BRING ON NEXT APRIL

[Purebred Redneck]

Why does God hate me? Oh yes, the sins...
After a horrible 3 weeks, turkey season is now over

In this time I have dealt with bad weather 90% of the time, quiet turkeys who won't gobble past sunrise, running into other hunters, taking a dump ON my wallet (long story) ;D, getting tangled and mangled dangling in a barbwire fence (long story) ;D, and almost getting ran over by a train not once - but twice (long story) ;D. And I'll spare those for the time being


But today I have found the reason why I keep going back for more, the one occasion that occurs every few years.


With nothing gobbling on 5000 acres for hours, I went to a few spots where I have seen birds before and figured I'd just sit down for a couple hours hoping to ambush a bird. When going to one of my spots I hear a gobble 1/2 mile away. Now I ain't going to walk all the way over there for one gobble; but when he gobbles 4 more times I'm going over there to see what exactly is going on...because these birds just don't do that.
I finally get to the woods he's in and go in trying to close the distance further. He is still hammering away to any noise, including my crow call.
Because of the terrain, I had to get really close - I had to get on the same ridge as him. I took off my bulk vest (bringing only my glass slate call with me) and crawled up the ridge and to the nearest decent size tree where I was going to stand up and call b/c of the thick cover. When I stand up by the tree which is only about 50 yards away from the out of site bird, a deer jumps up and blows and runs directly past the gobbler. Just my luck
I call and he's thankfully still only 50 yards in front of me. Everytime he gobbled you could hear his feathers beating in the wind and slapping against eachother - for you turkey laymen that's when you know you're in shooting range
Still can't see him and it's been about 10 minutes after my call. I call again and he answers in the same place. I call 20 minutes later and he's still only 50 yards away in the same place.

Well I'm not playing this game anymore because my arm's about to fall off from keeping the gun aimed in a standing position the entire time. I let out a minute of nonstop cackles, cutts, yelps, kee-kees, and purrs in no particular order or loudness and it was enough to have the old generation of turkeys hunters roll in their graves. But the bird gobbled about 10-15 times during this unorthidox approach to calling a hung up bird --- and within 30 seconds he was standing 30 yards away with the red head in view. But the cover was too thick to shoot so i had to wait a bit longer...but he turned right around and went back to about 50 yards away and out of site.
I called again and imediatly he answered and I figured he was comming right on back in...or not. We played the game for about another 45 minutes before I let out a totally unneccisary aray of every turkey call imaginable. Just like the last time, he gobbled about 15 times in one minute and was right infront of me at the exact same location at 30 yards but I couldn't shoot b/c I thought it was a little too thick.
This time he got nervous and left and was never seen or heard from again.

Even though I didn't shoot, I heard the same bird gobble between 70-80 times in less than two hours all under 50 yards from me.

I have never experienced this before and may not again. But this is what is going to get me out next year ;D

[jimh]

Red, 30 yds and can't shoot because of cover would have put me into an early grave. i would rather of had that than the absolute quite i had on sat. morning. the only thing i saw was a 4' long black snake sunning it's self.

[Purebred Redneck]

It was pretty hard not to shoot.

A couple times I saw only a head and thought about shooting but there was some brush inbetween us. All I needed was another 5 steps and he would of been in a good shooting lane on both approaches. I thought for sure he'd walk closer the second time since he didn't find the hen the first time.