On Saturday my son and I worked a bird until 11am but he never would commit to come into the decoys. He was in a very small strut zone with hens coming to him left and right and he wasn’t moving! He finally moved out of that strut zone and we made our move. We get setup and make a few calls and nothing in return, all is quiet. After about an hour of nothing we decide to go get some lunch. On the way back to the truck guess who we run into??? Yep, ole Mr. Longbeard just a swanging. He saw us about the same time we saw him and scurried into the woods. DANG! After lunch back to the woods were we never heard or seen a thing other than plenty of deer. Figures!

On Sunday morning, after the morning gobble-fest on the limb all was quiet, and I mean quiet! We never heard nary a peep, cluck, yelp, nada thing except a few deer which blew our hats off around 10:30am. We move into a well known strut zone and made a few calls around 11am. A couple birds from across the road on another farm gobbled back a couple times then got quiet again. We sat there for about an hour and finally we did what turkey hunters do best on slow mornings, we took a nap. After our nap I decided to make a few aggressive calls in hopes of getting something going. I was immediately greeted with some aggressive yelps in return about 70 yards out. For the next 15 minutes or so we exchanged some serious calling, everything you can think of. Once I got her fired up and coming she never shut up and neither did I. We were getting glimpses of her as she made her way towards us but never saw anything with her. When she finally got about 10ft from us I heard a FFTT-VVVUUUUMMM, the unmistakable drumming sound of a gobbler. I whispered to my son that I heard a gobbler somewhere. He whispered back that he saw something coming behind her. About that time, ole Mr. Longbeard came waddling into view walking between us and the decoys. He never broke strut and was standing there looking towards us at 10 yards, then finally turned towards the decoys. This gave Mason enough time to get his gun up and safety off. As he struts back to the left I tell Mason to take him if he can. He responds with a stone cold, graveyard dead shot at 15 yards with the clock reading 1pm.

Here are a couple pics of Mason and his 2008 gobbler which weighed 22lbs had 1” spurs and 10” beard. This is Mason's 3 spring turkey in as many years.

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http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...s040608007.jpg