Turkeys - lets see em

We headed to eastern MT to close out the MT season this past weekend. Got off to a slow start with a few "practice shots" off the roost fri morning but finally got rolling a little later. My wife shot a nice bird on Fri afternoon, then we got weathered out on Sat and they both shot nice birds on the last day of the season on Sun. My wifes 2nd bird was a beast, I didn't weigh it, but wish I had. It was prob 5lbs heavier than my sons which was an average sized merriams in the 18-20lb range. Hers felt like a cinder block.



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Didnt totally knock it out of the part but we did pretty good this year
 

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I missed this Colorado Tom the night before with my bow (really dumb miss!), but he didnt spook and went to roost where I could see him. I was waiting for him with the shotgun in the morning.

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One more front range public land tom in CO. My friend/coworker and his family were in town and we were able to sneak out after work and get his first turkey, 2 hours into his first turkey hunt. Also his son's first hunt ever. A couple miles in to the hike we got a gobble response close (within 100 yards). Worked the bird for close to an hour with only one more gobble before his hen started talking back and forth with me. She brought him right into the decoy at 15 yards yelping and feeding the whole way. He gobbled one more time right behind the decoy and that was it.
Third and final WY bird. It may be a while before I have another season this good.
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Great pic and season!
 
Finished my Ontario season yesterday morning with a chaotic solo hunt that proved sometimes it works out even when it shouldn't. Makes up for the all the hunts that seem to unfold perfectly, but end up fruitless. I had not roosted birds the previous evening, but know these properties well and knew that birds would be roosted somewhere. I arrived in the pre-dawn light at 4:20 AM and immediately heard a bird gobbling several hundred meters away in an area I had not anticipated. I waited about 10 minutes not wanting to walk past proven roost locations to chase this bird - in the interim he gobbled several more times and there was nothing but silence from the others. Knowing that time was now of the essence, I hustled toward the roosted gobbler as fast as possible. I had to take an indirect approach to avoid him seeing me in an open field. Once I closed to within 100 meters of him I was able to keep a section of thick forest between us. To set the scene, the woods I hoped to set up in was located at the top of a small knoll. The field in front dropped down into a bowl shaped depression toward a creek bottom. The bird was roosted on the field edge near the creek bottom. I quickly set my hen decoy up over the rise of the hill (couldn't get closer for fear of him seeing me) and then cut into the woods to see if I could find a quality setup. I was making my way through the woods toward the field edge when suddenly the bird pitched down! Standing beside a tree I froze. Thankfully the woods were very thick giving me great cover and I had several shooting lanes into the field - I was located about 5 meters into the woods. The bird was about 60 meters away, gobbling furiously. I couldn't risk sitting down (and wouldn't have been able to see into the field over the vegetation anyway) so I had to remain frozen standing while every mosquito within a several hundred meter radius zeroed in on me. The only call I could access was my Gobblestalker push pin call. I yelped quietly on it a few times and the gobbler began to move toward me (I sense it wanted to move to the top of the hill anyway). I ranged the bird at 41 meters and decided to take the shot. I use an Aimpoint Micro H1 on my shotgun and know from my patterning the Federal Third Degree load I shoot has a lethal pattern to that range. At the shot the bird collapsed - 20 lbs on the dot, 10 inch bird, and 1.5 inch spur (the second was broken off). This is the longest spurred bird I have seen in my 16 years hunting the Ottawa Valley for wild turkey.

2020 was a great season. I managed to fill both my tags with mature longbeards, helped my brother in law harvest a longbeard with his 9 year old son along for their first shared harvest, and called in my dad's first ever mature longbeard. Hopefully 2021 will bring great memories as well ...

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