I hunted Western Montana yesterday evening and this morning. I had two different groups of birds gobbling at me yesterday but couldn't do anything with them. I put one group to roost and was on them in the dark this morning. It was lightly raining, so I was happy they were gobbling.
The flock consisted of 4 or 5 hens, 6 or 7 jakes, and one tom. They all flew into the edge of a big field and got as close as 70 yards but I couldn't do anything with them. I tried to follow and circle and I'll be dang if they didn't start back along the edge after 500 yards or so and go back by me out of range. The tom wasn't gobbling at this point and the whole flock was scattered feeding in the rain.
I lost track of them and spotted a guy walking his dogs ( I was relatively close to truck at this point), so I headed to the top to look for the other birds from the previous night.
I heard a gobble up high once I got back in farther and started toward it. The bird gobbled a couple more times from a long way off and higher but went quiet after I sat down for 20 minites to listen and call a little.
He finally gobbled again and had moved farther so I wasted no time following a steep old logging trail up the mountain. I've never hunted this part of the,mountain so it was all new once I started climbing. I finally came to a big flat (ish) area that was really green from a previous controlled burn. I was thinking this is where he was gobbling from. I stood there for 30 minites waiting for him to gobble, but he didn't make a peep. There were also two cow elk bedded in there that I watched the whole time. I finally decided that I must have been mistaken and he was lower and i should have stayed on the trail, so I went back down to the trail. I'd hiked the trail a couple hundred yards when I heard a gobble but couldn't tell where due to the echo effect that you'll find in steep mountains. I finally realized that the dang Thing was up where I'd just came from. Back up I headed.
I had to climb a steeper area from where I was at so it took me 20 minutes. He gobbled 6 or 7 times as I huffed and puffed my way back but I could tell he was moving away again. I was convinced that he was following a hen.
I called before I broke over into the open timber and he gobbled from up much higher. He had to have went almost straight up through the steep rocky mountain side and was now 300 yards away and at least 400 feet higher than me.
I crossed through the old burn so that if he came down I wouldn't need him to cross 100 yards of open timber. Once He gobbled at everything I gave him for 10 minutes or so but I didn't think there was much chance of him coming down.
Apparently I was wrong and he must have misplaced the hen he was following. The next thing I know I hear what sounds like a jet airpline coming and I look up to see him torpedo off the mountain top and drop through the tree tops. If you've waterfowl hunted, think of 50 mallards five bombing from a couple hundred yards overhead. He looked like a lunatic and honestly looked out of control. It was one of the craziest things I've seen a tom do.
The problem was that his speed took him 100 yards behind me to my right. I had my head turned as far as I could to see him. He immediately went into strut and I helped when he's go behind a tree. It took him 10 or 15 minutes to make into range and he finally was so far to my right and behind that I was about to lose sight (think double vision around the frames of my glasses). When he went behind a tree I rolled around as quickly as I could just as he came out.
He knew there was a problem and came out of strut immediately. As his head came up I gave him a load of #6s at 34 yards. I called in 4 jakes from downhill immediately after I shot him that came to 20 yards after about 10 minutes and gobbled their fool heads off. I don't think they ever noticed their comrad laying there dead since he didn't flip for too long.
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