Last Minute Gobbler!

Dave and I headed up to the ranch this morning to try and get him a gobbler since they had been eluding him up North. We were at the ranch well before daylight and walked into an area where I had been seeing the birds. Within minutes of setting up the trees came alive and it looked like we had chosen the right spot! The birds stayed in the trees longer than usual but when they hit the ground we could here them coming our way. The birds were sounding like they would appear at any minute but as can happen in hunting things changed quickly!! As the birds came up the road towards us a giant boar walked into the pond directly in front of our set up and started drinking and wallowing. As we watched the show the birds were gobbling and sounded close but the wind swirled and sent the big boar running right down the road towards them, scattering the group of turkeys! We sat patiently and waited to see what would happen but could hear the birds moving off in another direction, dammit!!! We switched gears and hurried to try and get back in front of the birds but they beat us up the canyon. We relocated and got set up again and began calling. Right of the bat we had a gobble up the ridge from us and the bird sounded to be getting closer. Soon he shut up and we waited but he never came, so we went back to calling and to our surprise a hen started talking to us. Both Dave and I were mimicking her every sound and she got louder and closer! While all of this was going on the gobbles started again so we stayed at it until the hen got mad at us and flew across the canyon and landed right in our set up! She stayed put for awhile and then moved up the road and out of sight. About the same time a gobbler came strutting up the road in our direction! He was focused on the hen that had walked up the road and followed her but stayed down low and we only caught a glimpse as he went by us, no shot!!  We waited awhile and decided to move up the road towards them and try to intercept them again. The road that they had went up was right where we had parked first thing this morning and we knew that had to walk right past the rig to get up into the meadows. As we approached the rig we were walking up hill and as soon as we could see over the rise there stood the gobbler fanned out and facing away from us! I quickly got Dave's attention and as the gobbler turned to face us Dave smoked him!! I wasn't exactly text book but that's turkey hunting and a hunt I won't soon forget!