Just got back off Noah’s ark from SD. It was a tough hunt but we did get two birds could not fill the other two. Got there to our spot about 10AM on Sunday. On our walk in the rain stopped for about 4 hours or to a mist. That just gave me a enough time walking into a flock that started to talk about bit on our way into the woods. We followed with them for about 2 hrs. Called in a few hens out of the group and then they would mill around for a bit then go back to the rest of the flock. Each time they would go feed out of site we would make another move up a few more trees. Finally the hens broke and came our way but angled out a bit which was not good. Lucky two of the gobblers came in around 50 yards. I did not like that distance but they were going to follow the rest and angle away from us. I always let my buddy shoot first but these birds were going to be gone with the weather we had to take what we could. I dropped him right were he stood. One bird down in a few hours. We put the birds to bed that night they didn’t even spook too bad after the shot. The 2nd bird was too far after the shot.
We came back in the next morning and I called on in right off the roost. AGain lucky the rain poured but stopped right around fly down time. This bird almost landed on us. He came in no decoys strutted and looked for the bird that was suppose to be there. My buddy shot him at 20 yards. Two birds down in less then a day of hunting. Now the raing got even worse we hunted and checked out many places not getting too many to respond or even seeing out in the fields or in the coolies. We put on a lot of miles and had thousands of acres to our selves no one was out hunting because of the weather. Most years we will see a couple people but no one this year.
Monday morning we hunted same area we shot the two but the birds had different plans came down by us just out of range and went on to private land we could not hunt. This was the most birds we were seeing out of all the places we hunted. Think the birds are down just a bit but was still a fun hunt even know we almost drowned. Sorry do not have too many pictures and the ones we have are bad with the rain we just didn’t take any good ones.
My bird was 21lbs 1 1/4 spurs 8.5 beard. My friends 20LB 9inch beard 3/4 spurs.
