It was a beautiful spring morning when I woke to the neighbors rooster crowing outside. The darn thing just wouldn’t shut up at all. All I had my mind set on was that wonderful gobbling bird that sat high in the Alabama southern pine down next to the swamp at old man Bannister’s farm. His farm was well know for producing me some of the largest turkeys I have ever killed in my entire life. And boy was they some big one’s.

I sure am glad I didn’t have to worry about a gobbler smelling me because I had spill my coffee on my cloths twice while driving down the old dirt path that led from the highway to the open field. I just had a gut feeling that this was going to be my morning. Two weeks into the season and still no bird what was happening to me I had no clue. But this morning was set in my mind that it was already good even if I had spill my coffee twice. “ I didn’t care I was still going.”

The first sound was a gobbler yelling out to me from a distance about a hundred yards away. He still was not the one I wanted. I was after the one that would gobble twice before fly-down and then shut his trapper before he made his last flight from treetop to the wet ground below him where I would be sitting thirty yards away. As soon as he hits the ground he will then be allowed to perform me a show of excellence by strutting before a hen decoy which I have placed out at twenty yards to help lure him in to gun range. This will be his last strut and steps.

He gobbles for the first time.

His thundering gobble shook all silence from all around the neighborhood. The sound of true spring is now here and is heard for all to hear. Daybreak has come and I can see him still sitting up high in a southern red oak about forty feet up. He has no hen with him but the hens from seventy-five yards out have already made their fly-down and is headed my way.

I set patiently as he stretches his wings and gobbles once more. He has now reached the ground and he begins to show his dominance as being the one gobbler that will defeat all others who face him head to head. I cluck and make a small soft series of yelps and he looks around to decide where the sound comes from. A hen yelps in the distance but the gobbler has no chance to answer as I pull the trigger on my Remington 870 wing-master and drop him with a load of number 6 shot.

There he flops around on the ground like all other gobblers do after a shot of impact hits them hard. My morning was great as to have harvested such a remarkable animal. The colors of the feathers are a beauty to withhold for a lifetime. It’s a memory that will never leave you once you harvest a turkey for the first time or even your fourth time. Your heart will beat fast for the first turkey as it will do for the second one. If this does not happen then you will never be a turkey hunter. They say once you start you will never quit.

The stars were shining bright and the moon was full. Most of the guys in camp had not seen anything over the last two days. Mike the camp cook said it was cause of the full moon. “Yall know there ain’t no deer gonna move when the moon is full.” As we all sat around the warm fire enjoying some of our favorite drinks under the stars we all could do nothing but wonder what that big buck of Mossy Bottoms looked like.

We had all heard that he had 31 scoring points on that rack he held on his head. This buck was a legend in Mossy Bottoms hunting club. Even though no one had ever really seen him up close and personal and never had a chance to even say they had shot at him. Don’t get me wrong there was always some very good bucks taken each year.

John’s brother Joe who was visiting bout two years ago killed a huge 12 point and his wife came the next week and shot a doe with a bow and went back the same evening and shot a big 8 point out of the same stand. We gave the name aunt Sara to that stand even though Joe’s wife was named Sue. She sure was a heavy woman. Show enough could shoot though.

Opening day of bow season old man Jenkins kill two does out of the old oak stand down by the creek. Sara’s brother’s brother-in-law came three weeks ago and went to the pond stand and got lost and we haven’t seen or heard from him since.

Old man Hart said he seen that there 31 point buck two weeks ago but we all claim he is blind as a bat. His wife Karen has killed the most does since gun season has opened up with a count of 10 and still counting.

My sister-in-law’s brother’s uncle got drunk Friday night and he hasn’t woke up yet. Which no one wants to sleep in the same bunk as him cause he snores. We had another visitor the other day and climbed into one of the big trees over on Holley hill in a climber and couldn’t get down. We all told him to tie the bottom of that stand on or it wouldn’t stay up high with him. So it fell as we thought it would.

The president of the club got sick from the catfish he caught off the creek and had to go home. Boy did he mess up that out house. Well for me I’ve killed two does so far and a nice 9 point today to prove to all the idiots that deer do move on full moon days.  I told them that they have to leave the whiskey jug alone long enough at night so they ca get into a stand early enough to see one. But as far as the 31 point I don’t think he exist on this club.

We’ll end the story now before we get in over our heads and I hope you have enjoyed another one of my “Tall Tales.” So keep checking back cause you may never know when the next “Tall Tales” story will hit the site.

Carl and I had grown up together in the sticks of south central Alabama and we swore that there would never be one person to come between the friendship we had. We hunted, fished, trapped, and even bullfrog hunted together.

Both of us knew that the local bullfrog hunting championship was coming up and we were gonna win this year. We only had one problem and it was girls that stood in our way of winning. See these girls just wasn’t plain girls. They were the biggest tom boy girls this side of the Mason Dixon Line and every time you seen them the tallest one had a chew of red-man in her mouth so big you could barely make out what she said. That’s how she got the nickname big mouth Sally.

Now Sally had a best friend named Alley and god was she something else. See Alley was the local doctors daughter from somewhere way up yonder in the North. When she moved down here to Alabama she didn’t know what to think and became the best of friends with Sally all because their stupid names rhymed. But boy was she hot. Them long legs and all them curves in all the right places just made a boys mouth drop open where he couldn’t shut it.

See me I was the hunter that kept Carl straight and forward. Carl had this crush on Alley ever since she moved down here and I didn’t like it one bit. Heck I was about to lose my best bud. My huntin  partner. Who was gonna help me clean all them there bullfrogs when I caught em. Well over time Sally and Alley became as good as me and Carl at catching these here bullfrogs ya see. That was gonna interfere with the championship ya see and I wanted to win and win bad. We had not won in three dang years and I wasn’t about to get stomped another year by no girls.

