Tagged out on first multiple bearded bird

[onelessarrow]

20200529_195232.jpg20200529_195731.jpg20200529_195918.jpg20200530_115139.jpgShot my first multiple bearded bird tonight after work.
I spotted a handful of birds right in front of where my daughter shot her bird opening morning.
I grabbed my Tom decoy and headed for the makeshift blind that we had sat in.
Fortunately the terrain allowed me to work my way right to the hide without being spotted. I could see three Toms in the field about 50 yards evenly spaced apart, all strutting with five hens between them and me.
I placed the strutting decoy on top of the branches to the blind at a distance of just in front of my barrel.
I grab my binoculars and watched the show for a while trying to determine the best out of the 3 birds.
As it started to rain, a gobbler to my left just around the corner in the field started to fire off. I couldn't see him but I could tell by the direction of all the other turkeys stare, that he was right there around the bend.
I used that opportunity to pull out my gobble call and repeat after him.
We exchange several calls as all the other birds watched on like an audience at a tennis match.
I never ended up seeing that bird.
However, that amount of gobbling started to draw in the hens.
For the next 10 minutes all the hens slowly work their way towards me. The middle Tom continued to strut while the outside Toms just stared in my direction.
I grabbed the decoy and started to wave it like a rutting bull moose does with his antlers.
I then see the middle Tom walk over to the Tom on the right and watch him literally push him towards me, turn around and walk back to the middle where he was strutting. The tom on the right starts coming in like hes got a job to do lol.
He had to come up a hill just before he got to me so he disappeared for a second but only for a second as he must of ran once he lost sight of my decoy. I shot him at 10 yards, some of the pellets hit the breast unfortunately and lost some beard.
When I first walked up to it I could see three distinct beards with broken pieces laying on the ground as well.
It was raining so I put the bird in the back of my vest and took pictures back at the truck.
Before I could get a picture of the beard with the tape I accidentally pulled the middle beard's longest strains off from 11 inches reducing the remaining ones to 7 inches.
Not sure how many beards you'd count in the photo. Definitely 2, possibly 4. First time really seeing a beard like that. I'll let you decide Lenny.
The longest beard is 7inches.
Longest spur is 3/4". I'll post pictures on the contest forum as soon as I can get them up.

[tom gobble]

Congrats great story. Any pics