Surrounded Angus Battles Gobblers to a Draw

I’ve got us another member of the brotherhood, gentlemen. He may be more worried about getting warm right now, but I think he’s hooked. I've included a picture from earlier in the year. I think the temperature was in the low seventies when it was taken. Believe me, he was buried under about 3 additional layers, and that smile was a cold grimace when our action ended this morning.

We have an ideal place for ambushing turkeys about two-thirds of the way back to our family campground. It is a line of large oaks and cedars on the narrowest part of our main North/South ridge with pastures to either side. Our plan, for the start of Youth Season was to hole up in those oaks and call to the dense cedars beyond the pastures in hopes of pulling a gobbler out into the open. It was 24 F with a 20 MPH westerly wind when we headed out just after 8. We missed flydown—it was just too doggone cold.

Within minutes of our arrival, Angus, just shy of 9, had managed to get a gobbler to honor his yelps. We settled in. My back was to a big oak. His was against a log. Then another gobbler started coming in quickly from the opposite direction. I moved Angus to the other side of my tree and was looking over his shoulder from behind. All of a sudden, we had a thunderous gobble from our right. Another gobbler had slipped into our treeline from behind. I tried to look out of the corner of my right eye and tried to get Angus turned around for a shot.

From my rear, we heard “PfffFFFT!!!” and then the low drum. I cranked my head around to see a gobbler peering at us from inside ten feet, just on the other side of some bushes. Our eyes met, and he was gone. It’s hard to say exactly who counted coup on whom. I’d call it a draw. If Angus had stayed where he had been, he would have had to poke at the gobbler to get him off the end of the gun barrel for a shot.

Meanwhile, the original gobbler started back on us. I got Angus over and we called him for a while, and then the #2 gobbler started up again and showed every sign of coming in.

And so it went, gobbler to the left, gobbler to the right, until Angus put up his head net and announced that he’d lost feeling in his hands and could no longer feel the trigger on his shotgun. We broke cover and came back—two hours of turkey hunting with about a solid hour of close action.