Big boy down opening day

So in typical fashion there was miscommunication/no communication so as of 9pm the night before the opener I thought my hunting partner bailed on me. Considering he has the land access I was literally SOL without having done my public land homework.

I woke up at 6:13 am to see various texts starting at

4:51 am "on your way?"
5:13 am "hello?"
5:40 am " if you coming go to the spot"
6:02am "Im where we parked with your Dad"

fuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

So after drinking a cup of coffee I figured that since I know right where he is I was going to drive out there and if I didn't get ahold of him, I'll just start hunting and we will somehow meet up. I sent him a text that I was on my way and we met up at the spot. (this place has spotty service so phone calls are pretty tough to complete).

We met up at the trucks about 8:00am. He hadn't seen or heard any birds but the wind was blowing pretty good so I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me is the weeds in the orchard were already knee to thigh high. Last year on the opener you could have putted a golf ball across the whole orchard and the weeds weren't this tall until May. uh oh...

So plan B was to set up on a dirt road along the creek levee as that was the only spot decoys could be seen. While walking out I spotted (4) big toms and other birds across the creek in the orchard about 100 yards away. We quickly set the decoys in two different openings to where the birds on the other side could see the decoys and they could fly right up to em.

I sat down and glanced at my watch, it was 8:34am. I started yelping with my diaphragm call loudly since we were downwind of those birds. Within 5 minutes a jake flew onto the road, landed and started coming my way. booyah, we have touchdown... Then maybe 2 minutes later, birds started landing on the road at the same spot, first a group of maybe 8 hens, then One Big tom, two toms, 3 toms, 4 toms, etc. Realizing I had called the whole flock of 15 or so birds across this wide creek and wider riparian habitat I was stoked.

The jake kept coming down the road towards me and soon the hens and big boys followed. The jake closed to within 10 yards and then got puzzled, I was pinned down and unable to call thinking they would have me pegged and not keep coming to the decoys which were positioned to my left (was hoping to get those big toms in range). The jake started to turn to leave and the rest of the flock started turning around and feeding off. I held on what I thought was the biggest tom but he was 50+ and I didn't know exactly how far since I couldn't count the trees so I passed on the shot. There was a smaller tom in the front of the flock but he kept walking away with his head down. Finally I got him to stop and lift his head, click, BANG. Bird down at 8:54am. The shot was 45-50 yards I think.

I didn't realize how big he was until I put a tape on it when I got home. 10" beard with 1-1/4" spurs. My largest bird to date. Ironically I think the other (4) toms in the back of the flock were bigger so, yes now I want to kill a bigger one.

My buddy got a jake. Good morning. Oh yeah, in my haste to get out the door I forgot the go pro. The footage would have been epic too...

For the pics or it didn't happen peanut gallery, here you go.

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Big boy down opening day