Earlier than daybreak on April 19 Daniel Maness and his good pal Chris Morris had been owl-hooting on a hunt membership the place Maness had seen turkeys throughout deer season. The membership sat on 300 acres in west-central North Carolina’s Chatham County.
“I’m new to turkey looking, however Chris was displaying me the way it’s completed,” Maness tells Out of doors Life. “He owl hooted a pair occasions, and we had gobblers reply immediately.”
The younger hunters headed 50 yards towards the gobbling birds, which they guessed had been solely 100 yards away. They put out a hen decoy and Morris did the calling on a slate pot name, whereas Maness sat prepared because the shooter.
One gobbler flew down and made for his or her decoy. However then a pair of hens flew off the roost with the second gobbler, touchdown close by — then pulling the primary tom away, too. The entire group disappeared into the pines.
“We heard 5 totally different gobblers that morning,” mentioned Maness, a machine store employee in Robbins. “So, Chris mentioned we should always choose up and work our approach by the woods towards the place we heard different birds and find one other tom.”
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The buddies slipped by timber and open fields, calling as they went, hoping to strike a tom.
“Lastly, Chris known as, and a tom wolfed,” mentioned Maness. “Chris known as a second time, and this time two totally different birds wolfed again at us.”
They moved nearer to the place they’d heard the toms and arrange a second time. They had been simply inside one other subject edge, they usually positioned a single hen decoy out entrance.
Morris yelped and purred on his slate, however it was quiet for greater than 20 minutes. Then they heard one other gobbler from behind them — towards the realm the place they’d seen the birds fly down earlier that morning.
“So, we left and headed again within the route we’d come from, considering that’s the place the hens had been — and certain the gobblers, too,” Maness mentioned. “We had been shifting slowly, staying quiet, and we noticed a tom strutting in a clearing about 70 yards from us.”
The pair of hunters used a low ditch for canopy and had been in a position to minimize the gap to the strutter.
“We received to about 40 yards from him, I eased up out of the ditch, I put my sight on his head and fired. The chicken ran just a few yards, I shot once more, and he dropped proper there.”
When he walked up on his chicken, Maness observed it had a pair of spurs on every leg.
“I knew that wasn’t regular, and Chris mentioned he’d by no means seen a chicken with 4 spurs.”
The 21.7-pound tom with a ten.4-inch beard was certainly a rarity. Every of its legs had a 1 3/8-inch spur, plus one other 5/8-inch spur beside the primary one.
Gobblers with a number of units of spurs are actually uncommon. In keeping with the National Wild Turkey Federation, round one p.c of toms have a number of spurs. The late and famend Florida turkey biologist Lovett Williams as soon as mentioned that he knew of fewer than two dozen gobblers having double spurs.
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Within the time since he tagged his double-spurred tom in April, Maness has taken one other massive gobbler. His second chicken was known as to the gun by Morris as effectively. The 21-pound tom had an 11-inch beard and 1.25-inch spurs, and Maness says it placed on an actual present, strutting and gobbling up till he pulled the set off.
“Everybody calls me fortunate,” he says, chuckling.
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