My friend Tim and I made it down to central Florida for there opening weekend for a public land hunt. We both had to work the day before the opener, so we ended up driving through the night to get there. We had hunted the place a couple of years prior and already knew where we would start out at. We were standing close to a field waiting patiently on daylight when we see a couple of flash lights moving towards us. I turned my pen light on to let them know where we were. They shined there lights toward us and kept comming closer. At about 75 yds, they stoped and started setting up camp. The blind went up and decoys were laid out, and every tree within sight of that pasture had been shined with there flash lights. Tim managed to calm me down a bit when he said " turkey gobbles we will just go to him " I hooted, bird gobbles approx, 75 yds in the woods from the disrespectful idiots that we had just encountered. We got to the other side of the bird and got him fired up. He flew towards the field but, changed his mind and came back through the thick woods and died soon after. It was so thick we hunted a killed the bird standing up.
We put the bird in the truck, walked back through the field a third time....
and headed out after another. We finally struck another bird shortly after 10:00. He came in hard and fast and ole Tim flat out missed him...
he turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder in disgust. Tim being the VERY lucky fellow he is got a second chance. A second bird had came in silent from the left and was trying to figure out what had happened. It did'nt take him long though. He bolted and I cut to him on a wing bone real quick and he stopped at 10yds in the logging road and died.
The next day started out exactly like the first same guys same starting point.
We did'nt get on a turkey until close to 10:00. We got him fired up and he came in silent , but had the loudest drum I have ever heard, I figured he was going to be a monster. He ended up comming on Tim's side and he killed him in one shot this time.
He was a two year old. We spent the rest of the day looking for another without any luck. We don't have a pic of that one because Tim truck was broke into that night and his camera , gun, gps, bino's and other stuff was stole.
We woke up to find the truck was broke into on the third morning. I still had one left to kill. We walked to the front desk and told them what had happened, and explained that we would be back sometime later that morning to notify the police , but we had a turkey to go kill first. I don't think the guy understood...
We got there a little late that morning and decided to try a new spot. We rode in on our bikes a good mile before fly down and got one to gobble. We set up on him pretty tight and I did a fly down, he ansered. and so did several hens. We got real aggressive and he flew from his tree to within 35 yds of me in another tree. A few minutes later he droped down in my lap at about 10 yds, and died. If it was'nt for the truck being broke into it would have been a perfect trip.
Here's a pick of the last bird. Both of the birds I killed had 1.25" spurs and around 10" beards. Tim's were both two year olds...he's not always the lucky one.
