Last Thursday was beautiful down here in SW Iowa. My friend and I were hunting a long the Page Taylor county line, and by 6 we had already had two toms in fly down into our field. One of the birds looked real big, the other about average. Unfortunately, they didn't like the looks of my decoys( a redhead team extreme full strut tom, and a collapsible hen). Those birds ended up leaving the field after 20 minutes or so. Well, around 10 o'clock we were starting to lose our edge, as my buddy, who is also my minister, started playing the dueling banjo's theme on his cell phone. Obviously, it was time to call it a day. As we packed up and began hiking up through the field, we spotted a tom strutting about 200 yards out. We went ahead and set up within 100 yards of him, along a fenceline. Ten minutes later, I realized that my wife would be calling anytime now to ask where I was, and if I'd picked my daughter up. Normally, I wouldn't recommend doing what happened next, however, we were on private ground and pretty much in the open along the edge of last years bean field. I too, the tom decoy, slid it under the fence, and proceded to crawl 50 yards on my knees and right hand(which was holding my gun). My left hand was holding the cross bar on the decoy, as I did the best I could to make him look like he was just walking towards the real tom and his hen. After 15 minutes and only 50 yards of crawling, I peeked through my decoys fan and saw the big tom coming at me with bad intentions. I laid down so that my decoy hid the bulk of my body and legs from the oncoming gobbler, allowing him to close the gap to approximately 15 yards. He met his demise in full strut, thinking he was going to thump my deke. I have video of event, though the kill shot is blurry as the cameral apparently focused on some grass. I'll try and get it downloaded tomorrow. I know some people might jump me for safety reasons, but again, it was private ground, and I'm the only guy hunting it. I have to say it was one of the coolest hunts of any type that I've had, being in the open, and still being able to close the distance on that tom, then having him puff and want to destroy the decoy I was hiding behind, those are things I'll never forget.
dominator
New Member
LOL that is freaking awesome. i have actually thought about doing that before. that is kind of like waterfowl hunters that use those huge cow decoys to sneak up on ducks and geese. i dont know too many idiots that would shoot at a decoy in the middle of a field with a camo guy crawling behind it but you never know nowadays. sweet story
Limb Chicken
Active Member
That would be a rush for sure.
Horn Hunter
Member
That sounds like a lot of fun. Congrats.
Iowabowtech
New Member
I LOVE it. :way:
Way to get it done the hard way. I'd love to see the video even if the shot isn't ideal. The belly crawl with the deek/gun is must see material. Not a big safety Nazi site here, we like cool stuff.
Way to get it done the hard way. I'd love to see the video even if the shot isn't ideal. The belly crawl with the deek/gun is must see material. Not a big safety Nazi site here, we like cool stuff.
Waddell Wannabe
Quick Trigger
Haha! Nice work! Probably once in a lifetime! Sweet you got it on camera. Waiting on the video!
sureshot
The Hunt Never Ends....
That's awesome, and a great way to kill turks. Something we have done the past two years, not with the entire decoy though, just a fan attached to a stick. Nobody believes it works until they try it, but i've killed toms the past two years doing that same thing. I'll post some video later we took last weekend walking out to some hens in a field (we closed the distance from 100 yards to 6 yards with just a fan)
Anyways, awesome job! Congrats!
Anyways, awesome job! Congrats!
Ron, stop by my house sometime, or I'll try and bring the camera in to our next 3D meeting. The scene is blurry, you definitely get the picture. I'd wanted to try doing something like that for a while, but where I used to hunt, there was always the chance someone else was there, making me pucker a bit at the thought of belly crawling with a tom decoy.