Post by Woody Williams on Apr 26, 2008 9:51:37 GMT -5
After 4 days of hunting Kentucky and now on my 4th day in Indiana without even getting a longbeard even close I had THREE longbeards come into my decoy setup this morning - only two left.
Woodmaster called me last night and said he could not go this morning as he has 6" of water in his crawl space.
I woke up at 3:20 and there was a light mist. I checked the weather radar and it looked like it was hopefully moving out by daybreak, so I loaded up the truck and went turkey hunting.
I pondered whether to run and gun or sit a blind. Not sure on the rain situation I chose the blind. I got in the blind at 5:10 CST and started listening. Woodmaster had hunted that blind the day before and had heard 5 or 6 gobblers, although nothing close. He did see a hen or two.
At 5:30 I saw two yearling does down at the end of the field. They didn't know what to make of the mounted jake decoy and the submissive hen decoy in front of the jake. After a bunch of head bobbing and stomping they flagged and left.
By 6 am it was pretty apparent that there was no gobbling going on anywhere that I could hear. I hit my slate call with a few clucks and few cutts and a few yelps. I set the call down, sat back and relaxed, listening and poured my self a cup of coffee. I started glancing at the newspaper to see what was going on in the world.. I would glance at the paper and then look up and down the field for turkeys.
I got engrossed in Cal Thomas's (one of my favorites) article about Jimmy Carter and Hamas and didn't look up when I should have. All of a sudden I heard WHUMP,WHUMP,WHUMP and some fighting purrs. I looked up and three gobblers were beating the snot of of Woodmaster's mounted jake decoy! How they slipped in on me I don't have a clue. They must have run all the way in as I had looked at the field not 2 minutes before.
The decoy was doing a "Rope A Dope" and was just taking a beating. He was almost tipped all the way over.
I immediately put on my protective muffs ( my poor ears are super sensitive to loud noises) and reached for my gun. They were all over the decoy with me trying to get a shot that wouldn't take out two birds at once or one bird and Woodmaster's decoy.
Finally one got off a few feet and I lowered the boom on him. The other two flushed off about 15 feet away and then started heading for the downed bird - I guess to WHUMP him too.
I then clapped my hands real loud and they took off.
The gobbler had a 10 1/4" beard, 1 inch spurs and weighed in at 18 pounds.
I'm happy.... now back to KY Monday. ;D
Woodmaster called me last night and said he could not go this morning as he has 6" of water in his crawl space.
I woke up at 3:20 and there was a light mist. I checked the weather radar and it looked like it was hopefully moving out by daybreak, so I loaded up the truck and went turkey hunting.
I pondered whether to run and gun or sit a blind. Not sure on the rain situation I chose the blind. I got in the blind at 5:10 CST and started listening. Woodmaster had hunted that blind the day before and had heard 5 or 6 gobblers, although nothing close. He did see a hen or two.
At 5:30 I saw two yearling does down at the end of the field. They didn't know what to make of the mounted jake decoy and the submissive hen decoy in front of the jake. After a bunch of head bobbing and stomping they flagged and left.
By 6 am it was pretty apparent that there was no gobbling going on anywhere that I could hear. I hit my slate call with a few clucks and few cutts and a few yelps. I set the call down, sat back and relaxed, listening and poured my self a cup of coffee. I started glancing at the newspaper to see what was going on in the world.. I would glance at the paper and then look up and down the field for turkeys.
I got engrossed in Cal Thomas's (one of my favorites) article about Jimmy Carter and Hamas and didn't look up when I should have. All of a sudden I heard WHUMP,WHUMP,WHUMP and some fighting purrs. I looked up and three gobblers were beating the snot of of Woodmaster's mounted jake decoy! How they slipped in on me I don't have a clue. They must have run all the way in as I had looked at the field not 2 minutes before.
The decoy was doing a "Rope A Dope" and was just taking a beating. He was almost tipped all the way over.
I immediately put on my protective muffs ( my poor ears are super sensitive to loud noises) and reached for my gun. They were all over the decoy with me trying to get a shot that wouldn't take out two birds at once or one bird and Woodmaster's decoy.
Finally one got off a few feet and I lowered the boom on him. The other two flushed off about 15 feet away and then started heading for the downed bird - I guess to WHUMP him too.
I then clapped my hands real loud and they took off.
The gobbler had a 10 1/4" beard, 1 inch spurs and weighed in at 18 pounds.
I'm happy.... now back to KY Monday. ;D