By Brett Kiser

Jay Hill and Brett Kiser took these two 4-wheeling Toms on opening morning. Jay got his Kawasaki Prairie 4-wheeler just in time for turkey season! He pulls a nice tilting trailer behind his Chevy pickup for quick unloading. Now, we spend more time hunting the ridges than we did walking to the ridges.

When we arrived, we heard a couple of gobbles while it was still dark, but about 20 minutes before daylight there was a symphony of gobblers! They sounded off from every nearby ridge. My heart was pounding.

Jay, on the left in the picture, took his turkey about 10 am. He said his gobbler showed up wearing a blindfold and smoking a cigarette. That Undertaker Choke tube was the reason, I suppose. Jay told me that we weren't planning to catch and release this morning. The birds took us seriously.

Brett (that's me on the right) coaxed this lonely bird up the hill at about 11 a.m. with a diaphragm call. It pays to hunt as you walk. Moving very slowly, stopping and looking as I went, I was practically counting trees as I carefully approached the trail to the left that led down the ridge. To the right of the ridge trail was a huge hollow where I had spooked a number of hens earlier that morning. As I cut my eyes to the left I spotted a black looking gobbler with a swinging beard about 80 yards away down the trail. I froze in my tracks. He had not seen me. The weather was wet from a steady rain all morning and the Tom was ruffling his feathers and shaking off the water. It had just stopped raining. I saw the gobbler stretch out his neck and gobble but I couldn't hear him with the ground damp and the wind blowing. I could read his lips. He seemed to be looking for hens and they were no where in sight. He turned slightly and moved his head behind a tree.

I took advantage of the opportunity and I single-stepped to my left towards a cedar fence line. One more step at the right moment put me out his sight. I quickly found myself under the branches of a cedar tree and assumed the ready position. My optic green in the back and red in the front sights were now pointed toward an open spot 35 yards away where I thought he would appear. I let a few soft yelps slip form my H. S. Cutting 2.5. The Tom closed the distance in about 20 seconds!

When he appeared his neck was red to the top of his head. He was frantically looking and searching for his sweetie. His eyes looked as big as saucers! Winchester Supreme Double XX # 5's took him down hard from my Mossberg 500, XX-full .670 choke.

I called Jay on my Motorola Talkabout 250 walkie talkie (he was back at the truck with his bird). He picked me up and we headed to the house. It was a great opening day hunt and we are having TOO MUCH FUN!!