Top_Heavy's World

Friday was wet and miserable, we hunted in Benton Couty and saw a couple of nonresponsive birds while we managed to get soaked. Saturday I hunted alone and shot a huge tom minutes off the roost. Sunday morning I Jody to my Southern Iowa property

The morning dawned clear and warm, 51 degrees as we parked the truck at 5:30am. The turkeys were silent until 5:55 and then they were only mildly talkative. We followed the sparatic gobbles to the same location I hunted on Saturday. The property I hunt is the high side of the river and for some reason the birds flew down on the open fields on the low side. We worked our way upstream following each gobbling tom. The property is just over a mile long by a half mile wide. In that mile long search along the river we saw a ton of turkeys. The first group had a single tom and 2 hens, the next group was 5 toms and 2 hens, the next was a single tom and a pair of hens, the next group had 4 toms and several hens, the next group was a single tom with 2 hens, and finally ther was a single tom with 1 hen I could see. It was really unbelievable to see that many toms in one morning. We saw a total of 13 toms, but not a single bird responded on our side of the river. 8:30 was our set time to call it a day so at 8:20 I was feeling sort of bad that I couldn't get Jody on a bird. We worked to the center of the property to take the tractor road back to the truck, I tried one last aggressive set of calls on a glass friction call. I couldn't believe it, a tom gobbled back at less than 100 yards! I kept the tom strutting, his drumming was nonstop and very loud from my position, to give Jody time to work into gun range. Jody was just about there and a second tom showed up with a jake. Our bird met them and the fight was on. It is really awesome to watch as the newcomers were run off the strutting area. The big tom started back towards me, his attention back on my calling. After all of that effort, Jody in position, a hen showed up and the tom locked up. Jody was confident and his red dot scope was accurate so the 49 step shot was perfect. Our morning ended at 9:10... we were late, but we had our bird!