# 2 Tom's



## goosefreak (Aug 20, 2009)

so my dad and I went on the opener to our place to look things over and maybe luck into a tom, but every chance we had a turkey put to bed, a road hunter would roll down the road at first light and start squacking at every bird we were sitting on. That happened the entire time we were there for opening weekend.

so, we go back down this weekend (second weekend) and first thing we do is go to that guys camp (because he's back too) and explain to him how we hunt, and how we hike into the birds and sit on them before light and that if you see our truck then we are probably in the area. we never had a problem with him this weekend. sorry just a little rant

the story: we get there friday and set up camp by 6:30. I drop my dad off in an area for him to sit on, then I head down the road and get up into an area where I watched turkeys roost the weekend before. the plan was to put a few birds to roost. I wasn't too serious as I was still in my cowboy boots and jeans with a camo hoody. I got on the ridge and glassed up a tom with a hen headed towards those trees I saw them in last week. As I looked over the landscape, it was the perfect cover for me to cut them off. there was no way I was going to do this unless I new for sure I could pull it off. so rather than calling, I got into position turned my Go Pro on (or thought I did!) and waited. About 5 minutes later there they are, 45 yards off to my right so I poked my gun up and took out the Tom! for some reason my Go Pro didn't turn on.
So, good. we got one down, then it got real windy the rest of the evening.

Saturday morning was real windy. couldn't hear anything. so we slowly walked a ridge when we heard one gobble in the distance. We tried our best to sneak into the "RedZone" to where we could set up on this bird. we ended up seeing it down in a meadow with 3 hens.. No way we were going to call it in. We decided to leave them and come back in the evening because we believed them to be roosting in the trees above this big meadow. So all day was super windy which cut our luck down to none.
Finally evening arrived and we headed back down to the Tom we saw earlier. 
As we sat there glassing we quickly saw a group of 4 birds coming back into the meadow, 2 Toms and 2 Jakes. We decided to watch where they would jump up into their roost. as darkness was falling the turkeys disappeared around a bend in the meadow, so I snuck closer to a spot where I could pick them back up again. They started feeding back towards me and right at dark jumped up into 2 different trees 200 yards from where I was standing. 
So I carefully pinned a flag on my GPS and hiked out.

There was only 1 way the next morning's setup could go and that was to cut in from the side of the meadow and set up in the middle of the meadow in the grass. We get up a 4am drive down and sneak in to about 400 yards out, then we killed our headlamps and went completely black, easy and slow. We got 120 yards from there tree in the wide open sagebrush meadow and set up and waited.. 20 minutes goes by and songbirds just start to chirp. thats when the Tom started to lay it down! he goes crazy for about 5 minutes then 2 or 3 hens start to yelp. I can see the turkeys up in the tree tops. then another gobbler starts laying it down! 
Pretty soon the tom jumps straight down from his tree, i'm thinking "here we go"! then a hen flys down past us and starts yelping like crazy. Then another hen flys the other way to who knows where and this kept going on for a few minutes. I'm just lightly calling because there are turkeys all around us and the next thing i know I look left and here comes a tom. He's headed our way, but we figured he was going over to strut with another tom with hens that was 80 yards to our right. he got closer to us and I started picking it up on the call a bit to force him in. Everytime I called he would turn towards our decoys and start fanning out, but I believe he was dead set on kicking the other toms butt, so at 50 yards I told my dad to hammer him and he did. He was pretty pumped, it was his first turkey.. I did get my dad's on the Go Pro. i'll figure out how to upload a video
so my brother- inlaw and my little brother have tags too we'll see if we can slam 2 more next week

Dang, this has to be the longest story i'v typed on here. sorry guys and thanks for reading, i'm sure there are a few grammar errors, i'm not much of a proof reader


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## longbow (Mar 31, 2009)

Congrats on an awesome adventure Goosefreak! I enjoyed every word. It sounds like calling turkeys is similar to calling elk. Good luck on getting a full bag next week.


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## duck (Dec 31, 2014)

Nice birds!


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## utahbigbull (May 9, 2012)

Sounds like a fun trip hoss!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

That's cooler than the other side of the pillow!!! 

congrats


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## hawglips (Aug 23, 2013)

Congratulations!


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## whitepd01 (Aug 26, 2014)

Those are 2 beautiful birds!


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## dkhntrdstn (Sep 7, 2007)

nice job man.


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## BMCBryce (Sep 6, 2012)

Nice job. Both are great looking birds. Congratulations.


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## MWScott72 (May 23, 2011)

goosefreak said:


> so my dad and I went on the opener to our place to look things over and maybe luck into a tom, but every chance we had a turkey put to bed, a road hunter would roll down the road at first light and start squacking at every bird we were sitting on. That happened the entire time we were there for opening weekend.
> 
> so, we go back down this weekend (second weekend) and first thing we do is go to that guys camp (because he's back too) and explain to him how we hunt, and how we hike into the birds and sit on them before light and that if you see our truck then we are probably in the area. we never had a problem with him this weekend. sorry just a little rant
> 
> ...


Man, that is a long COOL story! Congrats....the morning your dad shot his sounds completely awesome. So fun to be in the middle of Thunder chickens!


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