We hopped from spot to spot, hoping to get onto something in the rain, but nobody wanted to play.
As we drove up to the spot I killed my bird on this year, I commented that we needed a bird to be strutting in that field. Sure enough, we turned the corner and there he stood. Through a spotting scope at about 500 yards he looked good, so we made a plan.
The bird was at the north end of a woods, strutting for 2 hens in a big, freshly-turned field. There is a 2-track that cuts through the woods about 300 yards south of the birds. We parked on the 2-track and sneaked north to the field edge, staying about 150 yards east of the birds. I peeked into the field, and they were right where we had left them.
A few minutes later I had the kid, 13 year-old Ryan, sitting against a tree with a bunch of tall grass, briers, and a blow-down between him and the birds (Ryan likes to fidget ). We watched him strut for the hens at 140 yards for about 1/2 hour. Ryan kept telling me I needed to call, and I kept telling him that if I called he would get busted as soon as they looked our way
It was apparent that nothing was going to happen anytime soon, and Ryan was losing patience, so I pushed the envelope. I dug out a decoy (The one Chris left in my truck when he and Brandon headed back to TN!), crawled about 10 yards away from Ryan and the birds, crawled to the edge of the field right behind a big brier bush, stuck my arm out as far as I could, and planted the deke about 3 feet into the field. As I did this the tom looked right at the deke, and I had to freeze for what seemed like forever before he turned his fan to me and I could crawl back to Ryan.
Once the deke was in the field and I was next to Ryan again, I gave a few short series of clucks. The birds acted like they never even heard it. There was some standing water in the field, and they were right next to it, even wading in it at times. I called louder....nothing. I yelped at medium volume....nothing.
About 10 minutes later the birds had moved away from the water. I clucked a few times and he gobbled. About a dozen clucks and 10 gobbles later, one hen suddenly got irate and we had a cursing match. She finally noticed the deke, and both hens came cutting and running at the deke with the LB in tow
When he was at about 40 yards the hens saw something they didn't like (they were at about 10 yards, getting ready to kick the snot out of our deke) and started putting. His snood went up, and I told Ryan to kill him.
By the time Ryan got on him he was at about 70 yards and doing the nervous turkey shuffle. Ryan let him have it anyways and he flew about 80 yards, kind of crash landed, and started to run east along the north side of a hedgerow in the field.
I jumped up and ran the Redneck 300 meters toward the opposite (east) end of the hedgerow, and just beat the bird to the east end of the hedgerow. It was pretty cool, watching his white head bouncing along the opposite side as I sprinted along trying like the devil to get ahead of him. At one point he hit some water, and had a hard time getting back out. I almost cut through the hedgerow and just tackled him in the water, but he made it through and kept on running.
When I turned the corner at the end of the hedgerow, he stopped and buried himself in the tall grass next to the fence less than 5 steps from me. He was still very alive and very fast with very sharp spurs, and I was very tired. (There are a lot easier ways to sprint 300 meters than in knee-high rubber boots through a muddy field!).
I waved Ryan over, rushing him as much as I could. By the time he got there he was out of breath, and I was barking instructions at him. I had him point his gun at where the bird was and walk up on him. The thing let him get to about 2 yards, then jumped up and started running back west along the hedgerow. With me yelling, "Kill him! Kill him!" in his ear, Ryan just about blew the running bird's right leg off at about 5 steps
The bird kept running, and I told Ryan to shoot him again. He said he didn't have anymore shells in his gun. I yelled, "Point that thing at the ground!" When he did I played redneck linebacker, and chased the bird about 20 yards back down the hedgerow before I jumped on top of him. I grabbed his head as he tried to roll and spur me, and finally wrung his neck. I hadn't had that good a turkey chase since Channing and I chased and tackled one on a Tennessee hillside a few years ago!
After that it was a lot of heavy breathing and high-5's over Ryan's first longbeard.
As we walked out I found that there had been so much rain that the water in the field where the birds had been wading was actually running pretty fast, and was noisy. After standing there next to it I am pretty sure they didn't hear any of my calls until they walked about 20 yards away from the water.
We haven't measured and weighed him yet, but he's about 9 1/2", 3/4 and 3/4, and 20lbs.
I called to them with The Edge and a Black Max. He ignored the Black Max but gobbled at The Edge every time he heard it, and the hens got MAD at The Edge as well. I had both calls in my mouth at the same time, and once I figured out which one they liked best I stuck with just it. Another testament to changing up sounds and finding what that particular bird likes on that particular day
