Got the assist on a nice bird.

[mr4pt]

I got to hunt this past weekend up at the Ranch. We hunted Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday morning. Friday was completely dead and I was worried that the season had passed me by. Saturday morning Dave and I got a group of jakes gobbling around 630. We worked them for about 30 minutes when Big Boy started gobbling just down the ridge. We were pinned down by hens and had no way to re-position ourselves so we decided to back out and circle around the ridge and set-up on the big tom. By the time we got set-up it was around 7:30 and the ol boy was still hammering about every 5 minutes. We called for about an hour but finally decided we were too far away. We closed the distance to around 100 yds. By that time it was around 9:00. After working the bird for over 2 hours (yeah, I know...he was working us) I was about to give up. This bird would gobble EVERY time I'd call, double gobble over the top of himself...he was very, very vocal but he was also very, very stubborn. He had gobbled non-stop since around 7 am and it was now around 11:30 and he was still gobbling about every 5 minutes. I had never heard a bird gobble that much that didn't get shot. Dave suggested that we back out and try to get below him which shocked me because we were just talking the night before about how hard it is to call a bird downhill. I told him to hang-on, I wanted to try something I had never done before. I took out my shaker gobbler and shook it for all it was worth. About a minute later he gobbled right below us. He had closed the gap from around 100 yds to less than 60 yds. He gobbled all the way up the hill, unless he was strutting, which he did three or four times. Finally, he got off to my right like he was going to circle around us. When he passed in front of Dave I told him to take the first shot he could get. He shot immediately at around 45-50 yds. He had to shoot it again just for good measure.

The skinny of it......bird gobbled for over 4 hours straight, probably over over 75 gobbles all together. By far the hottest bird I've ever heard and yet it still took us over 4 hours to kill him.

Here's the specs -

22 pounds
10 1/2" beard
1 1/4" spurs
almost exactly like Chris' bird.

Here are a few pics....






oh yeah, I will use that shaker gobble call again......

[Bucktales]

Sounds like a blast. I got 3 1/2 more weeks before I get to go. Hopefully they will be gobbling when I make it out.
Nice bird 4.

[deerslayer11]

Congrats on the kill assist.

[NitroHunter]

Another good one and a good story to boot.
I had one of those shaker deals and was always afraid to use it, guess I should have tried it.

[mr4pt]

admin said:

Another good one and a good story to boot.
I had one of those shaker deals and was always afraid to use it, guess I should have tried it.

Same here, I would've never thought it would work until I saw it last year with my own eyes. Three gobblers were headed away from us and I suggested we go cut them off. The guy I was hunting with said, "No, I'll call them back right here" I thought he had lost his ever-lovin' mind when he pulled that thing out. It sounds like crap but it works, those three gobblers turned on a dime and within minutes he killed one of them.

I thought that was probably dumb luck, I guess that's why I waited so long to try it Saturday morning but I was running out of options and ideas so I let er rip....

I will use it again....

[NitroHunter]

I'll give it a try. They do sound like crap, but I've noticed the farther you are away from it, the more it sounds like a real gobbler.

[chris]

congrats on the assist. great looking bird.