JNRBRONC
Well-Known Member
I've been practicing shooting the bow I bought earlier this year. At first, I was practicing at 20 yards. Then, I started shooting standing 20, 30 and 40 yards from the target. Last week, I thought it might be a good idea to so some practice kneeling since I was going to be hunting out of Muddy's DoubleBull blind. Kneeling practice seem to go okay, so I figured I was ready.
We had scouted a place on Saturday, April 8, getting there before sunrise. We heard some gobblers and even had one on roost fairly close. We hung around and he flew down and gave us a little strut show. We debated where we would set up and figured things were looking good.
This last Saturday, we got in and set up by 5:40 or so. We had a heck of a decoy spread out, a Pretty Boy and half a dozen hens. We had lots of gobbling going on before fly down. After fly down, there were birds milling all around. One gobbler worked his way behind us. Muddy started working him in and boy was this tom hot! He came in on a rope. There were just a couple of small problems, though. One was the "sight picture" I was presented with (the shot was more to the right side of this window and was between the strands of barbed):
This "visual obstruction" also prevented the tom from getting to our decoy spread. So it was a now or never event. He was so close to the corner of the blind that I was reminded of the thread where the guy reached out and pulled the tom into the blind. You almost literally could have tried that with this one. Matter of fact, I had to let him get away from the blind to attempt the shot. I selected a spot to thread the arrow through the fencing and let the arrow fly. I saw feathers fly and the tom run off. We waited an hour then went out and picked up the pile of feathers and found my arrow buried in a tree behind where he was standing. I did a shave job on him. In this photo, you can see the arrow to the right of the feathers in my hand.
When I showed the feathers to my sons when I got home, they started giving me grief about missing the bird. I told them that I was happy with the way things went. I got the excitement of the hunt, I have a little momento (the feathers) and I'll be able to hunt this bird again!
Half empty or half full?
We had scouted a place on Saturday, April 8, getting there before sunrise. We heard some gobblers and even had one on roost fairly close. We hung around and he flew down and gave us a little strut show. We debated where we would set up and figured things were looking good.
This last Saturday, we got in and set up by 5:40 or so. We had a heck of a decoy spread out, a Pretty Boy and half a dozen hens. We had lots of gobbling going on before fly down. After fly down, there were birds milling all around. One gobbler worked his way behind us. Muddy started working him in and boy was this tom hot! He came in on a rope. There were just a couple of small problems, though. One was the "sight picture" I was presented with (the shot was more to the right side of this window and was between the strands of barbed):
This "visual obstruction" also prevented the tom from getting to our decoy spread. So it was a now or never event. He was so close to the corner of the blind that I was reminded of the thread where the guy reached out and pulled the tom into the blind. You almost literally could have tried that with this one. Matter of fact, I had to let him get away from the blind to attempt the shot. I selected a spot to thread the arrow through the fencing and let the arrow fly. I saw feathers fly and the tom run off. We waited an hour then went out and picked up the pile of feathers and found my arrow buried in a tree behind where he was standing. I did a shave job on him. In this photo, you can see the arrow to the right of the feathers in my hand.
When I showed the feathers to my sons when I got home, they started giving me grief about missing the bird. I told them that I was happy with the way things went. I got the excitement of the hunt, I have a little momento (the feathers) and I'll be able to hunt this bird again!
Half empty or half full?
