My Brother-in-law and I headed out on the opener to some private property we have permission to hunt in the Inland Empire. We woke up at 5:45 for coffee and breakfast before heading to the blind. By 6:15 birds were coming off the roost and we had two hens at our host's house. By the time we were in our blind we had birds trickling into the meadow where we were had set up. At around 7am we saw our first hen in the meadow, followed by a second hen with a good size tom a few minutes later . He was drumming and spitting withing 15 yards of the blind. Would have been an easy shot but we set out with the goal of trying to double up, so we passed.
We had a number of toms gobbling to our calls off in the distance. About 20 minutes later we had a lone hen fly into our meadow. 5 minutes later she was joined by another hen and two toms. My old raspy hen call scared off the young tom but brought two charged up toms running into the meadow. These three toms went into full rut mode over that one hen. As they strutted around that hen led them straight in front of our blind. When the opportunity presented itself, we gave a whisper 3-2-1 countdown and put two birds down.
We passed on the third, even though it was an easy shot. These birds got hit pretty hard by poachers a few years ago so our host is working to bring back the flock. It was worth it to see Tom #3 curb stomp the life out of my brothers downed bird. We tagged out by 8:05 am. It was an awesome opener
