I shot the bosses assistant this morning. I saw more gobblers then hens this morning and they were hot. I first call one that came in on my left, it was a mature gobbler that came running down a woods road and was close but did not present a decent shot opportunity. A little after 8:00 A.M. I started yelping on a friction call that I made a few weeks ago and got a gobble. Every time I called it got closer and closer; I had my shotgun up and I saw two red heads bobbing in the grass at a fast trot heading down the fence line. They saw my Dave Smith Decoy hen and skidded to a stop and fan out in front of me and I picked what I thought to be the larger of the two and my season was over in Florida. You will notice in the one picture his lower beak got shot off. I also notice on the underside of this bird his feathers were worn off. The one spur was broken off as well. Another thing I noticed when I picked him up he had feathers wrapped around his good spur. I think this bird been doing a lot of loving and fighting this spring. His one spur was 1 � inches and the other broken spur was 7/8 of an inch. The beard was 10 � inches and the weight was 20lbs., 4ozs. Not as big as the first gobbler but still respectable for an Osceola. I am done for the season; I will see if I can get my daughter out before school in the morning to get her first gobbler. Stoner
