I drove up to my place in Oklahoma yesterday, and it was surprisingly warm and very windy. I gambled on where to set up, and it paid off. I was about 400 yards northwest at the opposite end of a grove of trees along the river from my camera where I’ve been seeing turkeys, because I know they hang out in those trees. The wind was blowing pretty hard so I was up wind to hopefully get the sound to carry into the trees. I called a few times and after a while got a glimpse of something moving in the shade about 50 yards away. When he came out into the light, I could see it was a tom I’ve been watching that has something wrong with his beard (maybe beard rot), so I just sat still and watched him for about 30 minutes as he milled around my decoys (which I set up way too close). All of a sudden I hear a gobble south of me, but I was afraid to call back because of getting busted. Well, the other tom acted as my live decoy and coaxed this tom within 10 yards. It was a bang and no flop. The 1 1/4 oz #7.5 load dropped him like a hot rock even out of a modified choke.
He has a 9 1/4” beard and 1” and 1 1/8” spurs.
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