[kameron]

Well since I am having severe turkey hunting withdrawal I have been taking out folks and still scouting/keeping tabs on birds.
Sunday morning we could have killed one right off roost! Hammered hard came in strong but circled and met with the orchard hussies. But man did Timmy ever get an earful of turkey gobbles! Rapid fire double and triple gobbling...SWWWWWWEEEEEETTTTTTTTT but the ole Bernville Bomber was not as good as the real thing unfortunately.
Yesterday afternoon while cruising on the tractor my wife hollers at me that Hoppy is on the phone. He asks me if I would tape him killing a good bird in the morning (nothing like being confident) he tells me the story about watching this gobbler strutting for 2 hours and he has been after this bird for 2 years now. Well anyone that knows me knows what my answer to that invite was!
4 are. I am setting in front of my truck waiting for hoppy to show up! Load up my light turkey vest ( Risher weighed it last week and its 17 lbs without the video gear) and we were off. I commented that we need to hurry cause it was going to be light early today.
We park the truck at 10 after 4 and are off to the races, we had almost a mile walk. We get to the field and I said its too light to walk the east side or through the middle of the field so we hunkered over and pigeon walked to the west side, turned walked down the west side, turned east on the north side and walked east within 20 yards of the northeast corner to a spot he had picked out.
We set up with light fast approaching, got the camera set up and in about 10 minutes the first obble, obble, obble, obble sounded off deep in the hollow to the east. Soon it was followed by a gobble,obble,obble,obble,obble,obble,obble. We knew it was the big boy and the satellite. About 5:50 a hen starts limb cutting and rapid fire clucking and in a few minutes pitches out into the field. The 2 gobblers hammer on her, another hen pitches out and another. All is quiet from the hollow. I hear twigs breaking behind me, I look as far to the left as I can and I see a hen coming right up to me from behind, Hoppy asks what’s that, I whisper back a hen and she is close don't move! Finally she decides that the big ole leafy lump is ok but a better route to the field was in order.
She steps out in the field off to my left and feeds towards the other 3 hens. Another gobble from the hollow but much closer now. The satellite bird steps out and starts to feed, the big boy steps out and he starts to feed. They fed along for about 10 minutes and then the show started.
The hens worked back towards the gobblers and the one bird was strutting and the other bird was the look out. The younger bird had his head up and was keeping an eye on everyone and everything! The strutter was doing just that, they stepped out into the field at 5:55 and he started strutting at 6:05.
The whole flock meandered around in the field, first going this way then that way, and with the sun coming up I noticed that the hens would walk into the shaded area but the gobblers would strut up to the shade then turn and strut back out into the full sunlight.
While this is all going on and I am filming off and on being sure not to eat up all the tape before the hopeful kill scene. I hear footsteps again behind me and a hen comes out just to my left and I am thinking she will see us. She feeds out right in front of us; she never even looked at us or our way! Mossy oak real leaf works!
Finally the sun is up and the whole flock of birds is moving our way and the gobblers are bumping shoulders in strut coming towards us. The camera is rolling and I am telling Hoppy don't shoot when they are together, the one on the right is the bird we want, let him come. I see the hen that’s closest to us looking at us. She goes back to eating again.
The bird turns sideways and the shot startled me as I was not expecting him to shoot so soon. The air just erupted with putts and wingbeats and one bird was trying to regain his bearings and I was off to the races because Hoppy's gun jammed! I saw where the bird went into the woods and was gaining on him by then (Hoppy said he never saw anyone run that fast) I get to the edge of the woods and there was the bird.
Within a minute Hoppy was there and the hunt was in fact over. I left him say his respects for a long 2-year hunt with many close encounters that would never again happen. It was a happy but sad hunt as we both knew we would not here his familiar obble,obble,obble,obble again but knowing that the was the dominant gobbler there and with the 6 ladies surely we would have sons to hunt in the future.

the bird taped at 9" with 1" sharp curving spurs and pulled the needle to a solid 20 lb. A very respectable 3 year old on some HEAVILY hunted land.
Thanks
Kameron