My daughter was gone to the Outer Banks for three days. So I thought I was going to have three days of hunting. My wife does not like to be alone and she asked me to sleep in. With so many early morning hunts I said yes. I still got down to my hunt club by 7:00 am. I had no more gotten out the truck near the front of my club and I heard a gobble. I got ready fast and headed after him. I setup on him within 100 yards of the property line. The gobbler was just on the edge of the line. I found out when I heard a few clucks that he had hens with him. He would not come my way so I did not waste time with him. It was still early so I decided to head to the middle of our club. I started off toward the back northwest corner of our property. I setup a few times on the way. There were three food plots in the back corner. I setup at the first one and the third one with no luck. So I decide to head back to the truck and rest. It was warm day. When I got back to the truck I was sweaty. I was wearing my Walls Bibs and they were just too warm for my afternoon hunt. I changed into some cool BDU pants. I had noticed on my way back to the truck there were some gobbler and hen tracks heading toward the truck but turned to the right before I got to my truck. After I pasted that turn I noticed a hens track leading to the same turn. So I knew just were they had headed. I hiked down that road to a good spot along a creek. I began calling with some clucks and yelping on my slate caller. I was also caller of a mouth call. After an hour or two I began to mix in some cuts and got a gobble off the property about 250 yards or so. He stayed put for a little while. He began coming straight at me. He was about a 100 yards from me and I could not see him. The woods were thick and knew he work probably be in range has soon as I seen him. He gobble about 60 yard out. I put the slate call down and began to just work him in with my mouth call. I finally saw him coming about 50 yards out. He was strutting all the way in. he began to move angling to my right. When he went behind some thick stuff I shifted to my right and got on him when he was in a small clearing. As soon has in was in my sights I fired. He went down and did not flop much at all. It was 4:20 pm He was a nice longbeard with over an inch spurs. He was 40 steps from where I shot him. I tagged him and began taking some pictures. After I found my spent hull I headed back to the truck. I weighted him at the truck on my Berkley 50lb scales. He weighted 20 lbs. 6 oz. His beard measured 10” even and his spurs were 1 1/16” Left and 1 1/8” Right. It was an awesome day in the spring woods. I took this gobbler exactly 15 years to the day from when I took my first back on April 14 1997. It sure was special day in the spring turkey woods.
