The Youth day opener was good to the boys and I once again this year..
We setup in a blind on a field at daybreak, but never heard a peep. So around 7:30 we went prospecting. Finally found a couple of birds toward the back of the property and fooled with them for a couple of hours, but they would not come. We were headed back to the truck and called in a spot we had walked through earlier, but struck this guy up. He was in the middle of a loblolly pine thicket in between two fields and it was too thick to traverse the way I wanted to get to him. I kept him gobbling with a crow call and backed up and cut down the edge of a cutover and got on the other side of him on the field edge. I thought maybe he would come into the field, but we were so close to him at that point we didn't want to chance crossing the fence. So we setup and hoped for the best. He came right through a nasty thicket and skirted us out of range and got to the fence and I thought he was going to go into the field and behind us.. which would not have been good as we were facing the thicket. Luckily I had Gunner pointed looking down a deer trail right beside the barbed wire fence and when the tom hit that trail he turned and strutted right up it to us.
Here is some video of the hunt.
https://youtu.be/Uqb_j1s-CrI
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