On our first morning hunt in Missouri, I was up since Robbie tagged his bird the day before.

We headed to a perfect spot over a cow pasture and heard at least 10 birds and 150+ gobbles from the roost. It seemed like it could happen at any minute as a hen came up the hill to us and two gobblers headed into the pasture about 200 yards away. The hen had different ideas and flew down to them instead and carried them off.

About that time the woods grew silent, and we were freezing. After waiting a few minutes and hearing nothing else, we decided to make a move to the bottom and wait them out. Once we got all comfy and settled in, we called and heard no response. Then probably less than 15 minutes later, we called again and heard two VERY close and loud gobbles and saw two toms coming over a hill behind us. When they dropped off the other side of the hill, I dropped into a ditch so I could face them. At first, another hen flew into the field and started to carry them off once more, and I just knew they were about to leave us again. But then the hen responded to our calling and started coming closer to us, and the toms followed suit. After a few harrowing minutes of two gobbling toms strutting about 35 yards away while I had a huge deadfall limb between them and me, I finally had to raise up and shoot him over the top of it.

Down he went, and the unending smiling began. We had some emotional highs and lows, but the morning ended with a couple of pretty excited hunters celebrating in the middle of a cow pasture.