I met a guy from middle Tn, several years ago on a message board that had posted pictures of some crabs he had caught and boiled while visting Grand Isle La, I asked him if he liked crawfish as well and offered to through a crawfish boil if he would let me come hunt a few days with him. Well... that was six years ago. I really look forward to my yearly trip up there with Keith and his family. He has several small farms to hunt in the area he lives in and their usually covered up in turkeys.
When I got there his year the birds were henned up bad and their were alot less turkeys for some reason. Keith and I chased several longbeards during the six days I was there. They would gobble a few times on the limb and fly down in fields with hens. Needless to say the mornings were very frustrating.....I hate field turkeys..but love watching them. We found one longbeard with two hens in a small field at 11:00 on his uncles place. I got as tight as I could get and had him comming my way until he realized his hens were leaving the field. He turned just out of range and left with them. We checked the rest of the place and ended up sitting in a gap between two huge corn fields so we could watch both. We both fell asleep and I heard a gobble I thought...I made a few calls and heard nothing...so I went back to sleep and was awakened by a sure enough gobble this time. The bird was headed our way from the direction of the one we had fooled with earlier. He came in quick and hard and died a couple of minutes later at 2:30.
The next day it stormed throughout the day and finally broke about 1:00 I took off back to his uncles place and got on another bird gobbling after the rain. He was in a little garden spot with three hens. I was trying to get close to a gap in the field they usually travel through when one of the hens caught my movement. I was able to lay down and call to her. She walked straight to the edge of the field and clucked a few times and then walked off heading to the gap. The other two did the exact same thing and were less than 10yds. The longbeard followed them as expected and I killed him after he walked past.
The next morning we could'nt find a bird on the couple of places we hit. We did find one strutting on his neighbors place right off the highway with a bunch of hens at 2:00. He made a phone call and we were told to go kill him because he woke the land owner up the morning before gobbling in the dark at thunder....He was roosting in the yard. He also told us we could hunt the woods across the road he owned so we decided to take off that way and leave the yard bird alone. At 2:30 I struck one way off in the direction we were headed. We set up in the tee of a road and called to him. He liked what we threw at him and a couple of minutes later he was in range walking down the road in full strut. Keith's telling me to shoot him and I'm telling him to shoot....He finally pulled the trigger on a hard gobbling Tn, turkey.
Keith told me about three birds that were hanging out together behind his girlfriends house were we stayed. He had hunted them a couple of times ealy in the season, but said they had disappeard before I got there. We decided to check on them one morning during yet another daylight thunder storm. We heard one bird in the distance and after walking what seemed to be a mile we found out he was on private land. We did get him fired up but he would'nt cross the growed up fence line. We finally gave up 30mins, after his last gobble and stood up and spooked him on our side of the fence.... At 6:00 pm that evening I took off to try and roost that bird walking from the house. I saw a few hens in the fields but no gobblers. I figured he might be close to were he was that morning so I headed in that direction. There was a small wood lot seperating the fields that was 100yds, wide and open with big oak timber. I gave out a few clucks before I got to it and was cut off with a distant gobble. There he was.... I slipped in the hard wood lot and called again and he cut me off from in the field. I figured he was hot enough to kill if I had the time and luck to get through the timber to within the fields edge. I moved up to about sixty yards from the field we he gobbled on his own....and so did two more. it was the three longbeards that Keith had told me about they were back and on fire. I was pumped and disgusted at the same time. If I could have only made it another twenty yards are so....They gobbled again on their own and I could see all three standing on the fields edge looking my way....My heart sunk....they are not going to come into these dark woods and leave the field. I got to calling real aggressively and they were gobbling with every breath. They entered the woods and were heading my way. I could'nt believe it. I picked out the biggest one and let him have it. He ended up being the best one from the trip with 11" of beard and 1.25 spurs.
I finally got over my depression enough to write this story....some times it takes awhile... I really had a good season. I was able to share the woods with two good friends and my son and was fortunate enough to watch a bunch of turkeys come to the gun. I'm already thinking of next season like most of you and it can't come quick enough....
