Friend and I parked the truck about 300yrds from our hunting spot and immediately heard some activity. Once we got set up, it wasn’t five minutes until they flew off the roost. At first a small jake was out sizing up the decoys, but the big gobblers were still on the roost, we let the jake do his thing. Once the gobblers came off the roost the jake started back towards the group. It was group of three mature males and two hens. Once the lone bachelor caught sight of our hen decoys and that jake checking them out, he came running for us. He chased the jake away and started strutting at the decoys.

I didn’t have my gun up as he was doing this, which was a mistake because he was about 15 yards from me. I threw my gun up and he immediately broke into a run away from us. I took a breath and gave the gun a bit of a lead and boom, hit him right in the head/neck.

He had a 10.5” beard and about 1” spurs. About 18lbs undressed.

This was the first season I was actually calling, it was quite Wendy, and the birds were not having any reaction to my mouth call, so my friend pulled out his box call and laid down some sweet tunes because he turkeys really responded to it. I owe much of the success of the hunt to his calling haha.