Chasing Longbeards.

Saturday, we headed out to the woods to pursue longbeards with Tales of the Hunt Outfitters in Northwest Missouri. To start the morning off, Aaron Volkmar, good friend Jeremy Luke, and myself headed to the river bottom where several gobblers had been scouted, while Shaun and Charlie worked the birds across the road.

At first light, we spotted several birds roosted in the trees along the Platte River. We were anticipating hearing several gobblers, but we were bummed after only hearing two before the birds left the roost to fly to the opposite side of the river along with the majority of the hens. We stayed positive and sat it out; even though we knew those birds were probably not going to come back across the river.

After waiting patiently, we had a close encounter with a hen, which was followed by sightings of a couple of longbeards fanned out working the field. We hit the box call and slate call hoping the longbeards would catch a glimpse of our decoys and head our way, but that wasn’t the case. The birds worked our way, but hung up a long way outside of range. The birds eventually worked their way out of the field to the wooded bluff.

After checking in with Shaun and Charlie, we decided we would split up and try our luck calling in the bluff. Aaron, Jeremy, and I worked the north end of the bluff while Shaun and Charlie worked the south end of the bluff. With Jeremy behind the camera, Aaron and I set the decoy and begin to call. After nearly an hour of calling with no sightings or responses, I found that Aaron had already called it a day. Although we weren’t able to connect with any longbeards, we were able to connect with a few morel mushrooms and we had a great time! 

 Happy Hunting,

Josh McMillen