I and a few friends have been fooling with this bird most of this season. We weren't sure if he was an old bird or just a young one that had been fooled with too much. Well I laid that question to rest at 6:30 this morning. He's an old bird!
I parked my truck and headed down the camp road towards the pond that he has been roosting over just taking it on faith that he would be there again. He was. He gobbled just as I was about about 60 yards from where I wanted to set up and another bird gobbled with him. I set up about 80 yards from the pond against a huge water oak. Now my friends and I have learned that if you yep to these birds on the limb they will pitch off to the opposite side of the pond every time. But the problem is that they sometimes fly down on one side and some times on the other in a pretty random pattern. So even being silent until they were on the ground has led to several frustrating mornings spent listening to them gobble at us on the far side of the pond. So I sit there listening for them to fly down. They both gobbled about 15 times on the limb. You could tell which was the more mature gobble though and being that close to him on the roost, well he was jarring the ground. Finally at about 6:25 I heard the younger bird gobble on the far side of the pond. I'm thinking, "oh no, not again." I picked up my box caller and yelped softly just 3 times and old big boy thundered on my side just over a little rise in front of me that falls off to the bank of the pond. I laid my call down and lifted my gun up. Within a minute I saw his head bobbing through the trees as he came over the rise. He was coming hard directly in front of me. I barely had to move my gun barrel to get on him. Finally at what turned out to be 39 steps I hit him with a load from a 3 inch Winchester supreme no 5. He barely flopped. The first thing I noticed when I got to him was his size. Our swamp gobblers aren't noted for it but he was huge. Then I saw his beard and hooks. Here's the tale of the tape with photo's below. 21 lbs, 11 1/2 inch beard, 1 5/16 inch spurs. Needless to say I was pretty happy.
