It dawned a last morning of Va trukey season to no roosting gobbles, then at about 7:30 the woods came alive, 3 birds gobbled out of no where. Well to give you the readers digest version of this story is quite simple after moving 7 times on these now circling birds that will not come in or gobble on their own without a lot of hen talk 3 1/2 hours later. I was moving for the 7th time to what sounded like distant gobbles of over 100 yards. I was walking down a logging road headed for a creek where I thought the birds headed. Just then I see one of the birds in strut in a small clearing. I sat down and the bird looks straight at me about 50 yards away. I watched him in my binoculars for about 15 minutes and could tell this was an old mature bird with multiple beards. He finally closed the distance to 35 yards
and the load of Remington Heavi-shot #4's was on it's way. The Bird looked like he rolled over and took to the air at the same time. I don't know if it was a clean miss or not(I sure hope so). I looked for hours to see if I could find him but there was only two small feathers on his flight pattern. Reality sets in after 14 straight one shot kills with my Mossberg.

Sorry guy's my post, forgot my user name

beard buster no more

hey if you go 14 in a row thats pretty good, i'm a bundle of nerves when they get close and miss way more than i'm proud of. But it dont matter how often you get em clean those misses are the ones that stay vivid and haunt you like yesterday.

Just consider it as a "Catch and release" turkey hunt.
14 out of 15 ain't bad.

barry