chrislibby88
Senior Member
I didn’t come into yesterday very optimistic with the cold, windy, and overcast conditions. As suspected there wasn’t much gobbling at daybreak, my wife and I heard two distant birds roosted on private, one to the east, and one to the south. We slowly worked our way down the ridge stopping to listen, and doing some very light calling. Got a response once from the bird to the east, so we started working towards the southern ridge point. We set up on the end and did some calling with no response and sat about 45 minutes, then stood up and hit a crow call, and the bird from the east hammered down on the property border. We slipped as quietly as possible down to the creek bottom and set up about 20 yards from where I missed a bird last year and started some mild calling with no response and started waiting. After maybe 20 minutes of silence we both heard some stepping in the leaves at the creek, started looking, and a bird is about 80 yards out making its way down to us, silent, but popping into strut every few steps. He has a full fan and a medium length beard. I start working my gun up to him as he hops the creek and steps behind trees and follow him as he cautiously takes a few steps, struts, then stops and looks for the hens he heard earlier. He eventually steps into a perfect shooting lane at what I think is 40 yards, and I squeeze one off, but instead of a boom, I get a loud click. I immediately start whisper cursing, and my wife starts whispering “what happened? Is something wrong with your gun?” I had a dud primer, and this bird is about to get away. Somehow the bird didn’t hear it and he is still standing there looking around, so after a moment of thinking I start to quietly work action and slowly manage to get the bad shell out, everything is going ok, some noise, but all the movement is in line with my body, but he’s starting to notice something isn’t right and keep flipping from eye to eye looking in our direction, neck stretched and alert. He finally has enough and starts turning back to the creek keeping an eye on us as he walks away, so I rack the new round in, and luckily he turns at the creek rather than hop over and heads back parallel so I throw my dot up, pull, and he flops down into the creek. Not sure how I managed to get a new shell in with a bird at 40 yards but it worked out. My wife filmed the whole thing on her phone. It took me 4 minutes to cycle the action, and the bird was in front of us for a total of 6 minutes. He oddly had no spurs, but a full fan and a maybe 8 inch beard. Super cool hunt.
