My Opening Morning Longbeard (pic)

Nick

By Nick
in Turkey Hunting

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Nick Monster Buck

Nick

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For the 2nd year in a row, I managed to tag a long beard on some heavily hunted state land. This year, I was hunting iwht my uncles brother. We drew the same tags and the night before the hunt he suggested we flip a coin for first shot and somehow I was the lucky one. We headed DEEP into the swamp opening morning. We left camp at 5am and at about 5:45 we arrived to where planned on locating some birds on the roost. It wasnt long and the woods lit up with probably 15 different gobblers in the area. The closest were a group of about 5 or 6 100 yards or so off the trail. So I suggested we get even with them on the trail and set up the decoys since I knew that when the birds flew down they were going to head to the trail and go north. So we got all set up and waited. After about 10 minutes we heard them fly down to the North just like I predicted. We did some calling, not soft but not aggressive either. They continued to gobble. After about 10 minutes of calling to the bird we heard the hens kick in so we got a little more aggressive iwth the calling. The gobbles kept going further and further north. But we knew there were lots of birds in the area so elected to sit still for a little while. As I sat there some movement north about 60 yards down the trail and around the bend caught my eye. I motioned to my uncles brother that one was coming in. I got the gun up and he strutted out into the open for the first time at about 50 yards. He strutted back and forth inching his way toward the decoys spittin and drummin the entire time. He got behind a tree about 30 yards in front of me and for some unknown reason, my uncles brother said "shoot him!" The bird heard him and broke out of strut.....I leaned on my side and aimed the best i could and touched it off.He dropped dead without a flop. I knew this was a bird that was getting mounted. As he strutted down the trail I knew he had a SUPER thick paintbrush, probably 11" long. I picked the bird up and half of the beard fell out. frown.gif The rushed shot caused me to shoot low. I was excited to bag such a trophy but the shot placement definaely put a dampener on it. Oh well. Here he is....Down to a 10" beard, 7/8" spurs and 22lbs.

197705_1.jpg

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