I get in about 5:30 and it begins to pour and about 7:30 it let up and I hear 2 or 3 birds on the other farm so I hit the box call with a couple yelps and I get a gobble from a bird less then 100 yards away. I let the call alone. Now the rain has stopped and I see a big blue head coming out of the woods but he sure didn't like the pop-up he stayed on the upper part of the field. About 8:30 I leave the pop-up and head for the upper part of the field, about 50-60 yards. The bird was just over the rise, sees me and bolts I shoot from about 50 yards clean miss. I hear nothing the rest of the morning. SO I call Grovsnor and he said that he drought that bird would be back the next morning but if I were to hunt that field again I needed to hunt the upper side.
Saturday morning I'm tucked in under a ceder some 60 yards from where the bird Friday morning on the upper side of the field where he had been milling around. Beautiful morning also. At newspaper light I have 5 gobblers going off behind me in this 1000+ acre field with 3 islands of trees, I hit the box call with a few yelps and this tom goes off in the same area as Friday morning then 2 more behind him. So I sut up and get ready I hit my hat against the ground and a few yelps again and I see 2 heads coming over the rise , strutting and drumming but that didn't want to come in any further than 45-50 yards and headed back do the hill. John had said birds are very territorial so I figured I'd find out, I hit the gobble tube and quickly crawled out to retrieve the hen decoy at 5 yards, I should have hit the gobble tube after I retrieve the decoy because on my return crawl I made it back to the opening of the ca mo material I laced between to small sapling and I catch movement out of my right eye and I freeze, 3 toms barking like mad at looking for the invader who took their hen. I stayed frozen on one knee next to a tree in the open for I want to say 15 minutes but it wasn't that long but I was starting to falter in my composure with these 3 big boys barking and so before I fall out I need to slip onto my back side and hopefully get a shot at one. As slowly as I would turn on a big doe in full alert I muster the nerves to slide onto my butt and slowly bring the bead onto the head of that bird which eluded me the prior morning. Then the bird to the left spots me and the one to my right turns but the big boy stood defiant barking with his head protruding high as to say this is my area I wax um good and with no fluttering he was laid to rest.T
he bird was between 22-24 pounds , he had 1 1/4" on the left and 1 1/2" spir on the right and sported a 10 3/4 " beard.
