My trip to OK started pretty rough for the first 3 days but ended up turning out great for us after all!
After combing through piles of jakes we finally found a couple of adult toms that had buried themselves in a hidden draw 1.5 miles from the closest open road and far away from people. Yesterday morning we were able to get my friend, Ryan, his first Rio. It came strutting right to us 30 minutes after daylight and I got it all on film for him. Beautiful bird with a 9.5 beard and 7/8 spurs.
View attachment 273303We tried for a while to make a play on the other bird we knew was there but after a few hours it seemed he had changed zip codes and it was time to call it a day and go pack up camp to head home. I had resigned myself to going home birdless, and was wishing I’d have shot a Jake earlier in the week. As we were driving back to camp to pack up leave we ended up finding a flock of 17 turkeys hanging out on a private block right down by a barnyard, but directly across the county road was a piece of property we could hunt. Trying to give it one last ditch effort I figured I would try and call one of the toms away from the flock of hens across the road onto our block of property. Having dealt with hened up field birds in other areas I figured I’d was an almost impossible scenario. I knew my normal calling wouldn’t make anything happen so I started wailing on the call like a psycho Karen who was in bad need of some medication. I bet I yelped and cutted more in those few minutes than I do in an entire season of calling back home! I’ve never been so obnoxious with a turkey call in my life. After a few minutes they finally started gobbling at my calls and for the next 20 minutes it was a beautiful strut and gobble show. As I was packing up to leave thinking any further effort was pointless one broke off and headed my way, then another and another! 6 long beards total, some that I hadn’t even seen yet, came strutting and gobbling across the pasture leaving a dozen hens behind, heading right to me. At 100 yards away they started losing interest and by the time they got to the fence there were only 2. One finally committed and crossed through the fence, and came across the county road, then through a second fence, and I shot him about 20 feet on to the property. It was my lucky day apparently, I’ve never been successful calling toms totally away of flocks of hens, but now I’ll never forget the one time that it worked! I find it funny how after walking about 8 miles a day on this trip I ended up calling one in less than 100 yards from the truck. Beard was 8 3/4, spurs 1 1/8.
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