Y
Youngbuck
Guest
Here is the story of my early 4th season jake. We were hunting some public land we just found this year, and we walked in and owl hooted, and one gobbled. So we started moving closer, but the closer we got, we relized it was on the other side of the river. Well, it was getting later, and nothing else was gobbling, so we set up, and hoped when he flew down, he would fly on our side of the river. Well he would keep gobbling to any owl that would hoot, but never our calls. While we were sitting waiting for fly down, we seen two geese along the river bank, one on a nest, and as it got later they both fell asleep. So he finally flies down, and absolutely runs the oposite direction gobbling all the way. So we sat for another twenty minutes and heard another bird on our side of the river, only this would respond to our calls. It would gobble when ever we called, but one minute it would sound close, then far, then to the right, then to the left. When it sounded further away I had to shift to the left side of the tree so it was sounding like it was coming straight in. Then once it gobbled, another with it gobbled. This went on for a few minutes, and we called again and one gobble sounded very close (40-50 yds), only I couldn’t see it due to this down tree top in front of us. But a few seconds later it came in, in a full strut. The only problem was it was to my left even further than what I moved, so as it went behind some brush, I moved the barrel to the left, so It was an off-hand shot at 37 yds. He went down and didn’t even flop. It ended up weighing 13.5 lbs, and had a 6 ¾ inch beard. Which, at one time, was very thick, but at 37 yds the pattern opened up enough it took a few pellets through the beard.
Here's the bird.
Here's the beard
Here's the beard to show how thick it was.
Here's the bird.
Here's the beard
Here's the beard to show how thick it was.
