My son scores!


Rhino

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Since opening day the birds have been gobbling sporadically.  That is until my son, Bailey arrived.  Bailey finally showed up for his 1st turkey hunt of the season with me in Mississippi this past weekend.  We go a a nice listening spot before dawn and heard 7 birds gobble on the roost from there.  They were all too far to work or get to from there so we high tailed it on my Polaris EV (electric Ranger) so we could quickly close the distance to the area where the 3 hottest birds were gobbling.  No knowing exactly where they were by then, I opted to stop short, park the Ranger EV, and ease along on foot throwing out some cuts every 100 yards or so.  We get to the 3rd spot to call…I dish out a cut and 3 birds immediately gobble back.  2 birds are real close so I whisper to Bailey “they’re coming” and we hit the closest trees with Bailey sitting to my left about 5’ away with a decent view of the direction where they're gobbling from.  I have an bit of an obstruction in my view.  I dish out some more soft stuff and they respond.  They’re not closer yet though.  The next gobble on their own, I cut off their gobbling with some loud cutting.  They immediately gobble back.  I immediately cut hard back at them again.  They immediately cut me off double gobbling hard.  They're HOT now!!!  Good enough…I went silent.  Within a few minutes, Bailey sees them strutting toward us at ~35 yards.  I finally see their heads at ~25 yards.  Bailey picks out the bird with the longest beard (2nd bird) & drops him at the 25 yard line at 7:15 a.m.  Bailey’s bird has a 10” beard and the spurs are 1 1/8” and 1”.  

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I'll be on the sidelines until I start hunting in Missouri on the 17th (next Monday).  I'm driving there on the 15th so I can listen for gobbling birds the morning before their season opens.  From there I'm heading to Nebraska for 4 days of hunting Merriams...then right back to MO for my 2nd MO gobbler (I hope).  Bailey will be joining me in MO on the 27th to try to bag a couple too.  I'm fixing to be a road warrior through the beginning of May and hope to bag 4 more gobblers in those 2 states.

Good luck everyone!

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11 hours ago, Strut10 said:

Where ya gonna be for Merriam's ??   You doing guided or public ??

Nebraska hunting "do it yourself" private land.

1 hour ago, pointing_dogs_rule said:

Rhino: I'll be in Nebraska the second week of May. Sounds like you'll be there earlier. Good luck. REMEMBER>>>> "3" bird limit :)

How many pounds was that bird. Just wondering how big you grow them... down there.

Yea...I'll be there earlier.  We can only kill 1 of our 2 MO birds during the 1st week of the season there so I hope to bag my 1st bird during the 1st 3 days of the MO season then head to NE and return to MO when I'm free to hunt for my 2nd bird.

We didn't weigh Bailey's bird but my best guess is he was ~19 lbs.  They don't weigh as much down south as they do as you go north.  The state record on weight in MS is only 25.25 lbs.  The birds we kill in MO typically weigh anywhere from 22 & 28 lbs.  

Edited by Rhino
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