[Keith Sirmans]

Geo and I went out on a beautiful morning. Nice breeze pushing the warm spring air. Creek behind us that led to a swamp. The sun rose with no noise. A few loud yelps with a glass call and one sounded off to our right. He was so far away you could not hear him if there was any traffic on the old country road half a mile away. I hit the call again and he was at the same place. 20 minutes later he gobbled at 300 yards. Finally Geo spots him at 250 yards as he comes out of the woods in full strut. He looked solid black and huge! The bird came into the right all of the way in a full strut but I could not do anything because of a tree in my way. Geo got the entire show. I glanced to my left and there was another Tom running in across the field to cut him off. I looked in front and this one had already beaten him there and I didn’t even see him, but there he was at 20 yards. He blew up to challenge the large dark Tom we had been working and his buddy pulled right in behind to help. All 3 mature birds acting as grown and wild as they could. I squeezed the trigger on the one in front and as I did he popped his head up. I blew off most of his beard. His buddy did a back flip and he just stood there trying to figure out where the shave came from. The second barrel was dead on and I dropped him. Woohoo! His buddy got out of the way and ran to about 150 yards and just watched the scene for about 10 minutes. The old big brute we were after that I could not get a shot on slipped back in the swamp to play another day. It was a great morning