Oh my what a morning. The boy and I arrived at our hunting spot at 0530 and it was game on from there. We literally had birds gobbling all the way around us.
I started calling for him at about 0630. It was obvious that the birds were still on the roost by the way they were sounding off, but it was absolutely amazing. I literally have never heard that many birds in one place.
By about 0700, things quieted down tremendously and what i thought was going to be a sure thing appeared to be going a different direction.
We got up and moved a couple hundred yards at approx. 0715. Wouldn't you know it, the birds from earlier were again sounding off.
We quickly turned around and went back about half the distance to our original spot. The birds were still gobbling from all directions, but they seemed to still be quite a ways out. After about ten minutes on this stand, a single hen was getting quite tired of our presence. She was yelping up a storm and seemed to be getting closer but we never saw her. We went at it hot and heavy for about ten minutes before she decided to take a hike.
About ten minutes after that, three jakes appeared out of no where. We heard them come in, but I don't know if they were running or if they flew in. It seemed like they just magically appeared. At any rate.......BOOM! Hunter dumped his first turkey. Just a lil' guy but he had three beards for a total of 8 1/2 inches.
High fives and hugs were given and then we tagged his bird. It was about 0800 at this point and we decided that we were going to walk lil' jake back to the truck and head out to see if he could fill his second tag.
We literally made it about 30 yards and heard birds gobbling right on top of us. He quickly set his bird down and chambered another round and and sat down. I set out a decoy and took a seat a few yards behind him. I waited a minute or two and let out a couple yelps............. Instant responce!
I called for maybe five minutes and two toms came into the decoy. One gobbling like crazy the other in full strut. They closed the distance and BOOM!!! He shot the lead bird mid gobble. This one had an 8" beard and about half inch spurs.
Turned out to be a spectacular first day of our hunting season. The only bad part is that I had to remind him that his turkey season had come to an end only three hours after it started. Who knows, maybe I'll let him try to call for me.
