Dad Tagged Out This Morning

[njdevilsb]

Well, our season is over here in NY.  Hopefully we can find somebody to help call some birds in for before the season goes out.

Yesterday morning we setup in a normal roosting area after seeing some birds feeding and strutting the night before.  We chose a pretty good spot because as daylight drew closer, my dad spotted a bird on a limb around 100 yards away.  Upon closer inspection with the binoculars, I determined it was a tom.  He gobbled and strutted pretty good on the limb.  Once we figured it was daylight enough, my dad did a couple flydowns with his hat, and it wasn't 10 seconds later and the gobbler pitched down.  Then 2 more hens pitched down and before they were done, there was 1 tom, 4 hens and 2 jakes.  We messed around with them for a while and they worked to the opposite side of a small hill in front of us, just about in range but out of sight.  Next thing we hear is a gobble from inside the woods, and we see all the birds milling around in there.  They eventually came back out, but they were on a mission, and it wasn't towards us.

Fast forward to last night, we spotted the birds in the same field, but working a different direction.  The owner of the land we lease said they would probably walk down the field edge, and cross the road onto his property like he has seen them do in the past.  About 10 minutes later we drove down through and the tom and a hen were finally on the piece of property we had been hoping to find them on all year.  We followed them through the field and eventually saw the gobbler fly up to roost about 150 yards from the road, right near my grandpas camp.

This morning we got in there early, since the best spot to setup was within 100 yards of him.  Not knowing where the hen roosted, we didn't want to go on the opposite side and bump them.  We set out our strutter this morning, hoping this bird was dominant enough to come on in.  He didn't make a sound on the roost.  Just like clockwork, he flew down at the exact same time as he did yesterday after he strutted for about 10 seconds on the limb.  The problem was he flew down in the exact opposite direction from us, right towards where his hen was calling.  The field is full of rolling hills so we decided to try and sneak up through and see where they went and maybe get a shot.  We used the hills to hide us as we kept peeking out and around keeping an eye on where they were.  We almost got busted 2 or 3 times by the hens, but we kept still and they kept moving on.  We got close enough one time that our best bet was to belly crawl through the dew soaked grass to try and get within range.  After almost getting busted by a hen within 40 yards, my dad spotted the gobbler, coming right towards us.  We lost sight of him and moved closer.  The next time we peeked up the bird was only 30 yards, and he spotted us at the same time we saw him.  He stuck his head up to see what was up and my dad dropped him.

He's a nice bird.  He has about an 8.5" beard and just under 1" spurs.

Here's a video.  The first part is him yesterday when he gave us the slip twice along with the 2 jakes messing around with each other.  The gobbles you hear in the background is the tom.  The last part is from this morning when he flies off the roost.  Where he roosted this morning is probably 3/4 of a mile or more from where he was roosted from the first set of videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9FR7CmgE0Q

[M,Yingling]

Congrats to your dad ,,nice bird

[stinkpickle]

Congrats to your dad ,,nice bird

+1   

[Wrangler95]

 


Very nice,congrats!!!

[gatrkyhntr70]

  congrats!!

[trkycaller]

Congrats!!

[Hognutz]

Congrats. 

[WiLL B]

Congrats! enjoyed the videos too!

[archery1]

 
way to go!!!!!!!

[WyoHunter]

Congrats!

[tra_cline]

always nice to kill a go back bird. congrats

[JVA54]

         Congrats!!

[RutnNStrutn]

Congrats to your dad!!

[hobbes]

Congrats!

[cannonball]

Congrats to your dad!