Great Ending

bowhunterfanatic · May 4, 2026

Told my brother we should give it one more go this morning before we call it quits on the year. He's had a rough go of it this year from a shooting standpoint. Told him he was shooting my .410 this morning or I wasn't even going. He agreed so off we went. We started in a spot where we watched one Friday but he was nowhere to be found. We heard 3-4 off in the distance back towards the truck so we headed that way. We cut the distance 500 yards or so after we knew the birds were down and pretty quickly realized we had options. We opted to try and get on the one gobbling closest to us. He was in a block of timber on the edge of a pretty large unplanted crop field. There was a second bird in the timber another 100-150 yards up past the closer one. We snuck out to the field just to take a peak and realized there was a bird out in it strutting with a hen that we hadn't heard gobble. I assumed the two gobbling in the timber would eventually work their way into the field with the other gobbler. We hopped into a ditch that runs the length of the field hoping to try and get between the birds. We didn't make it but 50 yards or so and had to get up out of the ditch to go around a log jam. Right as we got out of the ditch the closer bird gobbled about 80-90 yards up in front of us. Told my brother I thought we could possibly call him to us so we sat down with him 6-8 feet in front of me. I called twice pretty soft on a slate call and started loudly scratching in the leaves. After a minute or two of scratching he finally gobbled. Sounded like he hadn't moved. I picked the call back up and called to him one more time and started scratching again. About that time my brother put his hand behind his back and gave me a thumbs up. Maybe 30 seconds later he was running to us and stopped at about 25 yards looking for the hen. He made the shot count this time and wrapped up both of our seasons. It's rare that I get to watch one do it right in the timber so it was a great way to finish the season. Didn't hurt that the bird was also a doggone dandy. Until next year….