Saturday I was cruising thtough some planted pines alternating between a crow call and turkey call with no luck. I got out a Marlin Watkins box call and got real aggressive with cutts and yelps mixed in when a gobbler sounded off within 20 yrds. I tried to grab the closest tree. Busted big time. That was the highlight of my day.
Sunday I decided to go back to where I got busted and see if he was in still in the area. At daylight a gobbler sounded off right there in the same area. He gave me a couple of courtesy gobbles the flew down and walked off presumably with hens. I got up and went the direction they went to a long downhill food plot tucked into the pines. I figured I could chill out there while waiting on him to do his business with the ladies. Around 8:00 I grabbed that Watkins box and got real aggressive like I had on Sat. I thought I heard a gobble. A few minutes passed and I definetly heard one then. Game on!!!! He covered at least 300 yrds. with the last 200 yrds. drumming and strutting his way to me. It took him 25 minutes to traverse the food plot to get into gun range. I was pumped to say the least. I had never been able to witness a gobbler strut that far in the open like that. He finally got to 35 yrds. or so and my 20 ga. rolled him backwards. His left spur was 1 1/4", right spur 1 3/16". He weighed 20 lbs. 4 ounces. His beard was 10 1/2". It was a fantastic hunt!!
I didn't shoot him in strut, he had lost his center feather and was wet also. He looked kind of disheveled like he had been having a "good time"
This is the food plot he strutted down, I was sitting in front of the black dot (tree) at the bottom of the plot.
I thought the wings had an interesting shade of reddish brown mixd in.
Rick
