Well today I had a first and I'm still baffled what the heck happened. Never seen it before, nor do I ever want to see it again. I went turkey hunting even while having to wear hunter orange. I picked a big walnut tree out and setup against it. I had a hay field in front of me.
I started off with some tree yelps very early this morning and it woke a hen up. She answered half asleep. I knew I was in business.
I let it get light a bit more and I was rotating between calls. I could tell there were several birds and they were slowly waking up. I started amping up on the trumpet and before long, I hear them pitch out of the tree. Next thing I know, I had 30 + birds 10 yards in front of me. Was thinking, wow cannot shoot now... I stopped calling and let them do their thing. They slowly walked away and I thought, it's now or never. So I clucked and cutt real hard on my trumpet. The lead hen broke away and came back toward me. I kept watching her close the distance and slowly raised my gun. When she was about 20 yards out, she turned broadside. I clicked off the safety and fired. After I shot, I noticed her still standing there. I was like, how in the world did I miss. Debris started hitting me and I looked down. No more than 3 feet in front of me was the shot pattern and the wad!!!! It scared the
out of me and I jumped up. My first thought was, I had to have shot my foot. They were straight up in the air. Saying some choice words and jumping up, scattered the remaining birds left in the field.
I have no earthly idea how my gun shot that close to me. I shot a bird the opening weekend with it and haven't shot it since. The red dot does not appear to be that out of whack, so either something was wrong with the shell or I had a barrel obstruction I was not aware of. I know it was clean of debris last night.
Needless to say, I thanked the lord for keeping me safe. I did go track down 10 of them and called them back in. I didn't shoot not knowing what was wrong with the gun. It was a great morning, just wish I had one to show for it. I'm going to be scared to death to pull the trigger on that gun again... I have a lot of investigation to do now!!!
Morgan and Dave, shooting does definitely bust the flock up... just not sure if the shot scared the birds more or my hollering did!
I'm going back out in the morning and taking my other 20 gauge that shoots entirely different shells!!!
