Well, my 10 year old son connected this morning, we've been hunting these birds for about a week now and they've been henned up every day. We knew where they were roosting and set up a blind there yesterday and made a path by clearing the leaves for a silent entrance. We got there well before light and waited.

We had 2 hens in the trees about 30 yards in front of us, and a gobbler started mouthing off about 75 yards down the hill. The hens flew down in perfect position and the gobbler strutted his way up to meet them. When the gobbler was 35 yards away, he let fly with the #9 TSS that he handloaded himself. He even wrote messages on the overshot card... "See you later sucka," "I'm not a hen", "Bang," etc. LOL!

We never even had to get a call out of the vest.

He's excited to get his first longbeard (he got a late hatch 2 year old last year). He's even more excited to have bagged him with handloads that he put together himself!

Stats: 20 lbs, 8 3/4" beard. Gun was an 870 youth 20 gauge with a 552 Eotech.



About 30 seconds before "lights out":

Very nice, beautiful bird - how long were the spurs?  Our season is already over

The spurs were about an inch long.

I'm proud of him, he had it set in his mind that he wanted a longbeard. At the beginning of the week we had some mature gobblers (this is probably one of the three) come into a field we were set up on but they wouldn't come into range. Two jakes... legal birds... came into our decoy spread at 15 yards and hung out for about 45 minutes. He could have shot one of them but let them go in hopes to get a nice one later.

I always let him shoot if he wants to, but I also remind him "you can't get a big one if you shoot the small ones!" He's glad he passed on the jakes now.

Dang.  That's a nice bird!  Congratulations to your son.

Some more photos:

What a great bird op and way to go with taking the young one hunting. He'll have the memory the rest of his life.

Great job! You got a cool kid there. I've tried 4 times in the last 2 years and have yet to land a turkey down here.

Nice!!!

We really want to get him a grand slam eventually... your Osceolas are hard to get, with all the pressure down there!

Pretty Damn Awesome!

Am I the only one who read "neckbeard" down and was hoping for pics of some ammo flipper writhing in pain on the floor in walmart?

Very Congrats to him.  A 13yr old I took out picked up a bearded hen on Sat; pretty cool bird for a first turkey.






I had many birds around me the next morning and managed to screw up on a Jake. I had 4 at 40yds and missed; I had put a low power scope on my turkey gun and got it close using some old slugs I had wanted to get rid of, intending to go back and put my turkey choke in and shoot it with my turkey loads to finish sighting it in - yep never went back and did that, forgot all about it It was way off; I hate getting old......





 

Now it's my turn, got this thick bearded one at 6:10 am this morning before work. Never made a call, just patterned him as these birds have been pretty call-shy. Swatted him at 15 yards using another 20 ga. TSS #9 shot shell that my son handloaded himself. 9" beard, 1" spurs. He's marinating in Italian dressing right now.  





Walking past one of our video cameras


Muzzle flash from field cam #2... he didn't have time to duck.

That is cool as hell.  Congrats!