I don't know how it works for you guys but here in Illinois our turkey season is divided up into a bunch of short seasons. That is good and bad. The good news is we can apply for up to 3 tags. The bad news is if you only get one tag, you will only be hunting for a few days and the tags are county specific. Frankly I think we should be able to hunt the whole time if we are committed to bowhunting but the State of Illinois has never asked my opinion on the matter. Lol! Anyway I got a second season tag for Kankakee county. Not a lot of birds here but enough to keep it interesting. I had permission to hunt a field near an area of woods that is not hunted. Plan was to watch and wait and hope the birds would start using the field during the time I could hunt. I hunted the first 2 mornings without even hearing a gobble. Went back for the third morning which was my last day to hunt with similar expectations. Again I never heard a bird. Still it was a nice morning out there. Since it was my last day for this county and season I decided I'd stay in the blind until the last legal minute. I did a series of yelps on a glass pot early which received no response. After that I switched to just soft clucks and purrs. Around 9:30 I noticed a hen coming towards me. Cool. She was alone and at first was not at all interested in my decoy setup. She was around for quite awhile. She eventually fed her way past me and was behind my blind up in a bean field. I don't know what changed her mind but all of a sudden she came in to my decoys fast and hard. She started attacking my hen decoy and was really putting on a show. I had my video camera in the blind on a tripod so I hit record and just watched the show. She fought my hen decoy for like 5 minutes straight. Eventually I decided that I should do a few practice draws on her just to see what I could get away with. This was a stroke of luck. I drew on her and let down 3 or 4 times for practice when all of a sudden I looked up and noticed 2 jakes were running in to the decoys! Cool. I'm already in position for a shot and the video camera is still rolling! The jakes came in and began to trounce my Jake decoy. They were jumping on top of it, pecking at it etc. I've rushed shots on turkeys plenty of times before so I decided to let them keep fighting the decoy and let them settle down naturally. That worked. Eventually they calmed down a bit and one of them went into strut while at the same time pushing up against my decoy. I normally no longer shoot them when they are strutting but I just couldn't help myself. I mean he was right there! He was broadside so I aimed up the leg and drilled him. Honestly at first I thought I hit him a little low but he went 10 yards or so, stopped and just sunk down into the grass. After I dressed him I found that I hit him just barely below the hip. I shot him with a big treeshark broadhead and it broke his leg as well as getting into the "goodies". It was all over in seconds. I shot him with my old Habu recurve that Chris Cox made for me 15 years ago this spring. What a day. Interestingly I still have not heard a single gobble this spring! I got the whole thing in HD video so that was icing on the cake. Man I love this stuff. Good luck out there guys!

Great job!

Congrats sir , well done....

,,Sam,,

Nice work!

       

CONGRATS!

   

Your commitment got rewarded!  Congrats.

Congrats you you!

Very nice. I appreciate the way you presented your trophy.    

Fantastic

Great write up ! Thanks for sharing

Way to stick with it, hard to do when you don't see or even hear a bird  

 Looking forward to seeing the video  

Yea. I really wanna post the video on here but I don't know how and it might be too big. It's 10 minutes long. But if someone can explain how to do it I'll put it up.

Congratulations      

Hey Jon....just download it to YouTube and then just post the link here.
If you don't have a YouTube account it's pretty eAsy and if you have a google acct you can use it for YouTube as well. That would be the easiest way.

If by chance your video is on an IPhone then also download the app "Capture" and it will allow you to send it straight to YouTube. You can even add music or edit if you really want.

Snitch, thanks. I know how to get it to YouTube so good idea. I'll try to do that tonight or tomorrow after work. Cool.

Congrats.  This has been a quiet spring as far as my experience has been.  I heard the first bird yesterday behind my house.  Then last night we went to a spot and put a bird to roost.  My buddy got him first thing this morning.  Our season just opened Monday so I am hoping the birds will start singing and it will be good.  Tomorrow will be my first time out.

congrats

Congrats!