My challenging spring archery season has come to an end with success! After about 19 days of scouting, hunting, getting busted/beat, relocating, and repeating the process, I finally decided it was time to get some advice. This advice didn’t come from a psychologist, but from Brad Juaire, my neighbor/friend, or as I now refer to him, “the turkey whisperer”. I gave him the scenario from the field with my different decoy set ups, locations, calling tactics attempted, and explained some of my cat n’ mouse close encounters that were so close, but couldn’t seal the deal. Upon analyzing the situation, Brad gave me careful advise w/ regards to changing my game plan at this point w/ regards to scouting, set up, calls, etc. He even borrowed me his flock of DSD decoys (awesome, by the way). Well, the plan finally came together. I had been working a distant gobble for quite a while. I could tell he was closing in by the volume of his gobbles. As I was scanning left/right, nervously excited to get a visual, I saw the Tom, full strut about 100 yds to my left going away from me. Oh no. I started doing some desperation calls to turn him around but he seemed to ignore them and kept marching off. That was when it happened. All of a sudden, I realize that he wasn’t the boss tom, as I saw the big guy approaching from my left, full strut about 50 yds out trailing behind him. I got on the slate, he turned his head, saw decoys, and it was on. He powered in, approached the jake decoy from the side and began kicking the crap out of it. I was so excited watching this. I had gone to full draw, undetected by him and waited so as to not accidentally shoot brad’s beautiful decoy. After a series of intense kicking, spurring, and climbing on top of jake/squeezing, he got off took 2 steps and I let it fly, direct hit. He staggered for towards ravine edge, paused, looking back at me. Unsure if it was the vital hit I needed, I quickly nocked another arrow, and poof…the fatal blow. My heart raced with emotions. What an amazing, challenging adventure, but as Brad said, “if it was easy, we wouldn’t do it”. Thank you again Brad for sharing your wisdom. Bird ended up 25.8lbs, 11″beard, and 1 1/2 spurs. 
