Had an awesome opening weekend!! Started early, getting up at about 3 am for the drive to where I was going to be hunting. Wasn't sure how things were going to turn out, since the hunting plans changed last minute. Found out some other hunters where going to be hunting the area I had initally planned to go. But have seen good turkey numbers in the other area, just hadn't hunted it as much. Got the blind and decoys setup just before 1st light. Could heard some birds in the distance, it was now just a waiting game... View from inside the blind: Saw two gobblers on the far ridge, nearly 250 yards away. All of a sudden, you knew they saw the deeks in the sunlight on our hillside. It was a turkey staredown! I let out a couple of yelps and within seconds, both birds flew accross the draw and had closed the distance to about 60 yards. I hurried to get an arrow knocked and tried to remain as clam as I could... :d Again, within a few seconds, the birds had closed to about 25 yards. Looking back I shoold have put the decoys 5 yards closer and I could have maybe drawn them in a bit more.... Luckly, 25 yards was close enough. I let an arrow fly and immediatly saw a small puff of feathers. A few seconds later, I had my 1st bird of the day in hand! After the morning hunt, went back to the vehicle for a short lunch and started thinking about what to do next. For the afternoon I moved next to a large flat. Bean stubble on the top and nasty draws on the sides. Later in the afternoon, I noticed something in the field. A large group of birds moving my direction! Closer... Closer... Notice the gobbler/jake in the bottom right corner starting to break off... After a lot of sweating, they finially made there way to my setup. Most of the birds hung up at about 30-35 yards. But luckily a large jake decided he was going to come check out the deeks.... At about 20 yards he hung up and was wondering if it was a good idea. To late.... Some how in all the comotion, I broke one of my box calls, but I guess it's a small price to pay for a heck of a hunt! :d
Nice looking birds!! I love the white on the tails. I think they look better then the Easterns we have here!
Awesome pictures! I liked the sequence that lead up to the shot on the last bird. Congrats on the birds.
Yeah, the Black Ice did the trick! I appreciated it's smooth draw on that last bird. He was starting to realize something wasn't quite right and I had all those other eyes looking in my direction - so my only real option to draw was from a weird position. I was kneeling but I didn't want to raise my bow up in front of the windows while trying to draw, so I had to hold it under the window out in front of me... A lot of bows, I couldn't have drawn in that position...
