Everything was perfect. I was set up 150 yards from the roost on their usual fly down route, and there were 3 birds gobbling from the tree tops, silhouetted by the rising sun :D.
Then the coyote starting howling behind me. One at a time I watched the turkeys fly down, all in exactly the opposite direction :(.
The turkey hunter's dilemma; should I wait it to see what happens, or relocate? My gut said move. So guessing where the birds might be headed, I looked around me and decided that if I followed the little creek valley, I just might be able to stay out of sight and get ahead of the birds. So I gathered up my decoys and gear, fast-walked a large loop to the other side of the property, and slipped into a blind I'd build before the season inside a woodlot. I decided to leave the decoys in the bag as I called.
Fifteen minutes later I was rewarded with a nearby gobble, confirmed that I'd managed to get ahead of the birds. I did some clucks and purrs and within minutes saw two red bobbing heads coming my way through the trees. They were jakes, and I let them walk on as they came within 10 yards of me. I was pretty sure that the gobble I'd heard was made by a bigger bird.
Thirty minutes later I was starting to have doubts, but then the bird gobbled again, this time closer. When I spotted him he was on a course that would keep him way out of range. Not sure if it was my calling that turned him slightly my way, because he certainly wasn't gobbling to my calls. Ever so slowly I reached for my range-finder and its magnification confirmed it was a tom. He was walking very slowly and I lost him behind the trees for a few minutes. When he finally re-appeared, he was hard to my left, almost beyond the limit to which I could rotate my body. It was now or never.
BOOM! The tom flopped over, didn't even flap. I walked over to him, picked him up by the legs, took one step back toward my blind, and that's when the hell broke loose! He wasn't dead yet, and in fact he seemed very much alive! I soon dropped him for fear of a spur getting me. But in our brief wrestling match, the tom somehow lost his tail feathers. A second kill shot was followed by the realization that here would be no fan on my wall from this tom. :ashamed:
The view
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...b0544d11_k.jpg
The blind
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...55d5b836_k.jpg
The fan
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...896267be_k.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...86d3b7ee_k.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...9703b420_k.jpg
