We backed out and run-and-gunned a couple miles without hearing a peep. We drove over 1.5 hours to get to some giant public ground in the southern part of the zone Shane has been successful on multiple times. Once again, we run-and-gunned and blind called for hours with no responses. So we left and drove to nearby private that had lots of birds. We called in two hens by the end of the day, but that was it. Shane said it was the slowest day he'd had all year.
Today: We went back to my public land again to start, but went on the other side of the river near the cliff. Our goal was to call the birds we heard yesterday across the 150 foot tall vertical canyon because the roost area was so tough to access. We didn't have a decoy out, since we wanted to hear the birds first and make a move on them. Shane had three gobblers going absolutely nuts around flydown time on the other side. We weren't close enough to the edge to see if any flew over. Shortly after, a hen came in silently behind us. She was followed by a jake. He was at such an angle that I would have had to put the gun between Shane and his camera to get a quick shot off. Then we spotted another jake 30 yards in front of us that snuck in while we were focused on the other two. When we tried to get the camera on him, he turned and ran off. The other jake wandered off without giving a clear shot. But then we could hear gobbling on our side of the river. One of the toms had flown over to investigate. Shane called again and he responded. We looked at our maps to determine how to set-up on him. As soon as we devised a solid plan a shot rang out...
We walked out to the road to meet the hunter who had just killed the bird. They had parked on the opposite side of the road so we had assumed we were alone on our side. It was a 2y.o. with an 8" beard. Nothing we could do but congratulate the guy.
Plan B...
We drove deeper into the state and past several public land parcels. Finally we found one that looked good at 10am. The signage was a little confusing, so we called the number on the sign and confirmed that the land was open for turkey hunting. Then we had to wade through a knee high creek to get to the high ground. On the way into the woods on the access trail, we found the imprint of a track in the grass and some droppings. We put the decoy in an opening in a narrow strip of hardwoods between two crp fields and set up against a big, out-of-the-way oak. After an hour of blind calling, we were nearly ready to move on to the next piece of public land. Then a gobble rang out in the distance. Shane hit the calls and waited about a minute. Then he called again, and the gobble interrupted him less than halfway from where the original was. He was coming fast so we turned the cameras on and got ready. Finally we could see his fan crest the ridgetop 60 yards away. He slowly strutted and shuffled his way down towards our decoy. It's been a couple years since I shot my only turkey, and was shaking badly and trying to control my breathing. When he cleared a big hardwood less than 10 yards from the decoy, I focused on the base of the neck and squeezed... The recoil took me by surprise, and when I looked up the tom was laying stone cold on the ground 28 yards away!
He was likely a 2 year old bird with 3/4" spurs and a 10 1/4" beard, but had a nice full fan. I let Shane keep the gizzard and heart in exchange for showing me his method of cleaning the bird, and I kept the meat, fan, beard, and wings. I plan on making fletchings from the wing feathers for my longbow arrows.
Pretty exciting hunt, and the best part was that I learned how to run-and-gun and call from someone who really knows what they're doing. The hunter we talked to this morning was like "there was some hen going crazy this morning that got the gobbler to fly over the river". Shane had replied "that was me" 
It was a pretty fun change of events from the bowhunting in a blind I'm used to. The video from the hunt will be edited and uploaded for Shane's webshow. I'll post the video when he airs it.
