Opening day of turkey season in maryland turned out good again for me this year. Tommy and I went up to our honey hole last Sunday to check things out. We were a little worried because the landowner had the property logged last fall/winter. Our favorite spot had a bunch of sign and a new logging road cut down a ridge leading straight to where we usually set up. We heard a few birds gobbling on the roost and 2 of the toms headed straight to the bottom (honeyhole). We drove back down to the bottom to glass to see if we could spot the birds and ended up seeing three toms down there.
Once they moved off we went in to look at wherewe would set up on Wednesday. On the way in we bumped another tom. We decided on setting up at the base of the ridge with the new logging road because there was a lot of scratchings and sign at a Y in the logging road.
Wednesday morning came and it was raining so we grabbed the blind and headed for the Y in the logging road. The first bird in was the ole bearded hen we have been seeing for the last 4 years. We saw a few more hens and then a jake. The jake walks off up the logging road and runs into a longbeard on his way down the road to the bottom. The longbeard ran the jake off up the ridge and eventually comes back down the ridge. He messed around forever just out of range and a little shy of our full strut decoy. He eventually works he way back up the logging road so I started to call a little aggressively at him with one of my Coleman Game Calls mouth calls and that's all it took.
The scouting and calls were all on point but my shooting was not. First shot was a little low and pounded him in the chest. The next two I have no idea where they hit. To say I was a little upset that i didn't drop him would be an understatement. Tommy looked at the video and noticed that the bird folded up after flying off. We went down to where we last had video of him and there he was. We did have to finish him off, like I said on the video, it wasn't pretty but there's a bird going home with me again this years opening day.
