4-28-13

This morning I guided Greg Hubbel Jr. on a turkey hunt. We had no more than gotten out of the truck this morning and could hear tom's gobbling all over. It sounded like there was 6 or 8 different birds so we headed in that direction. At our first set up I called and the tom's gobbled but I could hear hens in between us and the tom's, so we stayed put for awhile and then moved on.  At the next stop we had gobblers all around us but again, the hens had their attention. We could see a tom no more than 80 yards from us strutting his stuff but there was no way he was leaving his girl, so we snuck out of there and tried to find the others. As we moved along we spotted a group of 3 tom's up on the hillside and they did not have any hens. We crept into position and I gave a soft call that they immediately answered back to. Each time I called they would gobble but they just would not come towards us, as they did not want to cross the ravine between us and them. In true killer fashion I put together a quick plan. I was going to have Greg sneak down into the ravine and then up the other side while I sat and called to the birds to try and focus there attention my direction while he put the sneak on. I have done this in the past and had it work a few times so we gave it a shot. When all of the birds were facing away Greg slid down the embankment into the bottom and I kept calling to try to keep the birds from moving off in the other direction. As soon as Greg started to make his way up towards them I continued to call and the birds puffed up and strutted in circles, so far so good! I could see Greg was nearing the top of the ravine so I began calling aggressively to try and drown out the noise he was making. The birds stayed put and as Greg peeked over the top I saw his gun go up and then watched as a gobbler was knocked off his feet. The shot was true and the stalk panned out. The tom had a 7 inch beard and 1 inch spurs. Although it didn't happen the way it is supposed to it's always nice when a plan comes together! Either way the results were the same and Greg ended up with a beautiful bird!!

Casey