Hunter: Bobby Goodine
Animal: Turkey - 10" Beard, 1 1/4" Spurs, 23lbs
Location: Iowa
Weapon: Shotgun

Every year i look forward to chasing Iowa longbeards during the early season and this year I drew an early season tag and couldnt wait till april 12th to try and wrap it around the ankle of a mature bird. When the time finally came to head up to Iowa, me and Lil Jon decided to head up a few days early and see if we couldnt pattern some birds before we started chasing them on opening morning. As usual we didnt have to look to hard to see what we were after.. Lil Jon tagged out with his pse 15 mins into opening morning and I was filming Jeff trying to do the same, we didnt have the same luck.. It either happens or it doesnt and it wasnt happening..

After a long morning sit in a blind waiting on a turkey to come within range we decided that it was my turn to try and wack one with a thunder stick.. and that wasnt easy either.. What we thought was going to be a cake walk turned into a constant task of checking field edges and trying to get a bird or two to strike up a conversation with a crow call or a hen call.. Its usually not a difficult thing to do in the first season but those old gobblers just didnt want to cooperate very much.

We had had a tough few days chasing birds and decided on the 3rd afternoon of running ourselves to death chasing these crazy turkeys that we would finally go and try and kill a bird that Lil Jn had scouted for us in an old corn field. He had been there for two afternoons in a row but knew it was going to be tough to get set up on him without getting picked off by him or his hens first..

He was there just like we thought, and now the fun begins..Me Jeff and LJ decided that we would get into a fairly deep creek bed and try and sneak around to the other side of this corn field and try to get our King Strut decoy out and hope to draw this bird into our range. We knew this had to be a dominant bird because he was always here by himself and if we could just get give to see our King Strut might get him to come over and have a little wrestling match..

After a slow walk through the winding creek we were where we wanted to enter the field, we all climbed the bank and was trying to get the decoy set up when the gobbler came out in the middle the food plot and started looking around.. We all froze.. Dont move! He kept looking our way then back the other way.. Where was his hen is what he was thinking.. I guess we had possibly bumped her on the walk in and now he thinks we are her moving in the bushes.. What now? All of a sudden he goes into a full run directly at us .. "Get ready here he comes!" All the way to about 15 yards where I had to skull bust him to keep him from running over all 3 of us.. Bird down and boy was we excited. It was my biggest bird ever a twenty three pounder with inch and a quarter spurs and 10inch beard !

That was some kind of fun.. I never would have thought it would have worked out that way but bird down and thats all that matters. My biggest bird ever out of the same field that I killed my biggest buck ever a few years before.. I like that spot for sure. There is no place like it .

Thanks to Jeff and Lil Jon for following me around with cameras for a few days till I killed, I know it wasnt easy.All those miles of walking with all that gear but its worth it when you get to carry a skull-busted longbeard out with you when you are headed back to the truck.. Thanks again to both of you, and thanks alot to David and Jeff for inviting me up to harvest a bird on their farm.

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