When our first-light set-up produced no gobbling and only a couple of hens in the decoys, I offered to take Wally to a field that routinely holds birds at mid-day. It was fairly hot, definitely windy, and the thought of baking ourselves inside a Double Bull blind in a wide-open cut cornfield all afternoon wasn't exactly appealing, but it was turkey season after all, so we agreed to give it a go. We weren't disappointed!
We hadn't been in the blind for 20 minutes when a bruiser longbeard came to the field, but ignored us to go strut on the far north end of the field (you can actually see him in some of the video). And it wasn't another 15 minutes before a group of 4 longbeards, all 2-year olds, stepped out. A little fighting purring was all it took to get them to amble our way, and the video from that point on more or less speaks for itself.
Our hunt was shaping up to be a classic "pick the bird you want" done-deal, but while we were enjoying having multiple longbeards in the decoys at 10 yards, Wally's cell phone started to ring. His ring tone? Hank Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive". Apparently tom turkeys aren't big fans of country music, because they started laying down tracks in a hurry. Watch the video to see how well Wally handles going from spectator to shooter, in about 3 seconds!
And as follow-up, I turned Wally's 2-year old tom into a decoy, and he used it to kill a bearded hen in the spring, 2009. She's now in the freezer, and will ad realism to his Thrill Kill decoy spread for many years to come!
Oh - some might wonder whatever happened to the big tom strutting on the north end of the field? Keep an eye on this blog - in the next few days I'll post the video we took in the minutes following Wally's Thrill Kill! More exciting turkey hunting footage is hard to find!
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