Been chasing Easterns for 5 years now and only had a jake in shotgun range. I'm guessing that would have been around 25 texas eastern hunts in total, with time split between public and private land. This morning I went hunting with a friend on private property and finally shot one.

We started off just moving pasture to pasture listening for gobbles but never hear anything on the roost. At around 6:35 I made some light yelps but no immediate response.

We kept walking and both thought we heard a gobble. We stopped to listen and heard a gobble again at maybe 300 yards. I setup my hen decoy and found a tree. I made a few more yelps and heard another gobble at around 150 yards. We knew he was headed our way quick. My buddy made a few yelps and he popped out of the woods at 60 yards. He strutted and I knew he was a tom. He came in to 35 yards, turned sideways and I shot. This had all happened in around 5 minutes.

It is almost ironic that after struggling with these birds for years, when I finally got one it was a super easy hunt.

9.25" beard
1.125" spurs
22.00 lbs
NWTF score: 63

Awesome!!

Congrats!!!

Great bird!!


Gman

Congratulations! Nice bird!

Very nice. Congratulations. There's a parable that is quite old, but Greg Popovich of the Spurs uses it to teach his teams to be persistent. Here it is.

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Fantastic to have it all fall into place.

Great bird. Easterns are tough to hunt.

That is a great bird, Eastern can be tough, but they all can at times.

Awesome bird!