Bagg-it Tag-it
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2009
- Messages
- 327
- Reaction score
- 32
I had quick success on tuesday at 7:15. Well today as I got in the woods at the same farm....they didn't gobble right away. So I went to my strategic set-up/listening spot. It was light when they started but there were lots of gobbles in several directions but the closest was right in front of me a couple hundred yards across the field. I set up under the cedar tree again. Saw lots of birds traveling around but very few responded positively to the call. More often it hung them up out in the field--but an hour after light I had a group of three gobblers coming my way--that then got hung up by a couple of jakes that appeared out of nowhere. Finally the jakes move out of the way and I'm working the gobblers again. They get to about 60 yards and I realize that these aren't gobblers but super jakes. 4" beards but gobbling their heads off and scaring everything out of the field. I shut up and let them "cycle" through. A few minutes later I hear a gobble from 270 degrees right down the fencerow I'm sitting in. I'm trying to figure out which field he is in so I can set up on him correctly. I do the shift and shuffle a couple of times moving around the tree in response to different ways it sounds (I'm sure it looked ridiculous with all those gyrations). finally I see him moving laterally away from me and he goes to a spot 250 yards away at the edge of the field in a nice little rise that drops off on two side and has woods on the other side. He posts up and gobbles to all points on the compass. I cutt at him and yelp. He looks but never moves to me. He is the big dog and lets the b*tches come to him. Finally he breaks down into his matador dance and I realize he has a couple of hens right there. I sit there for an hour and half watching him breed with two or three hens. Then he disappears down the ravine that it in the woods. At this point I can move on him. I back out of the woodline and make a big loop around the field hidden by the way the topography lays. right as I'm about to doubleback to get in front of this gobbler and cross over to a the other side of a pond...I hear jake/gobbler deep yelps on the other side of the pond (at least a quarter mile from where the other gobbler probably is). Bird in the hand is my attitude. Picturing where these guys are, I sneak around the other side of the pond and get set up on the side of a logging road. I get on the other side of the road from the pond and ease up next to a tree and crouch down. I start to think that maybe I should creep up in the leaves a little further but then I hear yelps right in front of me. I'm hidden by a treeline and the woods and look up the road. I figure I'll hit the call a bit and make some light cutts. There is more yelps. Suddenly before I can creep forward--I hear phitt---boooooom, phitt boooooom (that sound like big bubbles escaping from a swimming pool). He's close!!! I see movement in the tree just mere yards ahead. My gun is up and I'm looking through the Burris FF. He decides "she" is getting away and he breaks strut and runs down the road I'm sitting on. I see a swinging rope, I steady the dot and let 'er go. He falls over backwards and doesn't even twitch. The jakes he is with start alarm putting--but I yelp them into a calmer state of mind and they ease off. My blood is pumping and I'm thinking "what the heck just HAPPENED!!!!"
I step off 10 paces to my prize. 23lbs, 11" beard, 1 1/4 curved hooks!!! Old bird. He was so close that I shot his waddles off. What a week! I'm ecstatic!
It was 10:15. It pays to stay longer!
I step off 10 paces to my prize. 23lbs, 11" beard, 1 1/4 curved hooks!!! Old bird. He was so close that I shot his waddles off. What a week! I'm ecstatic!
It was 10:15. It pays to stay longer!
