Going into the final morning of their Texas Rio turkey hunt, lifelong hunting friends Allen Shortridge and Tommy Jackson had yet to score on a Rio Grande gobbler so they enlisted the aid of veteran turkey hunter Justin Jackson, who’d already tagged out. During the prior morning hunt, Shortridge and Jackson had set up in a large field in an area where the turkeys traveled each morning.

Every morning except that day, that is.

Nobody like’s coming down to the wire on getting your tag punched, and these passionate turkey slayers were no different, but after two fruitless days of hunting they were confident that the “Young Master” would pull them through.

As the hunt started, the trio of hunters set up near the turkey roost in an area that the birds had passed through the day before.

“I was confident, but anxious for the birds to fly off that roost,” Shortridge said.

The morning dawned clear and cool, just right for a spring turkey hunt, and the gobblers departed the roost and flew into the field at the crack of dawn. The field soon filled up with hens, jakes and longbeards all vying for attention.

“It was a classical hunt straight off the roost,” Shortridge said. “After the birds flew into the field, Justin started calling with some of his sweet love talk and the jakes, hens and gobblers started heading our way.”

I watched the scene unfold from across the field when several gobbling jakes broke out of strut and started running towards the hens and one lone gobbler. The gobbler followed the hens but pulled up and seemed ready to depart.

“Boom!” Shortridge squeezed off a shot, and the trophy gobbler collapsed in a heap.

“I knew he didn’t like something and was about to leave, so I pulled a fine bead and shot him,” Shortridge said.” The trophy tom had succumbed to Jackson’s sweet love talk, and Shortridge’s aim was true!

One down, one to go

The morning had started fast, and with a successful hunt and tagged bird for Shortridge, it was now time for Tommy Jackson to try his hand.

One of the ranch hands had spotted a group of gobblers and hens in an area we’d previously hunted, so we drove to an oil well site, and Tommy and Justin Jackson got out and headed into the brush, stopping to call every so often.

“We thought we heard a faint gobble, so we started back towards them,” Justin Jackson said.

“Gobble, obble, obble” thundered an old tom from the west of their position. They quickly set up, and Jackson called again, and the bird answered with a thunderous gobble.

“They wouldn’t answer my mouth call, so I hit them with the David Halloran Glass Call,” Jackson said. “I hit that call, and a hen cut me off at about 200 yards, so that’s where we set up.

“There was an old crossroads where we set up, and I thought that would be the ticket and started yelping at her, and then I saw her cross the lane, and three jakes came right behind her followed by a few more hens and a longbeard.”

“Moooo!” All of a sudden, a big Angus cow came out and ran right at them and into the brush. Jackson waited for the dust to settle before calling again. After a few minutes, he called to them, and they got cranked up again.

“Suddenly, the gobbler came out running those jakes ahead of him,” Jackson said. “The hens came about 10 yards of us, and the gobbler puffed up right behind them. I knew something didn’t look right, but that gobbler was bearing down on us fast, so I cut, and he stretched his neck real high.”

“Ka-Boom” roared Tommy Jackson’s shotgun, and the full load of shot laid him down!

Ironically, the old gobbler only had two short tail feathers, but he was a full-blown warrior and king of the roost in that area. Old, two-feather had a 10 ½-inch beard to go with 1 ½-inch spurs, and he weighed well over 20 pounds.

It was a memorable last-minute finish that made for another lifetime memory, and just in the nick of time as a weather front with high winds hit the area a short time after the final kill. Carpe Diem!

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comast.net.