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First double beard.

I went out on the 4th and got a nice Tom. It was the first bird with a double beard that I have ever shot. I put about 5 Toms to bed the night before. One of which was a truly giant bird. From 0ver 200 yards you could see this just long and thick beard hanging down, swinging under its breat. The other Toms you could just make out that they had beards. I went out the next morning and set up where I saw the birds go in to the woods and within 10 minutes of setting up, heard the first gobble. Shortly later, the birds flew down and I could see them up in the woods strutting and hear them gobbling, drumming and spitting. It was so cool. Off to my left I heard a stick break and when I looked over, saw the huge Tom standing at 40 yards. He was looking at my decoys so I started quietly moving my stuff around inside of my blind so I could position myself for a shot in his direction. As I was getting my stuff organized, I heard thumping and pounding out in frond of my blind. I looked over at my decoys and saw four other Toms beating the heck out of my Jake decoy. They were all over my decoy. It was so cool. It was like one of those hunting videos that you watch and afterwards say to yourself, "that doesn't ever happen". Only it does. LOL Anyhow, I looked over to the huge Tom and he was getting nervous, and still at 40 yards, so I decided to just shoot the big Tom that was attacking my decoy. I shot him at 15 yards. He flopped 3 times and that was that. I was heading back to my car with the bird after spending less than an hour in the woods. What a great and special day! He had a 9 1/2 inch double beard with 1 and a quarter inch spurs. A nice bird,,,,, but not the biggest. LOL Jay

Jay great story and bird congrats!

Oh, here is the beard

Congrats! Awesome hunt and a great bird!

I'm having a little difficulty getting number two. But it sure is fun hunting them with my bow!

Have you got any pictures of your set up?

Nice Jay!!!! Congrats!

Here is the bird laying up next to the Jake decoy. I was using a Dave Smith Jake and a new Avian X feeding hen. She was on a stake with a pull cord for movement. I was using a Dounle Bull Matrix ground blind.

Double Bull, Geez, fat fingers, and too early.. LOL

A shot of the hen and blind. The picture of the Tom with the decoy,, the blind is off to the right, just out of the frame. My set up was with the blind backed up to the woods with the major openings facing out to the field. The blind was situated near an inside corner of a woods, where the woods, a corn field and grass all came together. The night before I saw the Toms strutting along the edge of the cut corn, nect to the grass, and they went to roost in the corner of the woods, near a log pile. I set up there the next morning. My decoys were set up about 10-15 yards away from my blind, facing me. I try to keep them close because the birds will try to get in front of the dekes, which pretty much, in a perfect world, puts the turkey in my lap... Rarely is the world perfect though, it just happened to be that morning. LOL. I didn't mention the drainage that I had to cross.. It was knee deep,, and it was 37 degrees that morning, so it was pretty cold,, but well worth it. I do love bowhunting, any kind. Jay

My hen on a pulley.

Congrats!!!

As it turns out, our setups were pretty similar!

I was also setup on the edge of a cut corn field in the grass between the corn and woods. It is about fifty yards to the hardwood.

But I used two Jakes and three hens. My two Jakes were just ten yards from the blind, about six feet apart and they also faced the blind.

I once read the Toms will try to intimidate the Jakes but if they are facing away from the Tom, it makes him come in and strut around them. If they were facing the direction that he was coming from he might hang up.

Really nice bird J! Tough season... your smile says it all.

Sweet Jay ! way to go . Only tom I saw was in the pouring rain (with 2 hens) and couldn't get in bow range...thats a trophy !...Tom

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