So me and Carl came up with a little secret. In the championships you had to hunt together in a group of four. And what ya know we got teamed up with the two most outlawed girls in this here state.But boy was it gonna be fun. That’s when me and Carl come up here with our secret.

Our plan was to cut holes in the sack of Sally’s and we would be ok. See Alley she didn’t like to catch them bullfrogs and she was just along with Sally to hang out and be part of a crowd i guess you could say. She show enough acted like she liked it. But you could tell she didn’t. She was after Carl ya know.

The night of the championship was here and we was ready to go. The only thing you had was a empty corn sack and a flashlight. You would take off to them there wood’s and swamps and hoped that yo didn’t get chased by Ol man Johnson’s cows. Getting down to his pond after dark was never a problem until the cows seen you. Then you had better taken off hauling butt. It was something about that pond and the cows would never go down to it after dark so if you made it to the pond and the gully you was ok.

The night had started off so good and the four of us was catching them bullfrogs left and right. Well three of us anyhow. As the hours passed we had to be checked back in at the check in at no later than midnight. Around eleven o’clock I told everyone that we needed to start heading back but to my surprise Carl and Alley was nowhere to be found.

So as me and Sally looked for them we found them two making out under a big oak tree and boy was the faces on them red when we caught them. All I heard all the way back to check in was from Sally’s mouth ” Alley I can’t believe you made out with that there crazy Carl, you gonna have lip soars for a week.” You could actually hear her this time cause she had swallowed all that tobacco after what she saw.

But this was my year to shine in the bullfrog huntin championship and I was gonna win. After all those hours while Sally thought she had been putting them there frogs in her sack I was walking right behind her picking them up as they crawled through. Made my huntin easy I should say.

Well as for Carl and Alley they started dating and both went to college together and finished. They are now married and have 4 girls and 3 boys. They became well known in our small town as you can see with the most kids. Sally went off to college and became a nurse and came back to work for Alleys dad. Well for me That’s another story.

I hoped you enjoyed another story of the Tall Tales edition of Hello Hunting. Keep visiting for more Tall Tale stories in the future. I hope to bring you more excitement soon from the Tall Tales collection.

It was a cool cloudy evening and the day before Alabama’s opening day of spring turkey season. I had sat down at the dinner table to think out my first morning’s strategy of how I was gonna outsmart a turkey that had been busting my butt wide open for the past two years. This turkey wasn’t just a two year old bird anymore and he had outwitted me the last two seasons.

I had been scouting this one boss gobbler for the last three weeks and the mornings were shaping up just right for a perfect opening day of spring turkey season. As I bowed my head over my little bit of grub that I had sat aside for dinner I asked the good Lord for thanks for letting me have what I had. I had also asked him for a chance at that gobbler, that had been laying the smack down on me for the past two seasons. My prayer went like this. “Dear Lord thank you for this day and bless me the turkey hunters way Amen.”

Maybe I should have asked him to look down on me with a great big smile and hold everyone back while I eat a while. But to my luck there was no one else in camp but me. I just had this gut feeling that the bird of my nightmares would be in my, fryer by lunch the next day. I ate my food and washed up, and double checked everything needed for the next morning. Can you Imagine that I didn’t get the best sleep that night for the insane reason of worrying about that turkey.

I knew what tree he was in and I also knew that he didn’t have the first hen within 500 yards of him. He was a loaner and a smart one at that. He didn’t live to see five years old for being stupid and dumb. I had only made four shots at this turkey in the past two years and had missed him all four times. This season was gonna be different and I could feel it deep down my spine all the way to my toes.

The night had passed and the alarm rang at exactly at 3 am. I had to make sure I was gonna be in the woods one hour before sun up with my gun and box call in hand. As I grabbed my coffee and my coat, I headed out the door and I had my first whiff of clean air. I stood on the front door step and put me a pinch of snuff in my lower lip and climbed into the camp buggy headed to the one spot that was gonna give me that chance to kill that bird dead.

Sun was to rise at 6:16 am and I was under my tree and standing at 5 am. Everything was so calm that you could hear things walking through the woods from a mile away. I placed another pinch of snuff in my lip about 5:45 am and the first sound of gobbling shook me, and nearly blew my hat off my head. That was him OK and he was very close. Almost too close that I know he could have heard my heart pounding in my chest. “thump” “thump” “thump” I didn’t know how much I could take of it so I spit what snuff out that I hadn’t, already swallowed and took a deep breath and bellowed out the perfect owl sound that I had in me.

That darn gobbler double gobbled, and even triple gobbled at me and then went silent. 6:30 am there he go’s again no more than 40 yards from me and still in that big southern pine no more than 20 feet up. If you were to be sitting above him in a stand you could have spit on him and put his eye out. I took one deep breath and he pitched down no more than ten yards from me. As soon as he hit the ground it was too late for “em”.. The trigger was pulled and I had done what I set out to do and that was to kill a bird that was out to take me down for a third year.

Did you know that every time you hear a turkey tale the bird always weighed over 20 lbs and had over 1 inch spurs and he always has a beard that is over 12 inches. Well how bout this one for size. The bird in this story had two beards and both were over 13 inches long, he weighed 26 lbs and sported 2 inch spurs on both feet. Too bad this was my tall tale huh. I wish I could have seen that bird in real life.

So what did ya think? I hoped you enjoyed reading my Tall Tale of “The Gobblers Last Season” as much as I enjoyed making it up for you to read. Remember dreams always come true in Tall Tales. I hope to bring you more stories like this in the Tall Tales section of Hello Hunting. So visit daily and keep clicking.