This was my third turkey hunt. The first two were last year when I half-heartedly sat in a chair on the edge of the woods & scratched at a slate.

This year, I went with some real decoys and hunted from a pop-up. Saturday morning, a buddy & I sat in the blind listening to day break and the toms gobbling as they prepared to come off the roost.

Cluck and scratch as we may, they kept sounding further away. We came in for breakfast about 11:30.

Sunday morning, I broke out the big gun (my FoxPro). I put it by the decoys (one of my decoys is a Bob 'N Head model of a jake mounting a hen). Something had bent it's post the night before and he was a bit scratched.

We sat and called patiently waiting between my selection of turkey sounds. The only sound we heard was a far away hen & she only clucked once.

We decided to check Google Earth to see what type of terrain was past the woods where we heard the toms the day before. We were sitting, looking at our phones when 4 toms came in from our left - not making a sound.

They were headed towards our furthest decoys until they saw the jake/hen one. All of them started heading towards it like a street gang getting ready to kick some a$$.

We carefully (we thought) poked our gun barrels out of the blind. They turned around and started to leave.

We had previously decided if there were more than one, I'd take the one on the right & he'd take the other. I aimed & shot. It fell. He shot and another fell.

As we were looking at them, we noticed a 3rd one down. My buddy got 2 with one shot.

I told him that the ammo shortage wasn't that bad - yet.

Anyway, here we are with our 3 birds:



Now for a question:

When I got home, I was cleaning up the breasts for shrink wrapping and saw these black things in the meat. At first I thought they may be blood vessels, but they are short.

What is the black stuff in this picture?

It is probably feathers that your shot blew through the meat. Just trim it out.

Thanks. I didn't think of that. I trimmed it but did want to identify it before cooking.

Yep, Bama is correct. It's just feathers.

Feathers. Cut a small slice in the hole and lightly scrape with the sharp edge iof your knife and it cleans right up. Congrats.

nice job!

After getting hooked on calling them in, I had to get a turkey gun. That seemed more sporting than a .22 mag and more appropriate than a 20ga o/u Beretta dove gun.

Don't you just love gun buying excuses?

Congrats to you and your buddy!!!
Turkey hunting is a blast and very addicting!

Great job. Are these off the lease that might have openings?

Good to know theyre moving now. I went opening weekend close by Mertzon and the toms werent really going after hens and wouldnt come to a call. Last afternoon I hunted we had that front blow in with some rain and that really stirred them up. I just got out there about a week too early. Nice birds!

Yep.


It did surprise me that they weren't making any sounds at all that morning. We usually hear them coming off the roost, but they just snuck up on us from a direction we didn't expect.

Nice birds, Congrats