Great opening morning in NY....

western NY bowhunter · May 1, 2005

This morning my dad and I set-up in the same exact spot where we took our opening morning double on longbeards last spring. We heard a bird gobbling hard at first light but he was a ways back in the woods behind us. He flew down and before we knew it he was on his way in. A big rounded fan comes up over the knoll in front of us followed by a jake and the game was on! He must have gobbled 60-70 times out in front of us in the hayfield but wouldn't come any closer than 45-50 yds. Big boy sent his buddy, the stupid jake, in to investigate things while he stayed just outta range gobbling his head off. The darn jake was within 30 yds. for 35-40 minutes and has us totally pinned down. Both birds looked at the decoys but acted as if they weren't even there. To make a long story short…he wouldn’t commit all the way and they lost interest and finally moved off down into the woods. We'll be waiting for him in the morning with a different set-up.

We went home and got some breakfast, woke my brother up and headed back out to the local vineyard where we called in the jakes last weekend during youth season. Someone was already at the spot where we wanted to go so we headed down the road a little farther. We walked down towards the woods and called and a bird answered down in the woods. After setting up on him the gobbler seemed to lose interest and quite gobbling so we got up and headed down the hill to get closer to him. A different turkey gobbled off in the distance and me and my brother quickly setup again laying on a diversion ditch that runs through the vineyards with my dad calling back behind us. The original gobbler that we heard got fired up and started to come in. All of a sudden, the distant gobbler that we had heard gobbled off to the right and he was coming hard. We heard him walking through the vineyard rows and next thing you know…there’s a big white head and a big round fan out in front of us. He was gobbling and drumming within 40 yds. of us. I told my brother to get his gun up and get ready. The turkey headed to the end of the row of grapes and as soon as he got to where he was open for a clear shot…the 870 barked and Mr. Longbeard was down. Not too bad for his second turkey…just under 22 lbs., 9” beard and ¾” spurs. Although we still had an hour and a half to hunt, we decided to call it a day and took some field photos that should turn out pretty awesome (…sorry don’t have a digital camera yet). One of my uncles also called in a pair of longbeards first thing this morning and ended up killing a nice 19.5 pounder with a 9.25” beard and 1 1/8” spurs. Several friend around the area also took longbeards this morning. I can’t wait to get back out there and try again tomorrow morning and try to get me one before work. Good luck to everyone who’s still out there chasing gobblers!

May 1, 2005