We hunted this morning and heard a few birds but couldn’t get anything to work.  As we started to head out, we saw a big group of eight strutters with a bunch of hens.  We thought there is no way we will call those birds from their hens, but we did know that when is started to warm up, they would head to the woods and we knew just where to go.

We circled around to try and cut the birds off and as we were slipping through the woods Philip saw movement.  They were already where we wanted to be so we just set up where we were.  After we watched them peck around and strut for about an hour, we decided to try yelping even though they had hens.  

We yelped one time and one of the birds hammered off but didn’t budge.  We waited another 30 minutes and decided to get really aggressive with the calling.  One of the long beards started gobbling his head off and started to head straight to us leaving his hens and bringing all his buddies with him.  Philip let them come in to about 10 yards before letting his 12 gauge bark.  We didn’t move and all the other long beards looked up and saw the bird flopping and went to jump on him.  Somehow, Philip was able to give his gun to Jacob and he shot one of the bullies that was beating up Philip’s bird.  

What we learned:  Don’t be afraid to call to gobblers even when they are henned up.  9 times out of 10 it won’t work and sometimes can even hurt, but if the gobblers are headed in the other direction every now and then you can call his hens in or even call him away from his hens.