Live for the season...

WE DID IT!!!

Sometime back in early 2009, someone (me) decided that it would be pretty cool to try to kill the wild turkey Grand Slam in one season. It was!

I've always had a goal of killing a Grand Slam, but honestly never considered trying to do it in a single season until last year. It was an awesome ride - some of the best & toughest hunts of my life! I'm still recovering from the marathon road trip so I'll blog each hunt in a little more detail later, but for now I wanted to go ahead & post some pics. WE DID IT!!!

Chris' Osceola

Craig's Osceola

Chris' Eastern

Craig's Eastern

Chris' Rio

Craig's Rio

Chris' Merriam's

Craig's Merriam's

Why is it????

Why is it that no matter how much land you can hunt on, the best gobbling turkeys are always across the fence???

First Episode!

Very excited to announce that the first episode of our Strut'n Tom Outfitters 2010 Semi-live video series is live & on-line. Click here to watch.

Hope you enjoy & please stay tuned for another episode in just a few days!

For those of you...

For those of you who think hunting is all I can write about, you might get a kick out of this post I wrote for my wife's blog. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

WOW - what a ride!

**Update** 2 more "Ridin' in the Truck"!

We are now 6 days into our 2010 Tennessee turkey season & it has been... well, unbelievable! The first 6 days were so good in fact, I actually took today off & didn't hunt - I know, shocking! I'll get into numbers, stats, & details later, (if I ever get caught-up on my blogging) but for now I'll just leave you with a few pics...

Highlights from Florida

Craig & I returned home from our Florida hunt last Thursday night. We had a GREAT hunt & are off to a great start to our "Quest for the Slam"! The property was totally different from anywhere we had ever hunted before, but we adapted pretty quickly :)) You can read the full story on our Strut'n Tom Journal, so I'll just leave you with some pictures for now:

WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO Part 2!!!

What can I say - this has been the most memorable weekend of hunting in my entire life! After my oldest daughter Elizabeth killed her first turkey yesterday, today was Miss Molly's turn. At age 7, Molly is already a veteran turkey hunter. She killed her first bird on last year's Juvy hunt.

We had thunderstorms in our area this morning, so we waited until after Church to head to the woods. We got to the farm around 2:30. We saw several birds driving in, including a Tom in the field where we had planned to set-up. We got set-up & settled into the blind by 2:45. I set Molly in a chair by the right window & told her that her job was to watch that direction. Around 3:30, she said "Daddy I'm pretty sure that you're gonna want to look at this, right now!" Sure enough, a big Tom had stepped into the field around 100 yards from the blind.

I gave him a few soft clucks & he started slowly our way. He finally saw the decoys when he got to 50 yards or so. We weren't set-up to shoot out of the right side, so we had to let him strut past the blind & into our shooting lane. She finally got the gun on him & sent a load of 6's his way when he was about 10 yards out! It was all floppin' & grinnin' after that & we are still celebrating!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Barnes' house is celebrating tonight! Miss Elizabeth scored late this afternoon on her first turkey! I'll post the full story later, but just had to share some pics!

Of course, one VERY proud Daddy & one VERY excited little sister were there to share the moment!

Definitely one of the best day's I've ever spent in the turkey woods - only equaled by last year's Juvy hunt when Molly killed her first! I can't wait to share many more days hunting with them both!

Quest for the Slam!

It's no secret that Team Strut'n Tom, along with good friend Dwain Spray & Mark Moffett have taken on the challenge of killing a single-season Slam this year. To those of you who are non-turkey hunters, a Slam is killing all 4 sub-species of wild turkey that live in the U.S. To accomplish this is a pretty good feat in itself, to try to do it in one year is... well, a bit intimidating. We are all starting with the Osceola which can only be found & hunted in Florida. Dwain & Mark left for their hunt this morning and Craig & I got actually got back from ours last night. We had a GREAT hunt! I'll post the whole story on the Strut'n Tom Journal in a few days, but for now I'll leave you with a few pics:

And So it Begins...

I'm still getting used to having 2 blogs since I've changed our Strut'n Tom Outfitters site to a blog format. I promise I'll do better than simply post the same thing both places! But some things are just too good not to share - take this year's first scouting trip for example...

3.19.10 Souting