Tennessee 2018-First three hunts
Open the Tennessee season to a clear 28 degree morning . A strange weather spring has carried right on in to turkey season.
Set up in the middle a 40 acre pasture field I had never hunted before, despite having scouted it annually for three prior years. Lots of wide open pasture on a hillside, and fields cleared to fence lines. Putting a bind in the middle of that open ground is a crap shot, but what the heck, it is opening day and I had seen some LB in the field a few days earlier.
(Editorial note-I observed every serious poaching issues preseason on some of my permission areas where I had enjoyed prior seasons success, finding dead carcasses with beards pulled and lower legs and spurs removed in two different places ...very disheartening. I was so P O'ed about this I just couldn't make myself hunt those areas opening day. This problem gets worse in eastern Tennessee every year, and appears to be uncontrolled and rampant).
Predawn starts , and one bird begins a lot of gobbling in the dark, along a field edge 200 yards away from the set up. That bird continued to gobble in the tree and then on the ground for more than two hours, never coming in to the field , but rather wandering out of sight through low cedars several hundred yards away I presumed he was with hens. About nine o clock I could still get him to answer a call, and decided the best thing to do was stop calling completely as I knew he knew exactly where I was sitting. Either he was going to come there in the field or he wasn't. No more calls till something shows.
After 30 minutes of my call silence I was surprised to see two fans come over a rise in the field at 125 yards , and below me. I also realized the birds could not see my decoys for a rise in the field between my set up and them. The two mature LB birds stood and gobbled for ten minutes, and l called lightly to try to get them to move my way. Eventually they eased around the side of the pasture, and then came straight in to the avian x jake and hens the moment they saw them. Both circled, strutted, and swatted the decoy, and I shot the larger one at 18 steps. A very nice three year old bird. Good start for Tenn.
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Some guy going by the name Three Toes from Virginia showed up monday night to hunt Tues and part of Wednesday with me. I had saved what I considered my best prospect place for his visit. Sometimes we have good luck when he is in town, and a chance to double was out there for us if we got some breaks.
Tuesday mornings clear, full moon. Again in to an open cow pasture , with this one being pretty steep country, but open clover, and having a three acre island of huge hardwoods right in the middle of it. We set up on one side of the hardwoods where l had scouted the birds in preseason. Turns out it was the wrong side on this morning. Several birds gobble out of the pasture and one in the woodlot island 125 yards above us. He had hens. I will not belabor the next 6 hours from daylight. Suffice it to say we split up a bit and Freddy got "close" to the area where the LB and hens had moved from the fly down. In this case close was 200 yards, straight up hill . And completely open except for a few large trees in the woodlot separating his view. Not wanting to get too close and wanting Freddy to kill the bird I hung back. I hung back from 8 am to noon. You could say I really "hung back" I took two different naps on the ground. Finally I crawled out and went and got some lunch for us. I crawled back below him after the food trip , and he was still pinned down in open woods. Now there were six LB in the field and maybe 20 hens. In three little pods. And it got to the place where they could see any movement either of us made. So we did not move. A foot.
Long story short , 2pm Freddy finally goes to light calling when bird was slightly out of his due to sight from dips and behind trees and coxes the original -'close'- predawn -gobbling bird to ease in full strut back to where he originally flew down , and within Freddys shooting range. And Freddy drops him stone dead. Two pm. A 6-7 hour siege. Beautiful bird, and picture attached.
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We then go in to another farm where l have seen some late afternoon activity , and proceed in thirty minutes to call in a passel of super-jakes in full strut and hard gobbling fury. Quite a show but i declined to pull the trigger on any of them, Freddy has a great video of this show, and he might stick it in here.
Tuesday night a huge thunderstorm rips through the area. Torrential rain , lightning ,thunderstorm at 2-3 am and then drizzle at daylight. We go to a place where I knew there were some LB. At daylight several birds gobble, despite rain showers and 20 mph N W wind and falling temps. Somebody shoots right at legal time along an out of sight fence line a few hundred yards away ,and we wonder if the birds in the area will respond after that. Two gobblers fly down in the field at 300 yards and downhill from us. Apparently there are other birds across the property line from us , and visible only to those two LB in our field. Finally we see some hens and two large gobblers in the very small visible corner that we can barely see across the fence field. For 5 hours we try to coax the birds still in our pasture to us, but they are mesmerized by the birds across the fence from them, and march back and forth strutting non stop during that entire time. Due to lack of cover we cannot move at all. Patience soon again, for the second day, goes from persistance to insanity but we are determined to break one of them our way. Five hours. Did I mention we fooled with them for five hours?
Finally, mercifully one fo them drifts too far out our way and Three Toes hammers him with Abby's 20 gauge shooting a non pixie dust lead load. We had watched this bird closely with binoculars for Five Hours, so we knew he was big and had a rope for a beard. We could not see his spurs. Freddy picked hum up and said " this is one of the best beard and spurs birds I have ever killed."' It was impressive, and our pictures may not do it justice. Great hunt. I have used half a seasons worth of patience. In two days. It was worth to see my good friend do is magic.