It is hard to believe that my 2018 North Carolina spring gobbler season is history. It’s crazy how you wait for that all year, and then it goes by so quickly.
Day One - youth day
I took my nine-year-old grandson Jesus out for his first ever hunting trip. We got to roost a gobbler the evening before, and I had high hopes that we could get him to come in off of the roost early in the morning before the rain set in. I knew he had a lot of hens with him, and so my plan was to find a way in that would hopefully allow us to get close to him where he could fly down and come to us first.
So the next morning we came in from a direction that would avoid contact with hens, or so we hoped. We got in tight and were in good shape - and he gobbled good. We heard a few hens close by and the gobbler flew down and slowly worked our way.
Some of the nearby hens got with him but they were all coming our way. At one point we caught glimpses of him coming through the bushes - in range- and could hear him drumming as he strutted for the hens.
But right before he could get out from behind the bushes into a clear shooting lane, a hen that we did not know was there flew down out of the tree about 40 yards away. She had been looking at us the whole time, but never putted or never made a sound. But since she knew we were there, she flew down and apparently led the whole group away from us.
We tried to flank them a couple times, but Jesus quickly got tired of that, and wanted to Get out of the rain and ride around instead of hunt any longer.
So, that ended day one.
Day Two
After an unspeakable mishap north of the border, my 2018 North Carolina season officially began at 10 AM when I signed into the logbook at the old club house.
I went To my favorite midday location, and decided to sit down and cold call for as long as it took to either get a turkey, or give up and go home.
After about an hour into my calling routine, I was answered by a hen not too far away. I couldn’t really hear her all that well because the wind had picked up and was blowing pretty hard. But I started trying to work on her. I hoped that there might be a gobbler in tow. She would call back to me very aggressively every now and then, cutting and yelping and making all kinds of racket. But she didn’t seem to want to come to me.
I was not in a location where I could easily move, so I stayed put and tried to convince her to head my way. I tried calling real sweet, I tried calling real aggressively, but she wouldn’t budge. I tried mimicking her, but she wouldn’t budge. So I gave her the silent treatment. She wouldn’t budge on that either.
At one point she had begun to ease my way, and got to about 60 yards. This time when I called to her, I got a subdued afternoon gobble in response. So now I knew she had a tom with her. But then she went quiet again, and I lost audible contact shortly after that.
This went on for a couple hours when it finally sounded like she was moving some - over towards my left. Over about the next hour it sounded like she progressively kept going to my left and even went out into a nearby field. But try as I might, I could not see her out there.
So, I decided to scoot closer towards the field, very slowly and carefully, to see if I could get a better vantage point of what was in the field. I continued my calling routine as I did this. Not too long after that it sounded like the hen had actually gone past me in the field, though I still hadn’t seen anything out there. Then all of a sudden, I thought I heard drumming. Try as I might I couldn’t see anything, and wasn’t sure that I actually heard drumming, with all the wind noise.
Then a few minutes later, in response to another of my calls, I heard drumming again - closer - and it was unmistakable. So i peered through the bushes at the edge of the field and saw turkey coming down the edge of the field closer to me. When the turkey reached an opening and showed me his profile, I saw a beard. Then a second turkey with a beard showed up right behind him and stuck his neck up looking towards me where I had been calling from. So I put the bead on his head and let the 28 horses go.
As it turns out, there were three toms with that hen, and they had gone by me with the hen, then turned around to come back to me after I had scooted a little bit closer to the edge of the field and called from there.
The pictures of that bird are in the OP.
Day Three
I planned to do a before-work flash hunt on the first Tuesday of the season. This was a new place I had never hunted before, but I knew there were turkeys in the area. I had scouted a month earlier, and had been thinking about how I would make my approach early in the morning. I decided to get there extra early so that I could walk along the edge of a field without getting seen by Turkeys that possibly could be roosting not too far off the edge of the field.
So I got to my predetermined location in the dark and found a place where I could stand in a little bit of cover and watch what was going on, and move as needed if I heard something on the roost.
When it came time for gobbling to start, a bird gobbled right on the edge of the field about 70 yards to my left. It was so close, since I was also on the edge of the field, that I was afraid to move at all, even to sit down - in fear that I might get seen by that turkey. As I was thinking about that, all of a sudden another turkey gobbled about 40 yards behind me - about blowing my hat off. I had inadvertently positioned myself very well, right in the middle of two roosting, gobbling Turkeys.
When the bird to my left gobbled again, and the bird behind me gobbled again, I elected to slowly sit down and face the closest bird that was behind me in the woods since I thought I could do so without being seen. If the one on the edge of the field flew down first, I would be in an awkward position, but at least I’d be able to watch him and adjust my movements accordingly, to get a gun over on him.
Then another turkey gobbled and another and another. There were at least four maybe five or six gobblers-I don’t know.
I looked and now could see the closest gobbler standing up on a limb and strutting and gobbling at the hens that began making noise as they began to fly down about 80 or 100 yds away.
Then I saw a second gobbler further back in the woods - also strutting and gobbling in the tree at the hens. It was crazy, and I was right in the middle of it.
Well, now I knew that I had to get serious with the competition, or my hunt might be over. So I began calling softly, immediately after the turkeys would gobble.
After a couple minutes of that, I saw a turkey fly down quartering towards me landing below the lip that dropped into the bottom. So I got my gun pointed in that direction in case it was a Tom that might come up over the lip to me. I called some more and then I saw a second turkey sailing through the trees headed my way- Right towards me actually. I could tell it was a male bird as it was flying towards me, because I could see the white top of his head. It kept coming and landed about 10 steps from me at 1 o’clock - And immediately went into strut.
I shifted my .410 over on his head - he stuck his head up - and I let the little gun squeak.
That bird turned out to be the longest spurred bird I’ve ever killed with 1 7/16 inch and 1 5/8 inch spurs.


And I wasn’t even late for work.