My twin sons are 15, so Saturday was their swan song for youth day. I scouted pretty hard leading up to Saturday, and was able to locate several pretty vocal birds at my two primary hunting spots. Since these spots are about 30 minutes apart, my brother jumped at the chance to take one of my boys - his two children are still a little young. We met at my house at 4:45am, and headed off in separate cars.
Teddy and my brother struck first. They set up in a big stand of hardwoods, and heard at least 5-6 gobblers, but only 3 were near enough to work. They started working one bird, but quickly did a 180 when another bird behind them started gobbling hard to my brother's calls. Initially, the bird hung-up at about 100yds, but they were able to take advantage of some cover and close the distance to maybe 75yds. Once they got in his zone, they were able to reel him in. Teddy stopped him at 25yds - it was 7:20am. Tale of the tape - 20 3/4 lbs, 9 1/2" beard, 1 1/4" spurs. Of course, they immediately took a picture and texted it to me and Cole.
Meanwhile, Cole and I were also among multiple birds in some mixed hardwoods and thicker pines, but we were close to 3 in particular - 2 on a ridge to our left, 1 on a ridge to our right, and us at the head of the ravine between the two ridges. After gobbling hard on the roost, they got a lot quieter when they hit the ground. They would only half-heartedly respond to my calls, as there were a few hens with them as well. Eventually, the two birds from the left ridge ended up with the bird on the other ridge. We knew this because we heard a helluva gobbler fight break out, complete with fighting purrs, gobbles and thrashing wings. This lasted 30-40 seconds, then it was over. Only 1 bird remained on that ridge, so we assume he kicked butt on the other two and sent them packing. Of course, I couldn't entice him off that ridge, so we had a Mexican stand-off. (This was about the time we got the text from my brother.) Figuring he would stay on that ridge for a while, we decided to go chase after another bird in the distance who had been gobbling pretty regularly since flydown. When that didn't pan out, we returned to find our king of the ridge right where we left him. This time, instead of us plopping down and trying to call him off the ridge, we got aggressive and used a thick stand of pines to get up on the ridge with him. We crawled through the pines to where we were about 15yds from the hardwoods, and made our stand. I hit him with a couple of yelps which he responded to, but he didn't budge. Then I got an idea - I hit him twice more with yelps, followed immediately by my gobble-shaker. That did the trick - in less than 30 seconds he appeared at the edge of the pines at 40yds, looking for another fight. He covered most of his last 20yds in full strut. It was 8:45am. King of the ridge measured 19 3/4 lbs, thick 10 3/4" beard, and 1 1/16" spurs. Cole's comment to me: "My heart was beating so loudly, I'm surprised he didn't hear it." Classic! We took a picture and immediately texted it back to my brother and Teddy.
What an awesome and memorable morning. Needless to say, my season has already been made before it has even started.
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