The Punk Rock Gobbler

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After a lunch of pancakes, fried potatoes, eggs and venison sausage we visited with Terry and his wife for a while. Terry told us that he saw lots of gobblers and hens go through the gate above the farm house so we set a blind up there. Fred wanted to set up another blind in the trees close to the river. An open gate was nearby. Then Terry drove us to the blind by the picked corn field.

It was 2:00 when we got in the Dark Horse blind and it took over 3 hours before we saw any wild turkey activity. Wouldn’t ya know, they came off the hill where we hunted this morning. A hen was first, with two Jakes in tow, one had a 6-inch beard and was larger than the other Jake. Coming up fast behind them was a longbeard. And I saw another longbeard lagging behind but closing in on the situation. (I didn’t get both longbeards in the picture.)

The lead longbeard interupted the Jakes and the other longbeard caught up and the two Toms cut the Jakes out of the equation.

The hen was not interested and the Toms let her go on her way. They walked around, just out of bow range, and strutted.

They didn’t get closer to us so there was no shot opportunity. But the picture taking was just fine.

Both Toms walked off toward the side of the field to our left. Fred called with his slate and watched them

When Fred clucked on the slate, he whispered that the gobblers had stopped and were looking. Half a minute later he added that they were coming up on our left and were in range. I nailed them with a picture and got the video camera on them.

Fred drew. They were very close now. And our 4 decoy set up had their full attention.

Fred whispered for me to cover the closest one and I did. The other longbeard threw us a curve and instead of going directly at the decoys he sped up and stopped 15 yards to the left of them. Fred preferred a standing shot or at least a slow moving one but now he realized if he didn’t take his shot it might not happen.

Fred took his shot.

And gave the gobbler what our friend Roy Keefer calls a “”turkey haircut.” An arrow through the tail fan. Neither Tom knew what had happened and they shot at lighted a few steps away and looked around. Fred nocked another arrow.

But not in time. Both Toms moved further into the field.

It turned out they had a reason to move away from our area, a hen and a Jake were also in the field and the two Tons waited for them. The longbeard Fred missed strutted over the them.

That “was the first time I noticed the cosmetic changes of the “haircut.” Below is a zoomed in closer picture.

The two Toms returned to the area later in the day and I took more pics of the gobbler I nicknamed the gobbler with the “Punk Rock” haircut.

They stopped on a high spot and the Punk Rock gobbler strutted away for my camera and video.

Here’s a zoomed in close up of the “haircut.”

“Punk rock” and his buddy didn’t know what had happened when they were over by us but they didn’t come back over either.

However, that did not matter. Because there were plenty more wild turkeys that would show up in our field in 20 minutes.

CONTINUED …

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