I had a great weekend with baitstop (Shane) in Dallas County. I hunted with Shane 5 years ago and after about 4 or 5 days of hunting finally got to put a boot on a stubborn birds head that year, but I earned him to say the least. He has been on me for the last few years to come back and my schedule has just been slammed in the spring. We started planning for a weekend this spring a few months back and I've been looking forward to it. I had a meeting in Birmingham Friday until about 3 and when I got out headed down to Shane's place. We did a little riding around and checked some fields just seeing what was out, but it was late. Dinner at the lodge was some of the finest roast I've ever eaten in my life, I mean FINE. We devised a plan over dinner and went to a big lease that's mostly river bottom fields and some trees on the edges. Shane's buddy went with us who hasn't ever killed a turkey and it was fun hanging out with him and getting to know him while teaching him a little about how not to turkey hunt too. It was rainy and windy and about 10 am it set in raining so we headed out and went to get a bite to eat. We finished up lunch and let it clear out before heading back. We went to another piece of property that he has that is small, but holds a bunch of birds. He had the line on a few birds there and had called one in for his Nephew earlier in the year already. We walked the roads on it to the back side to a pretty bottom and sat up on the edge of the thinned pines and the hardwoods where he said the birds liked to hang out. I think it was 1:45 when we sat down against a huge oak tree on the ridge top overlooking the bottom. I did some calling off and on and we never heard a peep. I think about 3:30 we talked and decided to give it until 4 and we would walk around to a food plot on the other side and set up for a bit and call it a day. We hadn't heard a gobble all day besides one that was across a river on us earlier in the day. At about 3 minutes until 4 I had enough and got up, got my vest on and chair on and was slipping out to the logging road to check it. I was about 15 yards from the tree and Shane was up and ready, but texting our buddy from earlier in the morning about what an exciting evening he was missing by taking a nap. I was almost to the road and Shane was maybe 5 yards from the tree we had been sitting at when a gobbler fired off up the holler maybe 100 yards from us. I really don't know how he didn't see us, but I'm sure he heard us walking and thought we were a hen leaving him. We scrambled away from the tree over the crest of the hill and across the logging road and set up in the thinned pines facing the logging road. When we got ready I called to him and nothing, I called again and nothing, but he paused a few seconds and gobbled. He wouldn't answer me but gobbled 2 or 3 times in the next few minutes. I finally decided to get aggressive with him and call a little louder and make him start answering me and it worked. He started answering when I would call and also got close enough for us to both start hearing him drumming. Shane was facing straight toward where we had been sitting and I was facing to the left into some nasty thick stuff and didn't have much of a shot, which is what I wanted to do because I wanted Shane to do the shooting. The bird worked up the hill ever so slowly drumming like a mad man. He was loud and we couldn't see him for the longest time, but when we did he was straight down the place where we had walked out from and right down Shane's gun barrel. As luck would have it as soon as Shane could shoot him he stepped behind a big pine and completely took Shane's shot away. The bird stood there drumming and craning his next looking for the hen for maybe a minute or two. I had a wide open view of him the entire time, but wasn't prepared to shoot him nor did I plan to. As luck would have it the bird did the ole wing adjustment and walked left a couple steps. Shane said shoot him if you can and I swung, yelped at him in the only hole I had at that time and he gobbled in it as I sent the TSS his was. He weighed in at 18#6 ounces, had 15/16" very sharp spurs, and a 10 5/8" beard. What got me is his wings were almost perfect on the tips like he hadn't even been strutting this year or at a minimum at least. We celebrated and hunted all the way to the truck trying to strike another one up. We went and hung him in the walk in cooler with the other birds from the weekend that had been killed at the lodge and went and had a fine dinner of Filet, grilled jumbo bacon wrapped shrimp, boiled shrimp, and fries. It was some more fine.

Sunday we hunted our tails off all day and besides being on a bird that crossed the property line and got killed we didn't have much luck. We put some miles on the boots and hours in the chairs trying to wait one out. Sunday night we bad some deer bacon burgers that he had processed himself and they were awesome. So awesome he gave me a cooler full of it to bring home with me.

This morning we decided to go hunt a bird that everyone has been seeing in a big field in the same place every morning and see if we could do anything with him. We got in early and got across the field in the dark as planned and set up in a thick fence row in some big cedars. At 5:30 a bird started hammering about 3-400 yards across the field. We figured that was the bird we were after when another bird started hammering across the dirt road from us. Both birds hammered on the limb and continued after flying down. The bird that gobbled first gobbled 6 or 7 times in a row as fast as he could at a truck going down the road at one point. I thought he would kill over. We had just decided that we needed to go after him when a bird gobbled that hadn't said a word all morning and he was directly behind us in some thick woods and CLOSE. We both looked at each other like Holy Smokes that was close. The bird never moved much but we heard him drumming over the next hour and he did gobble a few times, but was acting like the old bird that we went in there to hunt. He finally eased off and we did the same.

Shane, I appreciate the hospitality and good times we had in the woods this weekend brother. I had a blast, but I am exhausted.

Good read and Congrats

Congrats again man!

Congrats

Sounds like a fun weekend. Congrats!

Congrats, Shane is a good guy!

Congrats to both of you!

sounds like a good time for sure!

Congrats Brandon!

Nice! Congrats!

congrats Brandon sounded like some great hunting and some great eating!

Great story ...Congrats

Congrats!

You should have come down to Barbour. You would have got to see me mad enough to tear someone's head off their shoulders with my bare hands.

Good huntin and good eatin on the same trip is mighty hard to beat!

Dead

Nice read. Congrats on the bird too.

Yeah, I figured with the Facebook post you could have bit a nail in half. Let me know if you need any help on that.

Enjoyed it man!!!! I'll save the part about how you jump shot my bird!!! Ha Rough weekend for hunting but we got it done.. Hopefully we can do it again next year!!

congrats Brandon!