Didn't start out too well Wednesday. I had prepared a setup tree beside a power line right of way where I had unsuccessfully worked one off the roost and heard 2 others the previous day. Heard absolutely nothing so decided to run and gun. Walked a loop around the 200-acre farm doing my best imitation of a crow with a big chip on his shoulder, with no responses to the racket. Was about to leave and go to another property when I heard a gobble at 9:30. I was in a wooded creek bottom and the gobble was about 250 yards away, across a brushy field on a ridge between this and the next creek. The farm is a nice mix of fields interspersed with woods along several creeks. The fields were kept clean by my friend's cows until he sold them 4 years ago and planted the pastures in pines. Now filled with chest-high broom sage and clumps of briars, the fields don't get used by strutting gobblers much anymore, but the hens still nest on the property and the gobblers have moved their spring festivities to the more open wooded areas. When I got to the top of this ridge which intervened between me and the gobbler, he was gobbling repeatedly from a wooded slope which falls from the far field edge to a creek, no more than 30-40 yards from the field edge. He was hidden from my view not only by the contour of the land, but also by thick multiflora rose along the field edge. If I approached him directly I would not be able to get into the woods without exposing myself. Just as I was considering how to go down the field far enough to set up against a tree out of his view, I heard a hen yelping in the woods beyond him. Not wanting to lose him to the hen and not wanting to get busted by her putts if I tried to set up in the woods, I approached the field edge directly toward the gobbling, which continued at regular intervals. My problem was that, although the brush provided pretty good concealment, I couldn't see if I sat, so I approached to about 15 yards from the edge, took a knee, and yelped which was answered immediately. Neither my subsequent yelping, nor scratching in the brush, nor a trial of the silent treatment, could convince him to cross through the multiflora hedge and enter the field, although he did continue to gobble. The hen, fortunately, did not continue to yelp, and I suspect that she had a nest and wasn't really too interested in the gobbler. Finally I did what I probably should have done at first. I crept down the field edge, hidden from his view by field contour and brush, until about 75 yards down the edge I could enter the woods without him seeing me. Seated against a convenient tree, I called again and was rewarded with an immediate answer. Shortly he appeared, but approached with a solitary multiflora rosebush between us, about 10 yards in front of me. He was starting to walk around the bush at which point I would be busted, so I shot him through the bush at 12 yards. The $9 TSS was overkill of course. Nice mature gobbler, spurs sharp and each 1 1/8 inches. While I was checking him in and taking pictures I heard another one gobbling back in the woods, and yet another one a few hundred yards away as I toted him back to the truck. Life is good.

Congrats on a fine hunt and a fine set of spurs!

Great hunt and congratulations on a fine dark spurred bird.


Earl