I realize that hunting is a "blood sport" and many people like to see it annointing everything from their tailgates to their thresholds but I personally prefer to just "talk" my Turkeys to death....keeps the blood off my butt when I carry them out of the woods......ignore the gun in the pictures that follow....its used only to protect myself from "gun nuts" and those that seem to think that croc's aren't appropriate Turkey footwear......
A pair of Rio's shot in Oregon....
Fun morning....after failing to do anything with a roosted bird the friend that I was hunting with and I drifted out of the timber and up to the lip of a deep canyon...I ran a series of yelps and got cut off on the first one by multiple goobles directly below us AND CLOSE....follwed instantly by a second clap of thunder from the Toms that was even closer.....
30 yards from any cover we turned and ran back to the first outcropping.....it was my turn to shoot so I sat in front of the rock with my back to it and Mike got behind the rock just his head above the rock so he could see....
The next series of yelps was from Mike and they cut him off just as rudely only thins time we could hear them inhale at the end of each gobble.....I could see the tops of four fans as the first bird stepped over the lip of the canyon and into the pasture in full strut....Mike yelped at him, he turned to look directly at us and then, for some reason spooked, when the rest of the Tom's behind him gobbled in unison.....slicked down now he couldn't decide whether to keep coming or go back to the safety of the other Tom's.....we'd messed up on this group of birds earlier in the week and as much as I wanted to see all of the Tom's strutting in the pasture I decided to take the bird in the hand and dropped the hammer on him......
On the shot the other Tom's gobbled, my bird went down and started to flop, and that was more than the other four tom's could stand and all four of them rolled up over the lip of the canyon to see what all the noise was about.....their attention was on the flopping bird and they never saw me lift the gun over my head, and hand it to Mike, nor did they see him rise up on his knees to shoot the second Tom out of the group....
That shot elicted another thunderous round of gobbles and I really think that if Oregon allowed multiple birds a day that we cold have just traded the gun back and forth and killed em all....what a shame...imagine the blood soaked tailgate photos that would have made....
Obviously the same birds .....
Here's a shot of the Merriam's with the big spurs from Fred Slyfields place...double beard and all....
Here he is laying with another Tom killed that morning by another hunter in camp
And here's a closeup of his spurs....
Agan, my apologies for the lack of blood....I'll try harder this year to include it in my photos.....
Steve
