Hunted up around the Tucannon on opener with a friend and shot this Tom about 5:00 in the evening. Hunted private ground for the morning hunt about 8:00am heard a gobble from the draw below. Waited for about 10 minutes and here comes a hen from the same draw, she came with in about 15 yards from where I was sitting. Then the gobbles started getting louder and louder, finally the Tom showed up following an old logging road and came right towards the hen and my decoy. About the time he gets in range here comes two deer 25 yards from me. I'm thinking what bad timing but to my suprise as the Tom got closer to the deer he went full strut and ran the deer off. That was pretty cool to see.
I'm waiting for him to close the gap to get about a 20 yard shot and some guy stops on the road behind me and scares the Tom
. I was forced to take about a 45 yard shot and sent him into a somersault. He landed face down and stood back up and started running shot two more times as he flew down into the canyon. Went after him and jumped him out of a tree and didn't have a shot but saw that he had a permanent landing gear hanging down. Went back to camp to regroup. Headed back to the same spot about 3:00pm with my buddy and hiked back down to where we had seen him to find nothing, so decided to stay down in the bottoms and shoot one going back to the roost. As we are sitting there we hear gobbles above us and spot three Toms headed back up to the top of the draw towards the field I hunted in the morning. So the hike was on once again. We hiked back up set up in the same exact spot and waited about an hour. Suddenly a Tom shows up strutting down to where me and my friend are sitting. He came within 5 yards of me. I am trying to wait so my friend could get a shot but he looked right at me and jumps straight up in the air and gobbles and lands facing the other way on a dead run I shot him twice and then he tried to fly right over my friend and he shot him twice finally bringing him down. I didn't think I would ever get a turkey that close. It was awesome!!!!!
He weighed about 18 pounds 8" beard and 1-1/2" spurs.
Headed back up in the next week or two to kill another one hopefully bigger!
