First Fall Tom with my VH
 

My wife and went on our annual fall Turkey hunt at my relatives land in Wabasha Co. MN last week and I managed to take my first Tom ever in the fall season. I had five toms come in together but they didn't seem to want to come in to my Jake decoy so they stayed out at about 31 yards. I decided to take the first one that seperated from the others and gave him a dose of Kent Matrix 1 1/8oz. #5's. The VH did it's job. It's a 12ga. 28" barrels choked .037 each barrel.
The weather was pretty lousy with rain/snow and temps in the 40's most of the week so I was very happy to even see a Tom as we seem to usually only see Hens and Poults in the fall. It made it even more special as I shot it on our anniversary and I'm very fortunate to have a wife that will spend our anniversary in the turkey woods every year. Unfortunately she didn't get a bird but not for a lack of effort as she sat in the blind every day for nine hours, five days in a row. She did have a hawk come down and knock over her decoy which was a great experience to witness.
I actually think this was the longest distance that I've ever shot a turkey so I was happy to see the Parker was up to the task using relatively light loads.
I'm going to try and attach a couple of pics so bear with me if it doesn't work right away as I haven't done it on this new forum before.
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...edpics1167.jpg
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...edpics1180.jpg

Nice work Bob! That's quite a nice set of tail feathers - looks to be a mature bird, not a jake as I had suspected in the first picture.
Hey, I didn't know toms had pointed primaries!?! The only ones I have seen up close is springtime gobblers with the primaries worn right off from using them as outriggers while strutting. Did you weigh him?

Good thing killed that big boy; hed'a likely beat the snot outa you had you missed! Nice bird....

Whoops, I thought I had the info. in there. It weighed 20lbs. and had a 6 1/4" beard. 1 1/2 year old bird I'd guess as it only had about 1/2" spurs.

So now I'm even more surprised by the full-length fan. That's a dandy bird and he'll eat very well after eating seeds, berries and grasshoppers all summer long.

Nice work Bob!

DLH

Congradulations,great looking bird,have never had the optunity to bag one yet.Plenty of deer around but the turkeys are hard to find....Mike