My son, Daniel, and I just started turkey hunting 3 years ago and we've been able to "luck" into a few good turkeys the first 2 years but so far this year we hadn't been able to seal the deal.
Two weeks ago we were able to call in a group of 4 but they shut up at about 100 yards and came in silent through thick stuff and, unfortunately, saw us before we saw them….
We've gone a lot this year and were starting to get discouraged but we hung in there and it all paid off Friday.
We never heard a bird on the roost but heard this bird gobbling at about 8:30…he was probably about 500-600 yards off on neighboring property.
He would answer us every time we called but was not budging, wanting us to come to him.
After about 15-20 minutes we were ready to give up on him but decided to get really aggressive with calling, just to see what would happen…we really had nothing to loose…
Daniel and I started just slowly walking around on the ridge top, hen calling back and forth so we'd sound like several hens.
He would gobble every time but after about 10 more minutes he still wasn't budging so we still thought it wasn't going to happen…
Daniel had taught himself how to gobble on a mouth call last year so I asked him to mix in some gobbles with some more aggressive hen calling…
So we started hen calling over the top of each other and Daniel would mix in a gobble every now and then…that was just more than this dude could stand, we could tell they were coming!
They gobbled the whole way in so we toned it down the closer they got. When they got to about 150 yards we sat down and started scratching leaves and calling very softly.
They both gobbled at about 60 yards with the jake coming in first to about 20 yards. We sat perfectly still and fortunately, he didn't booger, so the gobbler came in behind him about 2-3 minutes later and I was able to shoot him at about 35 yards.
18lbs, 9.5" beard, 1.25" Spurs.
Two weeks ago we were able to call in a group of 4 but they shut up at about 100 yards and came in silent through thick stuff and, unfortunately, saw us before we saw them….
We've gone a lot this year and were starting to get discouraged but we hung in there and it all paid off Friday.
We never heard a bird on the roost but heard this bird gobbling at about 8:30…he was probably about 500-600 yards off on neighboring property.
He would answer us every time we called but was not budging, wanting us to come to him.
After about 15-20 minutes we were ready to give up on him but decided to get really aggressive with calling, just to see what would happen…we really had nothing to loose…
Daniel and I started just slowly walking around on the ridge top, hen calling back and forth so we'd sound like several hens.
He would gobble every time but after about 10 more minutes he still wasn't budging so we still thought it wasn't going to happen…
Daniel had taught himself how to gobble on a mouth call last year so I asked him to mix in some gobbles with some more aggressive hen calling…
So we started hen calling over the top of each other and Daniel would mix in a gobble every now and then…that was just more than this dude could stand, we could tell they were coming!
They gobbled the whole way in so we toned it down the closer they got. When they got to about 150 yards we sat down and started scratching leaves and calling very softly.
They both gobbled at about 60 yards with the jake coming in first to about 20 yards. We sat perfectly still and fortunately, he didn't booger, so the gobbler came in behind him about 2-3 minutes later and I was able to shoot him at about 35 yards.
18lbs, 9.5" beard, 1.25" Spurs.
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