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Bird in Hand or 2 in the Bush? What would you do?
I had an interesting scenario regarding what turkey I should shoot this weekend. I will explain the situation and the outcome.
I had scouted my hunting area and knew a flock of turkeys were working a clover field in the mornings. Here is a pic from my cell camera a week before the season started.
I set up my blind along the edge of clover field and waited for the sun to rise. The flock was roosted 200 yards to the east of my location. Knowing I was dealing with a big flock, I set up an Avian X Jake decoy over a lay down hen and a feeding hen nearby, which is a killer combo this time of year. As the morning progressed, the flock slowly worked my direction. I only called when the hens were calling and did not get too aggressive with it.
Eventually I had 5 toms within 50 yards, but their attention was on the big group of hens. I had a lone jake come in and investigate my setup, and in the meantime 3 of the toms started to fight off to my right where I couldn’t film. Two of those toms pushed another tom my direction, and the lone tom saw my jake and then split from the other 2 on a dead sprint. He attacked my decoy and I shot him at 8 yards, all while the other 2 more dominant toms were less than 40 yards away, but were in the brush. You can actually hear those birds gobble when I shoot. After my bird runs a short distance, the other 2 birds are visible and you can see their booner-class beards.
To me a tom is a tom, so I was not about to pass up the opportunity with bow in hand to trophy hunt for a bigger bird. My only regret is that I did not film more of the flock before the shot because my camera battery was dying. At least I can rest-easy knowing I took a beautiful bird while solo filming. This was a fun pic from my cellular camera that was sent to my phone right after the hunt:
The bird I shot ended up having a 9 inch beard and 1 inch spurs and was 22 lbs.
Should I have done something differently? Keep in mind that Minnesota has a 1 bird limit. Let me know in the comments section!
Catch the hunting video https://youtu.be/VizHD_dpa1E!
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