I've been sitting on this one for awhile. I am fortunate to live on a farm, it gives me a little bit better insight on the location of wildlife. I watched 3 longbeards feed until last light in last years corn field across the road from our place. They went to roost in a big cottonwood tree in the creek bottom on the west side of that field. So I made sure to be in a blind that I had setup a couple days earlier when I started seeing birds using that field before first light the next morning. I had been using a single hen decoy with turkey skinz on it, but decided that since most of the hens are bred that I would throw a jake decoy out there too about 8 yards in front of the blind. Called lightly when the gobblers were really cranking it up this morning on the roost. As soon as I got a response I shut up. At daylight a hen came off the roost and landed about 20 yards in front of the decoys. As she fed out to about 60 yards I heard the gobblers fly down. One was gobbling going away,so I thought time to pour another cup of coffee. Just got it poured and low and behold two of the toms stepped out of the timber. I threw out about five soft yelps and they started my way. There was a strip of grass about 20-30 yards wide for them to cross to get to the old corn field. When they reached the edge of the grass they stopped and I putted once, purred and then yelped softly. They both strutted and gobbled, then came at a fast walk right to the decoys. The first one reached the jake and started kicking the crap out of it while the other one stepped around the jake flogging and mounted the hen decoy . As the tom got off of the jake decoy he was abusing I released an arrow. Got a complete pass thru and the hit looked good. The tom went down and rolled around, so I thought dead bird. I grabbed the second arrow, drew and released on the tom that was on the hen decoy. Still in the saddle I caught him perfect and he cartwheeled off only going ten feet, before giving up the ghost. Then to my amazement the first one got up and headed for the timber walking like a drunk. I wasn't prepared for a third arrow until he was out of range. He stopped at sixty yards at the base of a tree and stood there for 1/2 an hour. I called several times to see if he might move back in range. Then he disappeared and I figured he went down for good. Gave him an additional 15 minutes and went to check on him. He was about 10 yards in the timber and took off. Our spring season allows us to take 2 toms. This would be my first double. I looked all afternoon for him , but never found him. In retrospect I should have left for a couple hours, then came back to look for him. Sadly he became a meal for the coyotes as I never found him. I was using one of my Wing Thunderbirds, 57#@29 1/4'” with 2215 Eastons and a 4 blade Zwickey Eskimo.
Scene of the crime.
Topic: Toms- some are lovers, some fighters (Read 329 times)
