Liv4Rut
Active Member
Well Everyone I had a sweet ending to a very long bow season last Thursday morning. My buddy, a new member (Size_Matters) invited me to come down and hunt some of his spots down south. I asked him what the plans were and he said we were going to spot and stalk toms from dawn till dusk until we got one. I will admit I was a bit skeptical since I am about as graceful as an elephant walking through the woods when stalking game, but I thought what the heck, the blind and decoys weren't working out for me. Thursday morning we located our first group of birds to stalk, 3 toms a jake and a hen that were locked down in a cornfield next to a creek line. The stalk was on, we got to within in 60 yards of them and kept trying to cut them off and finally decided just to stalk right up to the edge of the cornfield behind them because they would not leave this one spot. After watching the birds for about a half hour, the big tom presented a 47 yard facing away shot. I thought no problem, and pulled back and settled my 50 yard pin right on his rump. The shot went a little high and caught a nice tail feather. I was depressed, I blew what I thought would be my only shot of the weekend. Bound and determined to get another shot we started cruising gravel and noticed 3 long beards in the corner of this huge public bean field. We circled the block and parked above them, there was a crp field and perfect wooded terrace that seperated us between them. We belly crawled up to the edge of the terrace and peered over the edge. They were about 75 yards down from us milling around. We backed out and crawled about 40 more yards and peered over the burm. They were still down about 40 more yards. We decided to crawl all the way down to directly across from them. I snuck up to the edge and peered through the grass, I could see 2 birds about 30 yards out in the field directly in front of me, but where was the 3rd? I got a little higher and Holy Crap, there he was not 15 yards over the edge. I could see his big paint brush beard swinging to and fro in the breeze. Still mad at missing the first shot earlier, I was not going to miss this one. I layed down and came to full draw, and slowly rose up to my knees and settled my 20 yard pin on his sweet spot. He spotted me and poked his head up just as I released. The arrow hit perfectly leaving a puff of feathers. He took 3 hops and piled face first out in the field. We were both pumped and a short 15 minute hunt meant everything in the world to me. He weighed 20 lbs, had a 11 1/8 inch beard and inch spurs.
