Not much gobbling on the roost this morning. After fly down I had toms, hens and jakes in the field with me but the toms wanted nothing to do with the spread. I watched a couple toms strutting at 80 yards forever following a hen. The hen decided to go back into the timber and the toms stayed. I thought it was on but the toms didn't act too interested.
The toms appeared to be leaving over the hill but for some reason the lead tom made a 180 and started feeding toward me with the second tom in tow. They got to about 40 yards and I could see they were going to try to skirt out and around me to get back to the hen.
I drew my bow on the lead bird but he wouldn't stop so I shifted focus to the second tom. I let out a few yelps and got him to stop, settled the 40 yard pin and sent it. The bird did a backflip upon impact and laid there stone dead. There were still birds in the field so I decided to let them clear before I went out to retrieve him and that's where it got interesting.
Around 5 minutes passed and another tom came from behind me and headed toward the downed bird. When he got to the "dead" bird he postured up and I thought he was just beating on him but evidentially he was administering CPR! The "dead" tom got up and took off running for the timber! At that moment all I could do was watch.
I got the binos on him and could see he was dragging a wing so I decided to give him some time before I went looking. I got out of the blind and checked the point of impact/arrow and wasn't very happy with my findings. The arrow appeared to get little penetration and blood was non existent. The broadhead was packed with feathers and a couple small chunks of meat.
I couldn't find any blood on the ground or on the feathers he lost so I decided to just grab the bow and head in after him. I walked the timber pocket and looked high and low but there was no sign of him so I went back to the point of impact to see if I had missed anything. After checking a few more feathers for blood and finding none I was starting to think it was a non fatal hit.
With nothing more to go off of I headed back to the pocket to look again. I made the decision not to take the bow this time because I figured if he was alive in there he would of ran the first time I walked it. I got in the pocket again and started walking a ridge and I stumbled upon him laying next to to a tree trunk. At this point he is 5 yards away and we are in a stare down waiting to see who was going to make the first move.
I started to analyze my plan of attack but luckily he decided to make the first move and it was to flee. When he took off instinct must of taken over because my first reaction was to chase him. We zigged and zagged through the timber and I figured out quick he still had a lot of life left. I knew there was a hog wire fence running through the middle of the pocket so I tried flanking him a little bit in order to herd him toward it hoping that I could catch him there.
After a 150 yard chase he met the fence and I managed to put an end to it. Upon inspection of the bird I found that the broadhead (grim reaper) hit the bird square in the wing joint shattering the wing bone but never entered the body cavity. That explained the lack of blood but I'm still stumped on why he layed there motionless for 5 minutes. He ended being a really nice tom with one spur reaching the 1.5" mark but he had little beard rot. I'm damn lucky to have gotten him. Quite the hunt lol. Good luck to everyone still after them!
