We found some better sign and then on our last stop we saw another guy from Indiana parked. We stopped and talked with him and he told us he had just roosted one for the next morning. We were relived that at lease he had seen something and while talking to him we heard another bird gobble in the distance. After a few gobbles I finally asked where he would be going in the morning and if he would mind if we went after the other bird gobbling. He said its public land and I told him that’s true but we’re not going to impose on a place he had already scouted out and take a chance of messing him up. He thanked us and assured us that if we went after that bird it wouldn’t mess him up. So we had a plan and a roosted bird.
Saturday morning we arrived at 4:45 only to find we were the 6th truck on that small rd. Looked a lot like MS. Well no one was parked close to where we needed to be so we set out towards our roosted bird. About a quarter mile in we walked up on a huge bottom that was flooded from all the rain and of course there was no way around it. And at day light the bird we roosted was gobbling on the other side. We were trying to figure out how to get across when we had a guy walk up on us trying to get to the gobbling bird too. We whistled and motioned to him and he just stopped and stood there watching us. With no way around we beat feet back to the truck and drove around to a place where we could possibly cross to get to the birds.
We started in the woods and made it about a hundred yards and we could hear the bird gobbling on the next ridge. While making our way towards him we heard another bird goggle close so we sat down, the close bird would up being a jake but we couldn’t move because he was so close and we didn’t want to bump him with the other bird so close. Reid got set up and I started calling on my Madhatter call and after about 30min Reid eased up to see water everywhere in the bottom in front of us again. He was looking to see if there was a way around the water when he dropped down and said they are coming around the far end of the water and headed this way. I started calling again and in just a couple minutes I see a huge bird running right at us with his beard swinging back and forth. I thought oh my gosh what a beard and when he ran up to about 10 steps Reid rolled him while he was still running. We are checking out his bird and a guy walks up and said that was pretty cool I watched the whole thing, and could have shot him at 30yds when he was coming to yall. He said he had run into some guys on the other side of the water (we said that was us) so he came over here. He parked by my truck and walked in and set up on the gobbling bird and when he heard us calling he let him walk by after he said he watched him strut and breed a hen then took off towards us. We shook his hand a second time and told him that was unheard of on our part of the woods but thank you so much for letting him walk. I’ve never parked beside someone and walked in on them knowing they were in there. But that’s part of hunting public land.
We left that spot to look for me a bird and we found ourselves climbing a small mountain, may have been why no one was hunting there also. Once we crested the top it broke off into long slivers of old strip mining terrain and long ridges. We walked about a 1\2mile in and I hit my call and we heard a distant gobble. We took off in his direction cutting ridges as we went. We cut the distance in half and picked the cutout we thought he was on. I set up and Reid sat about 20yds behind me and started soft calling and scratching the leaves. Some time went by with him gobbling at his calls and slowly but surely he finally showed himself and of course he was on the next cut over. I watched him cautiously work his way closer and closer gobbling and strutting and looking. Needless to say I was a wreck when he finally made to the tree I had picked out to be my max yardage shot. He strutted into that opening and I waited for him to do his look around and when he was totally stretched out I squeezed my trigger on my lil’ 20ga. and to my relief I watched my gobbler flip over backwards.
It was a great day for sure, the Good Lord blessed us with good weather and a couple great hunts.
