BrewCrew
Active Member
After a long hard season it finally came together in a pretty sweet way. During first season I spent the first four days straight chasing them with my bow and had pretty good luck getting them to come into range. The only problem was that they were always coming in right behind the double bull and not offering a shot through the window slide. I had one GREAT opportunity with the bow where I finally brought this tom into range with the STRUTN 360 and then completely shanked the shot by missing his head at under 5 yards – PRETTY PATHETIC.
With all the luck I was having on calling birds into the blind throughout 1st, 2nd, and 3rd season I figured it would be a bird in the bag the first morning of fourth season, boy was I wrong. I ended up hunting them pretty hard for the first four days of gun season with no success. Every time sureshot1 and I would get stalking on a bird it kept ignoring our calls and going the other way. And every other time we didn’t think a bird was coming in he would do so quietly and would end up busting us before we even knew he was there, needless to say we were getting pretty discouraged.
On May 10th I decided to change it up a bit and hunt with Everly aka the Brownman hoping my fourth season luck may change. That morning was beautiful with quite a bit of gobbles but never one sighting of a tom for either of us. Our luck was not changing. About mid morning my hunt ended with another hunter walking up on my calling and sent us back to the truck with no bird.
We ended up going home and taking a short nap and then were back at it. As we were leaving the Brownman’s house we saw two big boys strutting by one of his propertys on some public ground. We decided we might as well give it a try.
We were going to try an old school trick we learned from a guy over west. We pulled out the “tail fan on a stick.” As we walked down the logging road that connected up to the field that these birds were strutting in, the Brownman kept the fan in front of his face as we crouch walked behind it. A small hill in the field separated our outlines from the turkeys so we belly crawled to the crest of the hill with the tail fan in being pushed in front of us the whole way. At the top we found a dead log we laid behind and kept moving the fan since the toms attention was directed towards us. We yelped a bit but they were not about ready to leave their hens. While lying on our bellies I reached into the Brownman’s vest and pulled out his hen decoy and put it in front of us as well. Trying not to laugh I started to make her dance as he let out a few soft yelps. We really had their attention now.
As they were working our way they got cut off by another hen and started heading straight away from us again! We had both dropped our mouth calls somewhere along the crawl so the Brownman said “should I purr with my mouth?” We figured we might as well try and the second he let out a few purrs the lead tom turned straight towards us and spit and drummed. Nice job Everly!!
From there on out it was a race between the two toms to see who could get to the decoy first. As they closed the distance from 100 yards to 20 yards in a matter of seconds it was pretty difficult to settle my barrel on just one of their heads without shooting them both so I waited ‘til they were only 10 yards out before I let my Remington sing. The front tom hit the ground and flopped but stood back up and turned straight away and I put some 4 shot in the back of his head and called it a night. While I was making my follow up shot the Brownman was concentrating on the back bird with his Browning 10 gauge. His bird had run back about 40 yards and he yelped with his mouth at it while standing straight up behind the “tail fan on a stick” and the tom put his head straight up and he dropped it dead in its tracks! What a deal!
I never would have thought that the tail fan trick would have worked so well but it seriously just made these public ground birds look stupid. I have got to thank the Brownman for giving me the first shot and sureshot for taking these perfect sunset pictures. Thanks boys! What a way to seal the season.
The birds must have shared some genetics with both of them having the white streaks in their fans. Each birds spurs were all over 1 inch. My bird went 23 pounds 15 ounces with an 11 1/2 inch beard and the Brownman's bird went 19 pounds 8 ounces with a 10 1/2 inch beard.
With all the luck I was having on calling birds into the blind throughout 1st, 2nd, and 3rd season I figured it would be a bird in the bag the first morning of fourth season, boy was I wrong. I ended up hunting them pretty hard for the first four days of gun season with no success. Every time sureshot1 and I would get stalking on a bird it kept ignoring our calls and going the other way. And every other time we didn’t think a bird was coming in he would do so quietly and would end up busting us before we even knew he was there, needless to say we were getting pretty discouraged.
On May 10th I decided to change it up a bit and hunt with Everly aka the Brownman hoping my fourth season luck may change. That morning was beautiful with quite a bit of gobbles but never one sighting of a tom for either of us. Our luck was not changing. About mid morning my hunt ended with another hunter walking up on my calling and sent us back to the truck with no bird.
We ended up going home and taking a short nap and then were back at it. As we were leaving the Brownman’s house we saw two big boys strutting by one of his propertys on some public ground. We decided we might as well give it a try.
We were going to try an old school trick we learned from a guy over west. We pulled out the “tail fan on a stick.” As we walked down the logging road that connected up to the field that these birds were strutting in, the Brownman kept the fan in front of his face as we crouch walked behind it. A small hill in the field separated our outlines from the turkeys so we belly crawled to the crest of the hill with the tail fan in being pushed in front of us the whole way. At the top we found a dead log we laid behind and kept moving the fan since the toms attention was directed towards us. We yelped a bit but they were not about ready to leave their hens. While lying on our bellies I reached into the Brownman’s vest and pulled out his hen decoy and put it in front of us as well. Trying not to laugh I started to make her dance as he let out a few soft yelps. We really had their attention now.
As they were working our way they got cut off by another hen and started heading straight away from us again! We had both dropped our mouth calls somewhere along the crawl so the Brownman said “should I purr with my mouth?” We figured we might as well try and the second he let out a few purrs the lead tom turned straight towards us and spit and drummed. Nice job Everly!!
From there on out it was a race between the two toms to see who could get to the decoy first. As they closed the distance from 100 yards to 20 yards in a matter of seconds it was pretty difficult to settle my barrel on just one of their heads without shooting them both so I waited ‘til they were only 10 yards out before I let my Remington sing. The front tom hit the ground and flopped but stood back up and turned straight away and I put some 4 shot in the back of his head and called it a night. While I was making my follow up shot the Brownman was concentrating on the back bird with his Browning 10 gauge. His bird had run back about 40 yards and he yelped with his mouth at it while standing straight up behind the “tail fan on a stick” and the tom put his head straight up and he dropped it dead in its tracks! What a deal!
I never would have thought that the tail fan trick would have worked so well but it seriously just made these public ground birds look stupid. I have got to thank the Brownman for giving me the first shot and sureshot for taking these perfect sunset pictures. Thanks boys! What a way to seal the season.
The birds must have shared some genetics with both of them having the white streaks in their fans. Each birds spurs were all over 1 inch. My bird went 23 pounds 15 ounces with an 11 1/2 inch beard and the Brownman's bird went 19 pounds 8 ounces with a 10 1/2 inch beard.
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