I thought I'd share my opening day longbeard and story with everyone. What a story it is! Alarm goes off at 4am this morning and I get myself and gear together and head for the woods. I get to my usual spot for the opener, get out and start down an old logging trail. Sure enough, not 200 yards from the truck, two birds starting gobbling in the pre dawn light. I stood there for a while, thinking about where I wanted to setup. Now, its pretty dark out yet and I noticed movement in front of me! Turns out, a good family friend was moving in on the same birds and we found each other in the dark. Haha. So, he and I formulate a plan and go about setting up. We're setup, about 75 yards from each other up off the logging road we came down. As light started to finally come around, the gobblers were going bananas in the trees in front of us, not more than 100 yards away. Fly down time. I had a hen come up each side of me, across the logging trail and up behind me, sort of pinning me down. The gobblers were down over a hilll a bit still gobbling off and on. All of a sudden, about 1/2 hour after fly down, I look down the logging road and see two white heads working their way onto the road. They are right in front of my friend. I had the gun up, waiting for him to either shoot or perhaps have the birds move in my direction. I kept thinking... "shoot Steve, shoot!" Finally, bang! He shoots and drops one of the birds. Now, here is where it gets interesting. When he shot, there were two jakes and the second longbeard on the road. They didn't run! The remaining longbeard actually went over and roughed up the the fluttering tom down. Steve, after the shot, just froze and watched. I could see the bird about 75 yards away standing over his fallen buddy. So..... I figured, what the heck, might as well give him a couple clucks and purrs to try to calm him down and see what happens. To my surprise, he came right to me, looking for this hen he was hearing! I couldn't believe this. I have never shot at a bird and had them stay around and even respond. He walked right to me and at 20 yards, I pulled the trigger. Ended up being a pretty nice gobbler. 19lbs 9" beard with 1" spurs.
