What a great week-end with family and friends for the California turkey opener...Got up to Lake Henshaw Friday and settled into my traditional cabin 13...Stefanie and Jacob had their own cabin this year with baby Hunter...Although, Jacob ended up staying with me with the early get up...The evening brought lots of old friends and new around the fire...Many stories of hunts pass and great food ended around 10:00 pm...4:00 am was going to come pretty early...Jacob and I had high hopes with drawing a great zone on MCC...As dawn was starting to break, we have nary a gobble near us...Flydown comes and goes and zip...An hour and a half later, we decide to make a move...We see a tom with hens, but they would have nothing to do with our calling and we lost them...A little later on, we find another tom with about 9 hens and are able to get in front of them...They get to within a 100 yards, and something spooks the flock (bobcat or coyote) and that was that...At this point, it's about 11:00 am and we decide to go back and meet Stefanie at the Lake Henshaw Cafe...When we get there, she's ready to go turkey hunting...I say great, but I need a nap...
...After the nap, Jacob gets baby duty and we head for Julian...It's now a little after 1:00 pm...It's hot, dead calm, and we settle in for the long haul...2 hours go by and we have nothing...At about 3:00 pm, we're both dozing off when we both wake up to a solid gobble...I get off the Flydown Custom single sided box and on to the FC glass...Boom!...He hits right back...One more short series of yelps and he's comin'...A bit of time goes by and I peek around a big black oak to our right and there he is in full strut...Stefanie can't see him, but finally clears the tree and heads for the DSD jake decoy...He gets into her shooting lane...BOOM!...Down he goes with her M-2 Benelli...Happy birthday, Stefanie...ps...As we're finishing picking up, I hear a not to distant gobble...We pick up Stef's bird and scrabble back to the loungers...I hit the box and BINGO!...He's hot and he's comin'...I go to the glass one last time and he's close...The only difference this time is that he has a hen...They come into view, but she starts veering off...BUT, he see's the jake and immediately goes into strut...Moving slowly, but surely, he gets to the exact spot where Stefanie's bird laid...Kaboow!...We have 2 longs...Lots of hugs follow...This folks, is what it's all about...Love you Stef...
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