Time is not on my side, but The Good LORD blessed me

[3seasons]

Time is not on my side this year, but it only take about 2 min when a bird is right. My short story to come.
11 3\8" Beard
1 1\4" spurs
22.1lbs

[dbHunterNY]

looking foward to reading the story. Congrats on a great bird!

[whitetailfreak55]

Can't wait for the story nice bird

[Mathews XT Man]

Those kind of Blessings are the best!! Cant wait to hear the rest of the story..congrats on the nice Gobbler!! The Lord looks out for his own

[Ethan Givan]

Congrats on a nice bird!

[3seasons]

I’m in the middle of a huge outage at the plant where I work. I’m working 6\13hr days for the next 3months minimum and my days off are spent doing odds and ends around the house and spent with my little girl. Our season here in MS is unusual this year in the fact that we are, like most, having an early spring. Everything is happing about a month early. Our mid season lull hit around the first weekend of the season. I had one morning 2 days prior to the season opener to scout and didn’t hear a bird.

So I’m at work and all my friends are doing real good this year. So needless to say I’m getting a little depressed. Ha

Finally I get a day off and some free time to go, so I make the call to make sure no one else is hunting Monday , long story. I find out no one will be in there but they have hunted it every day and couldn’t do anything with a bird, good news is there is a bird to hunt bad news is he has been messed with. To top off things I find out they are burning the whole place off on Tuesday and that a dozer was in there all day Sunday pushing fire lanes. This is awesome, I’m going to an over pressured, run over, and future fire pit. Well I have one day to close the deal. Yes it will get better after the burn but dang my luck.

I wake up real early and walk the 3\4mile in to my favorite listing spot. I just sit and wait for the world to start waking up. It was nice, no mosquitoes that morning and it was a picture perfect dawn. Well I hear a bird start gobbling straight down a big ridge from me on his own but he sounded like a young bird. I listened for a few more minutes and never hear another bird so I figured what the heck I’ll go play with him. As I was nearing the hardwoods through the pine’s I hear another bird between me and the original bird, so my plans to get in close were shot. I set up in the edge of the plantation pines about 30yds from ridge I wanted to be on. I let things settle down and started a soft tree yelp and purr with a 4 track player from Redbeard followed up by another soft yelp with my mouth call. As soon as I’m done I hear both birds hit the ground about 100yds apart. I call one more time and get ready. One bird walks up the ridge in full strut straight to me, it’s so early that all I can tell is he has a full fan and he is legal. With the short amount of time I have to hunt I didn’t watch him to much when he hit 25yds I let the Nitro’s eat. As he was flopping the other bird gobbles so I start calling to him, just messing around. After 5 min of calling I had him 30yds behind me strutting and drumming for 10min. I actually went blind trying to turn my head around to see him. Bad part was I was sitting on my phone so I couldn’t record him. After he walked off I got up to see my bird expecting a two year old. Boy was I surprised to find out what he really was, prob my best eastern to date. I just sat and watched the sun rise and thanked God for the experience and the awesome sights. You couldn’t have scripted it any better. From the time I sat down till I pulled the trigger was about 5min.
My little girl wants to go on my next day off so maybe the other bird will give us a show, not worried about getting him just want her to hear one and maybe even get to see one.

Just goes to show that every bird has his day and I was blessed enough to be on his ridge on that day. Who would have thought that a bird like that would come in on such a string.

[Rackmasta68]

I am looking forward to your story

[WHISKEYSWAMP]

nice bird and good hunt... congrats

[wtnhunt]

Good story and a real nice bird. Congratulations.

[Rhino]

Congratulations Scott...great old mature gobbler!
Sorry work is going to keep you out of the woods more often than usual. I know how you feel. Hang in there...right after they burn it should be real good. I once killed an old gobbler in an area right after a burn. In fact there were a few places still smoldering in there the day I killed him.

[redbeard]

Congrats Scott!

[pointing_dogs_rule]

CONGRATS!!!

good luck to all
the dog