Windy day Tom

[Youngbuck]

Here is the story of dad's tom on public land. We went to a small tract of public land (54 acres). There is only one tom in the whole place. Dad had hunted him hard last year, but never quite worked out. He would set up on him all quite, get close, stay far back, whatever it would've took, and it would gobble like crazy, but it would never, never come to ANY call. Well he decided to try it again this year, so I tagged along. It was one of the extremely windy days we had this year. We walked into the timber, and owl hooted a couple of times, and finally he gobbled. So we set up, real quite, and everything about 65-70 yds away. From the position I was sitting in, I could finally see him in the tree gobbling and strutting... well trying to strut. With the wind and time he'd blow up the wind would catch his fan and throw him off balance. So he'd respond to the calls, but as soon as he flew down he headed the opposite way. Like normal

. Well we thought we knew where he'd go. Which was in a CRP field strutting area. So we got down on a small river bottom that ran parallel with the field, and we could just peak over every now an then. Finally we got to a corner of the field, and set up. He never came in because he had hens with him. But finally we spotted him on the river bottom about 70yds away, and he headed into the other part of the timber, so we got down on our hands and knees and snuck closer, then as we got closer we got down on our bellies and continued to sneak, we finally snuck close enough for a shot, after a long, and sneaky stalk. Here's the pic.

 

[Liv4Rut]

Way to go, sounds like a heck of an adventure

those small tracts of public land are pretty good, the one i hunted was 109 acres, and it had tons of birds on it

 

[blake]

Congrates on your bird. Very Nice photo also.

 

[simplesimon]

You all had a great season!! Nice bird or I guess I could say birds!