At 5:30am this morning at Hardies I ran into an old high school friend that was in visting family in town. He was headed up to philpot lake to do a little turkey hunting and fishing. He had been hearing some birds while he was fishing and had planned to try and unique up on a gobbler from the boat.

This gentleman is nuts and I had always enjoyed his company so I invited him to go with me on my before work hunt for a couple hours. We ditched his truck and boat down on the hunt club and took off where I had heard a couple birds gobbling to thunder last week during a storm.

We got set up at a great listening spot before flydown time and just sat there quitly listening. I made a few soft calls and then a fly down cackle. But was only answered by silence. We sat patiently for about 30 minutes and I thought about a nice set of tracks I had seen in the road about 150 yards west of where we sat.

We moved postitions down to where I had seen the tracks and I noticed a nice set of fresh tracks from yesterday in the muddy road.

We found some nice trees to set up on and made the decision to blind call for one hour and hold tight. I started off with some soft clucks and purrs on my aluminator, nothing. I then went to H.S. Strut 2.5 and made a few series of cuts and a few excited yealps, nothing. I then went to the true double II and started calling too much and too loud! It must of sounded pretty good because a Gobbler cut loose down in the holler below us.

We got twisted around on the tree and I told him where the gobbler would show himself and to get the gun on his knee pointed right there and get ready and "DONT MOVE". All was quite for a while, it seemed like a long while. I cut excitedly and the bird answered us just over the roll of the hill from us in what sounded like shotgun range, he was close.

I soon heard his drumming and he slowly strutted up the hill right in front of at about 30 yards right in line with my buddys shotgun barrel.

I was just about to putt to get the bird to raise his head when he cut loose with a gobble right in front of us and looked our way for an instant. BoooooM!!!

And then the party started! I hope none of you guys that heard all the commotion called 911 but we just acted like the two fools that we are for about 10 minutes. When I picked up the bird my watch said 7:01am.

Well I suppose my buddy is fishing right now but Im at work and patienty waiting for daylight tommorow.

I went on to work so I dont know what he weighed, Im thinking around 18 or so, 10" beard and 3/4" spurs

Good luck to you guys iisabigone

best kind of party

My kind of party

Congrats!

High fives all around.

Congrads!

Great job Big One!

bump

Big I hope your bubby gets a copy of this to save. I'm sure he will rmember it always
Tim" Vabirdhunter" Mizell