The birds at the SE Indiana farm are henned up bad, so my focus has been SW Ohio. Killed one last Tuesday, and was fortunate to tag out on my 2nd this morning. Well saturday morning the birds won, but I felt good about being able to get on them. Rewind to saturday morning, the morning I got busted at 7 yards.. Another group of birds (not the ones that busted me) strutted and gobbled on that same wide open grassy hill for a half hour, only this time I could not make a move. They were desperately looking for the hen, but I didn't have a decoy out, and they were out of range, about 60-65 yards. After that hunt I made a plan for next time to slip down closer and stick a lone feeding hen decoy out so that they could see it no matter which ridge they came from. Fast forward to this morning...I went down the ridge and put up a feeding hen decoy on the opposite hill, and sat up the ridge about 15 yards in a shady section of thick honeysuckle. Long story short, they gobbled all the way in, strutted around the decoy for awhile and finally gave me a ten yard shot. When I shot this bird, the other tom immediately went crazy on my bird and started spurring it. I had to chase the other bird off before he damaged my bird. Hate to do that, but he was really tearing in to him. I'm gonna give it a couple days and go after the Indiana birds again, I wanna go after them with my bow next year. Good luck to everyone still hunting... 18 pounds, 1/2" and 5/8" spurs, 10 3/4" beard. Longer beard than bird #1, but shorter spurs and lower weight.
That is awesome. The eastern Ohio birds made a fool of me this weekend. Well more like completely ignored me.
