My friend Tim and I made a trip down to central Florida for the opener. We stepped out of the truck to 36 degrees. I figured these sunshine state birds would be frozen to the limb they were on. It broke daylight and we heard two distant gobbles to my surprise. We closed the distance on the first and he WOULD not even answer our calls. The hens did and slowly drifted out of hearing. We heard another while we fooling around with him...so here we go again. This one was very willing to cooperate until he hit the road bed and didn't see a hen. He decided to come into the woods with us and Tim missed him at 25yds... I dared not say a word about the miss. I figured I would have plenty time on the ride home for that....
We took off on our bikes and within an hour we struck one that was sure to die. He gobbled hard and came in quick. I was up and did'nt miss thank God...but I was robbed..he had NO spurs at all and a very short beard.
We covered alot more ground that morning and finally gave up. When we finally got to a motel room we had both been up for 36 hrs...
The next morning we were rested and ready... Got on one quick only to have him fly down with the hens we had fired up and they all left in the opposite direction. Another bird that was gobbling acros a pond couldn't stand it and pitched out in front of us with some jakes. They all came our way and Tim killed his first of the trip. We let things clam down for awhile and took off after the other gobbler. It did'nt take long for us to get him fired back up. He came in strutting back up the road he left us on and died a short time later.
Day three found us in yet another different location. The birds were quite on the roost but shortly after fly down we had one with hens leaving us and another comming to us from behind quick. Tim smoked his second and I caught it all on film and the shot at 25yds. I had to mention at that point that we could have already been home if he hadn't missed the first bird....
