Do you have an ace up your sleeve for 5-9-09?

[Cut N Run]

Saturday marks the close of turkey season here in North Carolina.  Does anyone have any tricks or special places to hunt they've held off on, but plan to hunt between now & sundown Saturday evening?
 
I plan to go with my best hunting buddy, and his father, and the Landowner to see if we can call one up for those two who have not yet tagged out this season. We know where a decent bird is roosting and have left him alone for a few days so we can go after him on Saturday.
 
My buddy, E.P. took his handicapped friend to another property not far from the lease to try for a bird this morning.  They had a pop-up blind set in place for a few days near where there had been a lot of activity earlier last week.  The physically challenged guy was driven right up to the blind and assisted getting in place while E.P. went and parked the truck a few hundred yards away.  No birds were gobbling at sun-up, though it was cloudy from some serious storms that blew through the area last night. A few of those storms spawned tornadoes nearby to give an idea of why the turkeys held on to the limb a little tighter and were reluctant to let go this morning.
 
By 6:30, they hadn't heard a single gobble.  They were fearing a lack of action, when E.P. told the other guy that maybe the gobblers would gobble on their way in versus calling from the tree.  He had no sooner spit those words out of his mouth, when a turkey gobbled so close they expected to see the blind to vibrate.  E.P. broke out his call and lightly yelped & was cut off by another loud gobble.  They looked out through the mist and saw no birds at all.  E.P. clucked one time and the bird fired right back unseen.  About that time, they heard wingbeats and saw a gobbler fly down from a tree less than 35 yards away. He hit the ground running the opposite direction away from the blind. That was the only bird they had a chance at all morning.
 
They had to have driven to less than 30 yards from that bird before dawn and he held tight.  They had been talking to each other & drinking coffee from a thermos in the blind & that bird stayed put.  No telling what might have happened if they had been able to get in there & set up quietly.
 
That's how turkey hunting goes sometimes...at least they got to hear one gobble closeby.
 
Jim

[tracebusta32]

Good story Jim, I had a similar account about 6 yrs ago taking a fella on public land.
I knew of a place a tom had been flying down too, so we setup that morning in a blind and talked about what should happen at sunup, well it got about 8:30 and we still hadn't heard anything or seen anything....about 9 a.m finally we heard some wings flapping above us, and a jake flew down 30 yards from our tent and looked at us for a minute and started to head out of town, needless to say he took a ride home with us that day.
 
I don't know how, but we had set up the tent right below the tree he roosted in and never spooked him out of the tree, although he waited for several hours befor ehe flew down.