The five state slam was completed on saturday am in Ky. I had roosted five longbeards from a field edge on friday night; they could not have gone far in the woods as they were in full strut afte the sun had set..when I got in there the next morning and got set up I could see two of them at 50 yards in full strut on a limb 45 minutes before any light other than the nearly full moon...the drumming was intense as well..sure enough they pitched down perfectly, and when the whole group assembled there were nine full fans , and not a hen in site. Except my decoys ..I took out what I thougth was one of the two largest, judging by the beards...It was 11 inches, but he had one inch spurs so I would guess this was a group of two year old birds. . I hunted hard on sunday am on several different totally henned up birds in another place in Ky, and despite answering every call they were always going away with hens. I t finally got just too hot to hunt, as it was a record heat all weekend. This means my out of state hunts (at least the ones I have planned)have yielded at least one bird in each state; all out of state were mature birds (and the Tenn bird) and were taken on the first morning of hunting in those states. I have sort of referred to this and named it the "Little Dixie slam" since it covered Miss, Ga, Va, Tenn, and Ky...frankly, I really like hunting eastern birds. I have also had people sitting beside me take four birds, and I plan to take some other folks for the rest of the season, ( I still have a tag for Tenn), so we will see what happens now.
