Cornfed
Bowhunting Addict
Monday morning was as pretty a day as one could ask for in the spring woods. Very calm, cool with a beautiful sunrise. The gobblers were vocal and I managed to get on a nice tom early before sunrise. He worked into my setup approx. 30 minutes after fly down but would not come closer than 75 yards. He strutted and gobbled up a storm for around 30 minutes but would not commit to my decoys. I had out two feeding bobbing head deeks, but due to no wind they weren't moving in the slightest. He eventually decided he would look elsewhere and walked off over a slight rise in the river bottom timber. I cackled and started cutting and he triple gobbled and decided he had better come back for another look. He closed the gap to 50 yards but would not come any closer. After about 15 minutes I noticed movement in the timber behind him and here came a hen feeding out into the field edge. He immediately perked up and started putting on his best strutting dance. To make a long story short... it took me around an hour of trying different calls to finally get the hen interested in my decoys... each time I would lightly yelp on my box call she would work in my direction. I had to call her in 3 different times to within a few feet of my blind before the gobbler eventually closed the distance to 35 yards.
I am not certain what happened on my first shot, but somehow my Tom-O-Hawk broadhead partially deployed in flight and it took off like a boomerang and hooked about 10 feet over his head. He got a little spooked and started walking in the opposite direction. I managed to renock an arrow and get off another shot. This one flew true but a little lower than I wanted due to my failure to compensate for the extra yardage he moved from me after the initial miss. He hit the ground and flopped around for a few seconds then jumped up and hobbled into the timber edge. I was feeling concerned knowing the area he had just gone into was rather brushy with a lot of weeds. After a few minutes of slipping around in the area, I heard him rustle in the brush and managed to get another arrow into him.
He weighed 21.5 lbs with a 10" beard and 1 1/8" spur on the left and the right spur had the tip broken off so it measured 7/8". Most of the preharvest photos I got of him from my blind were blurry due to the low early morning light... however, I did get a couple a few minutes before the harvest once the sun came up.
Sorry,.. I can't seem to figure out how to include the photos in this post.
I am not certain what happened on my first shot, but somehow my Tom-O-Hawk broadhead partially deployed in flight and it took off like a boomerang and hooked about 10 feet over his head. He got a little spooked and started walking in the opposite direction. I managed to renock an arrow and get off another shot. This one flew true but a little lower than I wanted due to my failure to compensate for the extra yardage he moved from me after the initial miss. He hit the ground and flopped around for a few seconds then jumped up and hobbled into the timber edge. I was feeling concerned knowing the area he had just gone into was rather brushy with a lot of weeds. After a few minutes of slipping around in the area, I heard him rustle in the brush and managed to get another arrow into him.
He weighed 21.5 lbs with a 10" beard and 1 1/8" spur on the left and the right spur had the tip broken off so it measured 7/8". Most of the preharvest photos I got of him from my blind were blurry due to the low early morning light... however, I did get a couple a few minutes before the harvest once the sun came up.
Sorry,.. I can't seem to figure out how to include the photos in this post.
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