Florida Turkey Opener
- Thread starter 1hornwilly
- Start date
Huckleberry Finn
Senior Member
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twireman
Senior Member
rgecko23
*Supporting Member*
Well I am back home. I'll be back at it again on Monday morning, but a pretty sweet hunt this morning for sure!
My buddy that owns the land was hunting with me. My brothers and I have lifetime rights to hunt that property due to a barter arrangement we made. Eye surgery for hunting rights...yep, you heard it right
We settled in to the blind about 6:50am and were only in for a few minutes when a tom sounded off about 100 yards away still on roost. His calls created a cascading of turkey yelps, cuts, purrs, gobbles and every other sound they make for the next hour. We were surrounded by hens, jakes and toms from every direction. None were with in sight, but we were pretty certain as the sun rose that we were gonna do some damage this morning.
We set the decoy before climbing in the blind. The deke we use is a taxidermied Osceola turkey around a hollow plastic body. It looks exactly like one because it was one! It's the best deke I've ever seen and I am buying one on Monday from my taxi down here that makes them. A bit pricey at $350, but I've never seen a deke that works every single time like this thing does. If there is a gobbler in the area within eyeshot....he's runnin in lookin for a fight.
As we listened to the gobbler sounding off at our 12:00 and began to call, we caught motion coming from the 7:00 position. There was no time to do anything (we were planning on filming). They were 8 yards away when we saw them! Two toms came hauling in to kick the decoy's ass. As they both pummeled the deke, I got my old faithful 870 ready and aimed at the head of one...."click"...no bang. Dang it! I slowly and quietly racked the slide and ejected the "dud" shell and aimed again...."click"...son of a bi*$#! It did it again! I turned to my buddy and said, "you shoot!" He got his gun up and blasted one. Rolled him right over. The other dummy was still standing there wanting to fight the decoy and looking at his fallen comrade. We were making so much racket with all of the gun issues and moving all over in the blind and the idiot bird was still focused on beating up the deke! Unreal! He handed me his shotgun and I steadied (for a third time now) and waited for his head to clear the deke at 15 yards. BOOM! I finally pulled a trigger that made something happen... He flopped around for a bit before finally coming to his final resting place with half a head.
We high fived and whooped and hollered for a bit and then went to get our birds. It was an unreal hunt. One I'll remember for a long while.
Here are the lessons I learned today:
1. It's better to make noise racking your gun than to try to be so quiet you don't get the slide locked to get the shell in position in the chamber.
2. A good decoy and a dumb turkey make for plenty of room for error.
3. I am shooting blanks like a lot of you guys on this forum now:smiley_crocodile:
An awesome hunt on a perfect Florida morning (40 degrees at daybreak).
Here are a couple of shots from this morning....
My buddy that owns the land was hunting with me. My brothers and I have lifetime rights to hunt that property due to a barter arrangement we made. Eye surgery for hunting rights...yep, you heard it right
We settled in to the blind about 6:50am and were only in for a few minutes when a tom sounded off about 100 yards away still on roost. His calls created a cascading of turkey yelps, cuts, purrs, gobbles and every other sound they make for the next hour. We were surrounded by hens, jakes and toms from every direction. None were with in sight, but we were pretty certain as the sun rose that we were gonna do some damage this morning.
We set the decoy before climbing in the blind. The deke we use is a taxidermied Osceola turkey around a hollow plastic body. It looks exactly like one because it was one! It's the best deke I've ever seen and I am buying one on Monday from my taxi down here that makes them. A bit pricey at $350, but I've never seen a deke that works every single time like this thing does. If there is a gobbler in the area within eyeshot....he's runnin in lookin for a fight.
As we listened to the gobbler sounding off at our 12:00 and began to call, we caught motion coming from the 7:00 position. There was no time to do anything (we were planning on filming). They were 8 yards away when we saw them! Two toms came hauling in to kick the decoy's ass. As they both pummeled the deke, I got my old faithful 870 ready and aimed at the head of one...."click"...no bang. Dang it! I slowly and quietly racked the slide and ejected the "dud" shell and aimed again...."click"...son of a bi*$#! It did it again! I turned to my buddy and said, "you shoot!" He got his gun up and blasted one. Rolled him right over. The other dummy was still standing there wanting to fight the decoy and looking at his fallen comrade. We were making so much racket with all of the gun issues and moving all over in the blind and the idiot bird was still focused on beating up the deke! Unreal! He handed me his shotgun and I steadied (for a third time now) and waited for his head to clear the deke at 15 yards. BOOM! I finally pulled a trigger that made something happen... He flopped around for a bit before finally coming to his final resting place with half a head.
We high fived and whooped and hollered for a bit and then went to get our birds. It was an unreal hunt. One I'll remember for a long while.
Here are the lessons I learned today:
1. It's better to make noise racking your gun than to try to be so quiet you don't get the slide locked to get the shell in position in the chamber.
2. A good decoy and a dumb turkey make for plenty of room for error.
3. I am shooting blanks like a lot of you guys on this forum now:smiley_crocodile:
An awesome hunt on a perfect Florida morning (40 degrees at daybreak).
Here are a couple of shots from this morning....
Huckleberry Finn
Senior Member
- 15,973
- 135
Beautiful birds!
Did you figure out what was wrong with the shell?
Also, sounds an expensive decoy - don't shoot that one! I have an old school hen, full plastic that I'd like to repaint...my goal is to shoot a nice bird this year and make a decoy with his beard and tailfeathers.
Did you figure out what was wrong with the shell?
Also, sounds an expensive decoy - don't shoot that one! I have an old school hen, full plastic that I'd like to repaint...my goal is to shoot a nice bird this year and make a decoy with his beard and tailfeathers.
Oh yeah, forgot to make that clear....There was nothing wrong with the shell. It was the idiot operator of the shotgun. I tested the gun 5 times after the hunt. It worked every time. In and effort to be super quiet, I just plain didn't rack the shell into place with enough force to make it work. What a moron....
dante322
*Supporting Member*
Three things jumped out at me.
1) Huge congrats on an awesomely successful hunt!
2) You saw a bobcat on top of it? Extra sweet!
3) Glad you thought about some of the little people on your follow up story. Shooting blanks. rotflmao
1) Huge congrats on an awesomely successful hunt!
2) You saw a bobcat on top of it? Extra sweet!
3) Glad you thought about some of the little people on your follow up story. Shooting blanks. rotflmao