Good ones Fred.

I've got one.

My buddy Chris was hunting with me season before last. At daylight a bird fired up on the limb about 150 yards off our cow pasture on what we call the Home Place. So we crossed over the barbed wire fence and there was an old dim logging road that ran right out through the pines to where he was roosted.

So Chris set up against a tree about 60 yards down the old road and I remained just inside the fence to do a call through and draw the bird to him. Well the bird pitched off the roost and flew down in the road alright. But instead of coming up it to my calls like we figured he swung out to our right; came up the hill through the woods; crossed under the barbed wire fence into the cow pasture; and circled around about 45 yards directly behind the tree I was set up on. He moved back and forth gobbling his @$$ off for I don't know how long.

Finally I slid down and rolled over on my left side to look behind the tree. Couldn't see jack to that side through the fence, bushes and trees. Rolled over on my right side and I could see him back there behind me at times as he moved back and forth. In this position I had to switch over and shoot left handed. I was in a horrible cramped position and "Finally" he moved far enough for a clear shot at his head.

When I shot two things happened. One, the red dot sight on my shotgun nearly gouged my eyeball out. And two, the turkey flew up in a pine tree out in the pasture. As I was sitting there pissed because I thought I missed the gobbler he suddenly fell back down through the tree bouncing off about three limbs before hitting the ground with a thump.

By now Chris is standing beside and before I could say anything he calmly says, "You're Bleeding." I put my hand up to my left eye and there is blood all over that cheek and now my hand. Big gash under my left eye. Oh well, worry about that later. Let's go get the turkey. When we cross the fence and get out to the tree there is nothing at the base of it but some feathers where he hit the ground.

We start looking around and Chris spots him back down the hill near the fence. The gobbler is walking around and around in about a 3 foot circle. Strangest thing you ever saw. So we walk down and dispatched him with a finishing shot.

I have the fan and beard of that bird on my wall. Not close to the biggest I ever killed but a very memorable hunt with a good friend.

where's yekrut, I KNOW he's done some silly arse stunts.......

This is not a funny but it was a memorable one for me. I was only 24 at the time and hunting with a friend of mine who was close to 40. He was a veteran and I was inexperienced. I had killed a couple of birds before but never with him when hunting together. We set out one morning as a team and hit a couple of birds right off the bat. It did not take long for him to get the bird to me. After only 30 minutes, the hunt the hunt was over and I had shot. For a guy who had been hunting turkeys for 20 years I did not expect his reaction. He seemed to be more excited than me. I asked him why he was so jittery and his response was this "If you don't get this feeling when a bird is shot you don't need to be hunting". I was excited too but he seemed a little over the top. Anyway, while the bird was flopping he made a mistake that I could not believe. He told me later he knew better but the excitement had overcome his judgement. As we are going to get the bird, he reaches down to pick it up while it is still flopping rather than stepping on its head. Mistake...... when he reached down, the bird slung one of his legs back and absolutely buried a 1 1/4 inch spur in the soft spot between your pointer finger and thumb. To this day I have never seen a 40 year old man go to the ground in as much pain as he was in. I will never forget that and will NEVER make that mistake.

I was slipping around a pasture once on a rainy day and saw three gobblers strutting up in a little neck. It was a perfect setup for a crawl up and ambush (I still like doing that kind of thing) so I went over a gameplan in my head. I figured it would take a good 30 or 40 minutes to crawl up into shotgun range and I had been kinda putting off taking a crap all morning so I figured I had better take care of that before I started my stalk so I wouldn't have to deal with a code red while trying to crawl up on the turkeys. I found an old cedar fencerow running up the side of the hill and picked out a good post to hold onto while I leaned back and did my business.
I wore overalls back then and I was always real careful not to get anything in the gallouses, so I held the gallouses up in one hand, held on to the post with the other and leaned back and fired away. Sometime during all this the ancient cedar post broke and you can guess where all my momentum was already headed............I literally shat and fell back in it. I had heard people say it before but I never realized the term could have so much meaning until I experienced it firsthand. Breakfast burritos from Mcdonald's shot out in a violent fashion and then rolled in would ruin a hunt for most folks, but I didn't let it deter me. I wiped off best as I could and then proceeded my stalk. Crawling through that pasture I felt like the guy from Shawshank Redemption who crawled through the sewer to get out of the penetentiary. Good news for me was turkeys can't smell because the way that little hill ran up that neck I couldn't see the turkeys until I got to about twenty yards. I made the shot and carried the turkey out in one hand and most of my clothes out in the other. I was glad I was hunting by myself one day. I have the fan and beard from that bird hanging in my garage as a reminder of what the human body is capable of enduring if it has a goal. I don't seek the aid of old fenceposts when I need to do my business in the woods anymore either.