His first Tom

fratri

Active member
We went to two farms this morning... At the first farm as we pull in and park about 500yds from the bush, a turkey flies off a tree that is right beside the parked truck. Of all places, to park....
We trek the 500 yds to the bush/field edge and wait for the morning to unfold. We hear a distant gobbler, see a few deer but no real action close to us so after 7:30 am we decide to leave and check out another farm 5 minutes away....
Arrive at the second farm and make our way toward the bush catching a glimpse of a hen in the field/bush edge a few hundred yards ahead. We get close to the bush and settle in. After a few minutes we get a Tom to sound off maybe 300 yds out. We continue to call on and off for an hour, only to have a hen come in checking us out....
Shortly after 9 am we decide to take a walk to the back portion of the bush and have a look into the back field. We don't see anything so decide to make a big circle back to where we started off at this farm. As we near our starting point and before we break out of the bush, I spot a big bodied deer about 80 yds away slowly making its way toward us. There we are looking at this great big bodied deer, taking out my binos just admiring it, when all of a sudden without warning a turkey comes over the rise just behind the deer. Then another one and a 3rd one comes over the rise, it looks like two Toms and a Jake (maybe a hen, was not sure).
I tell my hunting partner (call him a boy but he is a young man now) to get his gun up and ready as they should following the tree line and give us a 25-30yd shot. They are taking their time and to encourage them to continue on their path I give out a few soft yelps of encouragement :)….. They came in just as I hoped.. I tell the boy wait until they separate, once they do he takes the 30 yd shot and his first Tom is down... He is very happy.... After the shot, the other one stood there confused for a few seconds, my partners offers his gun (I left mine in the truck on purpose) but in the moment I say no... Looking back maybe I should have taken his gun and the second bird but this was his day
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Congrats! We finally had a good year here in Missouri, we did a lot of trapping this past year and after getting rid of over 70 coon and a few fox and bobcats hopefully we have a good hatch. Seen several groups of Jake’s this year. After 2 mediocre years of limited turkey hatches, we decided it was time to take matters into our own hands.
 
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