Opening day of TN was quite exciting for us. There was a bird gobbling his head off on the neighboring property and not a single gobble on the property we were hunting. My cousin, my uncle, and I set up on the edge of an ATV trail near the property line and just listened to him gobble and sometimes even could see him strutting in the field. Of course opening day in TN this year was cold so we were ready for the sun to come up and start warming everything up. There's really no telling how many times this bird gobbled and he was actually calling hens to him. I thought, there's no way he's gonna leave those hens and come to us. Well we sat in the same spot and my uncle had begun to doze off and my eyes were getting pretty heavy as well.
About 8am he gobbled and it sounded different to me. I told them I thought he was in the woods now instead of in the field. They both disagreed, until about 5 mins later when he gobbled again about 80 yards away! He stayed there and gobbled a few times but didn't seem to be getting any closer. All of the sudden, I heard a hen purr behind us, I turned my eyes a little and seen that she was 5ft away going towards the gobbler. I thought, well, he sure isn't going to come up here now since he thinks the hen that has been calling is now coming to him. So we just continued to sit there and around 8:20am we called real soft just to let him know there was another hen up there. He never responded. At 8:25am I heard what I thought was a spit! But it was behind me! I eased my head around and there he was with the hen at 18 yards! As he was going behind a tree I told my cousin to turn around and get ready. He did and at 8:27am the loud mouth gobbler hit the ground!
It was definitely past due for my cousin because he hasn't killed a turkey in the past two seasons. I was just as happy as if I had of killed the bird myself. He weighed 20.7 lbs - 10" beard - 1" spurs.
