Toughest bird to kill memories...............

[redbeard]

Well, that last post of the Most Memorable "Should Be Dead" Turkey went well with some great stories. Perhaps this one will, as well. Tell the story behind the bird that gave you the hardest time, took the longest to kill and so on..........Here's mine.

I've chased many a bird for many a day but this one has to be my most memorable. His name was "Toomsboro's Tormenting Tom". I suppose it was my third year of huntin' turkeys and I was still hanging around the old codger that introduced me to the sport. We had gone huntin' down at our Toomsboro Georgia property. Well, our first introduction to the tormentor was a funny one. Ole Bill and I were coming up an old loggin road when he went to tearin' the woods up with his gobbles. I hurriedly set up right where we were standing and Bill did the same. We worked the bird for a bit and it was evident he wasn't headin' our way, so ole Bill started the hop-scotch turkey game by getting up and sittin' up about 20 yards ahead of me. Well, what's a rookie to do? I got up and sat up about 10 yards ahead of him. The game was on........Ol' Bill wasn't the mentor type, he was pretty greedy, we played this game while all the while the bird was headin' the other way. The next mornin' our friend, a championship caller came down and we went to see if we could fire up this bird. Sure enough, he shook the pine bark off that limb as he lit up the woods. Gary thru him the prettiest fly down cackles you ever heard and I swear, that tom would rattle the ground once he'd flown down. But not an inch closer would he come. In fact, he really didn't waste a moment to get to traveling. Thruout that year, we had many hunts like this, none of us could seem to get ahead to the Toomsboro Tormentin Tom. A year passed and we all ended up at the same place the next year and that tom was still at home in that same general area. He played us in the same manner for the first half of the season. Ol Gary had just about given up. Me, I stayed on him like he was my life's nemesis. I started going during the weekday's to have the woods to myself and one morning, ol tom started up his usual games and I never called, just listened and followed. He gave me the slip when he stopped gobblin' but I stayed in the woods. Slept, called, slept, called, scouted, etc. It was about 6 pm when I was easing up that same ol loggin' road and someone down at the dirt pit about 2 miles away went to firing off his pistol. It was loud, to say the least. But guess what, it fired up that tom to no end. He gobbled at every shot all the way to his roost tree. I had him pinpointed for sure. I made sure I got to sleep early that night for I planned to be an Indian the next morning and get up under his wing, if I could. It was darker than crap that next morning as I eased thru the thicker pines, I scared up some hens which jumped from tree to tree as I moved under them. It was just getting into daybreak when I saw him on the limb. I backed right down the small pine I was at and when I did, the hens went to cacklin' and he went to gobblin. I had a birdseye view of him struttin' back and forth on that pine limb. The hens pitched down away from him and me, which was perfect. They got quiet and he finally fell right off that limp. It was like if we just hopped off a 20 foot ledge. Straight down with a thud. He immediately went into strut and with the hens spooked none came. I got out my Lynch Jet Black slate and played some purrs and it turned him towards me. It wasn't 5 minutes until the magical moment happened and the chase was over. A two year hunt for one bird. Toomsboro's Tormentin' Tom died fine with 1.5 inch spurs and a 11 inch beard. He was, at the time, my heaviest and remained so for nearly 16 years, weighing in at 21.13 lbs. Beautiful bird, one of the prettiest tails I've even gotten. Needless to say, I interrupted work at Gary's place and stopped by to see ol Bill on the way home. It really got ole Bill a workin' on those gums Ever since that fateful day, ol' Redbeard has been known to throw a few Cherry Bombs out in the woods in hopes of firing up an ole tom, but I reckon it only works once.

[Rhino]

Re: Toughest bird to kill memories...............

Ahhhhh………the dreaded devil gobbler that finally made a mistake.

One of the ones that caused me the most grief in one season that I killed was one that happened to prefer a clear cut area between a narrow hardwood creek bottom and a big block of woods that was predominantly pines. I’ve never been one to give gobblers a name but an appropriate one for that bird would have been Ol’ Drummer. He was one of the loudest drumming birds I’ve ever heard. That bird had me really scratching my head for about a month. He always went the other way off the roost. I honestly don’t think he would leave the roost until he saw hens. When he did he went right to them and quit gobbling to strut and drum, loud too. It actually gave you the feeling he was a lot closer than he really was. Sort of messed with your mind. I tried setting up on him in several positions where he had gone before only to have him go the other way. After chasing that bird for over 3 weeks I tried double teaming him with a friend of mine. He gave us the slip again but while we were moving to re-set up, my buddy stopped and said I hear him drumming again. We belly crawled to the edge of the wood line and watched that bird strutting and drumming for about 8 hens for 30 minutes. It was a beautiful sight. My next drastic plan was made from that encounter. I decided to get where he was in that cutover and not call until at least an hour after flydown. I just didn’t want to risk trying to call to him right off the bat like I had been doing. I set up in the dark on the side of one of the piles of trash that was pushed up in the clear cut and set out a hen decoy. As usual he gobbled on his own and flew down to hens (I presume) that I couldn’t see. Around 8:00 I heard him gobble again for the 1st time since he quite shortly after leaving the roost. Thinking he was away from hens I called for the 1st time and he immediately answered. I stuck with the soft contentment type calls from then on and he kept answering me getting closer. My 1st sight of him was him hopping up on a log about 75 yards away on the edge of a trash pile. He was obviously looking for that belligerent hen that wouldn't come to him. He saw the decoy and came right in. That gobbler actually got within 5 feet of the nose of my decoy and stretched his neck out gobbling at the face of my decoy as if to say: “Haven’t you heard me calling for you?” That’s when I delivered a loud of #5’s to him. Yep, right in mid gobble. He wasn’t my biggest gobbler but a nice bird with a 10 1/2” beard and 1 1/8” spurs but I mounted him in memory of the hunting experiences I had chasing him.