Tagged out in Missouri!!

4/27/2012

Tag #2 was unfilled and it was burning a hole in pocket, so it was time for a decision. Head to the Oak Grove farm and kill the bird that gave Pete and I the slip the previous weekend or head to Appleton City and hunt my families farms where Pete and I have killed a ton of birds over the years. As much as I wanted to kill that Oak Grove bird my gut was telling me to head South, so that's exactly what I did.

Knowing my neighbor Randy was going to be hunting on public land I decided to give him the invite. It's always more fun having a killing mate along! We woke up bright and early and made the hour and a half trip south. We headed straight for the Yellow Barn farm which has always been a little honey-hole for Pete and I.

The game plan was to wait for some gobbling and head that way to set up and like clock work the gobbling started immediately off to the west. Our first set up was a bust and we couldn't get the birds to work right off the roost, which is pretty typical for this set up. The birds were heading straight for the killing hole like they always do, but it's impossible to setup on with their roost trees so close. It's an inside corner of a big field, but Pete and I have killed a lot of birds within 40 yards of this spot about an hour after fly down.

As we put our sneak attack on and got closer I glassed the three birds and realized that all three were jakes. We snuck up into position and I told my neighbor Randy that I really didn't want to shoot a jake, but I gave him the green light to unload. Randy put his stealth mode on and let the Mossberg eat! I watched the bird kind of drop and walk off. We checked out the area, but the shot wasn't lethal and after a thorough search we had to move on.

Randy was pretty bummed out but I told him we had several spots to try and lots of birds to work so keep your head up. We ended up setting up on 3 different birds, but for whatever reason just couldn't bring them in. I guess my smooth talking wasn't so smooth!!

With Missouri having a 1:00p.m. closing time I knew time was running out so I decided we needed to check one more spot for birds. We rolled up and I quickly saw 2 long beards hanging out right next to the creek bank and we immediately took off after them. After the 1/4 mile sneak through the creek we crawled up the 15' creek bank. Randy and I went back and forth on when he could see the birds and when I could and we quickly realized that there was just too much brush in the way for us both to shoot together. Since Randy had the first shot of the day I was up to bat. I took aim at the closest bird and cut loose. Ol' bird dropped like a rock. The second bird ran and stopped long enough for Randy to get a shot off but at 48 yards I think it was just a touch out of range for his short barreled turkey gun and it was a swing and a miss!

Weight:  23 Pounds

Beard:   9.5"

Spurs:   1"

After my celebration I get a text from Pete that his Lil' Momma got a kill of her own...the story will be coming soon.

With Big Pete still having two unfilled MO tags left it's time to concentrate on him getting on a Missouri bird or two. Let's get it done brother!!

I have to give another big shout out to Scott Ashburn of Scott's Custom Turkey Calls! These calls are all custom and are top notch and sound awesome!

Phone:   816-572-1927

E-mail:  mastvet@sbcglobal.net