Adam's Osceola - Florida
Adam and his Florida Osceola.
No decoy here!.
Hunter: Adam Spittler
Cameraman: Jeremy Lengle
One of my favorite times of the year is spring gobbler. It was hard to believe we were heading down to Florida already. It seemed like the fall hunting seasons just ended, and as usual we had high expectations. The first day Jeremy was doing the hunting. I won’t say anymore, I will let him tell his story.
Day two was my turn to hunt. I was using a Tenpoint crossbow. The morning hunt we saw some birds, but nothing that wanted to cooperate. Our guide came up with a plan for the evening hunt. I really had faith in this spot, because it had produced for me in the past. We were hoping we could intercept the longbeards going back to their roost. We placed a mounted hen and tom decoy about 20 yards away. After an hour or so, we had a small flock of jakes come in. They were real curious of the decoys and stuck around awhile. It was about an hour until we heard more turkeys on their way. It wasn’t long after we had two longbeards come running in to fight with the mounted tom. I slowly raised my Tenpoint and put it on the gobbler. I squeezed the trigger off. After that all I saw were feathers floating in the air. I thought I smoked him! But after a few seconds he got his wits together and wanted to fight the mounted tom decoy again. By now I was puzzled—I knew I didn’t hit my target. After a while the birds went on their way. After viewing the footage to see what went wrong, we figured it out. I shot high and the feathers we saw flying everywhere was from my decoy. I will admit even after missing, I had to laugh at what had happened. That’s what makes hunting great; you never know what’s going to take place when you’re in the great outdoors.
The 3rd and final day came upon us too fast. We hunted a different area that morning. We had a light rain and that pushed the mosquitoes out of the ground. The problem with that is we forgot our Thermacell at home in Pennsylvania. Needless to say we paid the price. All morning we had turkeys passing by but no toms. We sat out until 11 a.m. then we decided to grab lunch. We were sitting at the local restaurant and met up with our guide Tim. He spotted a gobbler where he thought we could set up on him. Once again we were setting up our Ameristep blind. We had the dekes in place and the game was on. We let things settle down some before we broke out the calls. As soon as I hit my slate call, one gobbled in the distance. We would call every 10 minutes or so to let him know where we were. And every time, he would answer back. I waited another ten minutes and struck the slate. I know sooner looked up and I could see a turkey in full strut gobbling. The longbeard was about 150 yards and I could tell he was going to come in. He came marching into the decoys that were 10 yards from the blind. I forgot to mention I am now holding my 12-gauge topped with a Nikon Turkey Pro scope. The longbeard started flopping the mounted tom. He wanted to show who was King of Spring! At this point my safety was off and a red head was in my crosshairs. I squeezed off and we had our Osceola on the ground. Another nice Florida bird; it was 18 lbs. 2 oz, 10-¼” beard with 1-¼” spurs. I just want to thank our guide Tim and Spencer Jones for another exciting hunt in Osceola country.