First Gobbler

[crazyice]

Here are a couple of photos of my first gobbler, it was 22lbs 8oz, 10" beard and 15/16" spurs.

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[crazyice]

[nate larson]

Awesome pics! That is a huge bird. Congrats.

[Dan Thiem]

Sweet! Awesome job Andy! Congrats to ya!

[Rugbyguy]

Awesome bird Andy! Way to go!

[youngie22]

Great work very pretty bird

[Tyler Holm]

Nice bird Andy. Way to go. I know you put your time in for that one.

I love the pic with your gun laying across the bird.

[ikeslayer]

really nice bird any chance we can get a story about it out of ya. That really gets my blood pumping. ike

[crazyice]

Sure, Ike. The whole hunt was actually a really lucky deal for me and my buddy, we had never applied for a permit before, and got lucky enough to be drawn for the first season in zone 344! Also known as Whitewater, so pretty much the best season in the best zone in the state if you ask me. Anyway, I was able to get off thursday and the weekend to hunt, so I hunted hard on Thursday morning with no success. My buddy came down on Friday around noonish and hunted the afternoon and evening, with no luck as well. Neither of us even heard a bird both days. Saturday, we hunted the morning in some different areas and still didn't see or hear anything all morning, so around noon we took a break to look for some different areas to hunt as I had gotten us permission to hunt on some private land that borders the WMA down there. In checking out a different area altogether we finally saw a couple of hens out feeding in a corn field that had stood all winter and had just recently been combined, so we opted to move all of our stuff over to this new area. My buddy hunted the corn field and I went down to the river bottoms. Saturday night my buddy shot a 18 pound jake at about 7:00. That whole night I didn't see anything except a few trout fishermen, so I kinda figured that my area wasn't going to produce and birds with all of the human traffic. Sunday morning I set up on the corn field as well and my buddy came with to help call and locate birds, but nothing happened all morning, we quit around noon again as my buddy had to get going back home, a two hour drive. So we came back to my place in Rochester, I dropped him off, checked the weather, as they were talking about nasty stuff coming possibly, it looked good so I went back out. I was in my blind for maybe an hour when the storm started to come through, I actually had to hang on to my blind from the inside to keep it from blowing away! But eventually the wind let up to the point that I could let go, and then it just rained for like an hour or so I would guess. As soon as the rain quit and the wind died down, the woods just came alive with turkeys!! Gobbles from every direction! I started to make a few yelps and cutts on my box call and got an immediate response(gobble) from my right. So I took the shoot through screens out of my right side windows and contiued "talking" with the tom to my right. Well eventually he went silent and I couldn't see him anywhere in the woods, so I went to look at my decoys and off to my left, was this bird in full strut coming in like a freight train to my decoys!! I really didn't even have time to think if it was a big tom or a jake, I just knew that this was probably my last chance, so I grabbed the gun and dropped him at about 25 yards. The rest you can see in the photos.

[Dan Thiem]

Wow! Very cool story Andy! Way to hang in there and stick it out. Even go back and sit through a rain storm. What a trooper.

[stillhunter]

they can really light up at a break in the weather. Be my guess that you have the virus. Only affects those that love to hear the woods wake up in the morning.

Congrats!