I made my annual trip to hunt in the Georgia -Fla area to hunt as a guest of a with a friend who has some nice turkey woods and fields.Only hunted the Ga side this year.

It was a cold and windy weekend , with mid 40s and a strong northeast wind 20mph at times, and consistent 15-18 mph if not 20+.. Low ceiling drizzle for some of it. Not the weather I have found to be good for a lot of turkey ground gobbling. But is it season opener for me so what the heck, if we can, we go when it is open, right? Typically I do not find the lower south birds to gobble in any weather much on the ground in mid to late March, as the hens are about under the trees waiting for the gobblers to fly down,. It is the peak of the mating season.

First morning I put on some duck hunting warm clothes and set up in a lane of green grass and clover through mature hardwoods , where I have killed some birds in the past. Sort of a hen highway in past years. Heard a few birds gobble a couple times at predawn at maybe 200 yards away, but only heard maybe one or two ground gobbles after flydown. I started a yelping sequence every few minutes hopping a hen might come my way with a gobbler in tow..

An hour after fly down, a lone hen came pecking down the lane and passed by my decoys without putting; and after she passed I made a few clucks on the Cody, and she yelped back. That sequence produced a gobble for a bird somewhere back in the direction she came from originally. In five minutes I see the gobbler step in to the lane fifty yards away. I looked closely with my small binoculars and could not see much of beard, if any. But I could see his spurs. The gobbler sees the Avian Jake decoy and his head lights up and here he comes in the Mean Walk. He came straight in and opened a full fan , and I knew it was game on. He beat the decoy up pretty good facing away from me and I had the wait several minutes for his head to pop up ,and stay up , before I had a clear shot. I got the shot I wanted and he dropped dead at 25 yards. The picture will show you why I could see the spurs when he first stepped out. A wisp of a 4 inch beard strands , but clear mature old bird..

Pictures of first bird and spurs

Second morning it was raining lightly and the cold wind persisted just as it had all night and all of the day before. .I heard a few birds on the limb. I was set up on a field edge in what they call a deer plot down there. Although I never heard the first ground gobble close to me two hens came in to the far end of the field and began looking in the woods behind them where gobbler soon stepped out of woods ; and two more hens joined the others at the same time. That group of five was 70-90 yards away from me for an hour, and I believe the gobbler bred everyone of the four hens in that period .I could not budge him my way. But who could blame him? That party of birds drifted back in to hardwood swamp. That male bird about never broke strut except to mount a hen and never gobbled one time in that period. He didn't need to.

After that group left the field about 920 am, I hit a crow call and a bird answered maybe hundred yards away in direction opposite where first group left the field. I made one yelp series and no answer. But i was watching that direction, and I soon see two longboards coming my way, I had a full fan B mobile out in that field and when those birds saw it they ran to it and left the ground to fight it from the air when they were still five yards away from the decoy. They really didn't like it. When I got a good shot picture on the larger bird I stopped the party. Amazing what old lead #4 shot will do to birds head at under 30 yards.

This second bird didn' t have the spur length of the first bird but the spurs were over an inch and sharp as needles. And a nice beard although wet from the rain. His wing was broken so it looks goofy in the posed picture but the beard can be seen easily. Neither of these birds was over 18 pounds.

All in all a great trip and a good good way to start the season.

Bird 2 photo

Congratulations to another great start to the Umpteenth STR. With lots of rain and wind it don't gets any better then that. Nice mature birds.


Earl

Nice job GN, glad you found a few to put the crosshairs on right outta the gate.

Getting the season off right! Congrats on some long spurred Toms

Success!

Good to see the masked turkey avenger still has it working. Congrats on 2 good birds. I see you still have your Amy seat with you. I still use mine a lot and had to find one for my son. They are about the best seat to tote around all morning. I have others that are comfortable too, but a pain to carry around. Thanks for stoking the fire.........Like we need it stoked, right?
V

Congrats again GN. Way to get it started.

Nice start indeed. Always nice to read the stories.

First day on the board in while and I'm late to the party already.. congrats man.. good stuff..

No suprise here at all!!! GN is a gobblers worst nightmare!!! Congrats on another great start.

Doug