Moose Finds A Little Luck and Ruins Tom’s Day

As turkey hunts go this was quick if you only look at today’s hunt but I had already spent a fair amount of time attempting to be in the right spot. Mistakes while turkey hunting are usually costly but today I was able to over come a big goof and still wreck Tom’s day.

The alarm clock going off at 3:30 this morning woke me up from my very short slumber as I got ready to go hunting. This was the second morning in a row I answered the bell so early and to think it’s my day off from work. Rick was waiting for me when I pulled into our Alamance County lease he hunted here yesterday and had some pretty good action while I hunted in Caswell County only seeing hens. We split up based on where the birds had been the day before so hopefully one of us would be in the right spot.

I was sitting in a blind on the edge of one of our food plots with a hen & Jake decoy set out. I hadn’t been in the blind long when the first gobbler in the woods behind me sounded off. As the light increased so did the gobbling and it appeared that the birds were basically in the same places they had been the morning before. All in all it seemed we had 4 or 5 gobblers all around us so the morning was looking pretty promising. I did some soft calling once I was sure the gobblers had hit the ground. I heard a number of hens calling and moving towards the gobblers and away from me and towards the front end of the property. I just hoped one of the gobblers would come to this field.
One gobbler in particular got my attention as he gobbled and gobbled getting closer and closer to my set up. As long as he seemed to be getting closer I just kept quiet and watched the woods line where I felt he would come out. After a few minutes he didn’t show and I hadn’t heard him I switched to the slate side of my Away Hunting Fatal Attraction call and did some soft purring. He then sounded off much further down in the woods headed to the creek bottom rather then the field I was set up in.
After another brief period of silence I started to purr again and that’s when I heard him drumming as he came through the brush behind the blind. Before I could really react he was in front of the blind headed for the Jake decoy. I picked my 12 gauge Mossberg off my lap but couldn’t bring it all the way up to a shooting position because he would of busted me. Tom goes into full strut and as he turns towards the Jake decoy with his tail towards me I bring the Mossberg up to the shooting position and I eased the safety off. As he clears the decoy and puts his head up I squeeze the trigger and hear the frightful sound of my firing pin “CLICK” but no boom. Tom is now looking at me and I don’t dare move despite my urge to chuck my gun at him.

Tom is nervous and I’m sure he is about to take flight at that moment a breeze catches the decoys and they move ever so slightly and Tom goes back into strut. My lucky day so I rack the pump ejecting the shell and putting a fresh one in. There is no hiding this noise and Tom starts trotting straight away I re acquire my target and yell “Hey” enough to get him to hesitate briefly and turn his head giving me a better target this time as I squeeze the trigger the boom of the shell going off drowns out the sound of the firing pin. Tom immediately flops and my hunt is over. I look at my watch and it is 6:57 for a brief moment I think if I hurry I could get to work and not use a vacation day.. Not.
After I notch my report card to make my kill legal I go back to the blind and pick up my shells and see why my first shell did not go off. There is a dent in the primer but on closer examination it is not as deep as the one on the empty shell.

My mind goes back to early in the morning as I loaded my gun and I tried to be as quiet as possible as I racked the shell into the chamber. I believe that I didn’t get it fully closed and that small fraction was enough to prevent the firing pin from striking the primer hard enough to fire the gun. That was almost a costly mistake and one I can assure you I’ll remember in the future.

This gobbler is the biggest one I have ever taken; 11 1/4 beard 1 1/2 spur on one leg and a 1 1/8 spur on the other one that appears to have been broken off at some point, it weighed just a shy over 19 lbs.

Not one that usually believes in luck I got to wonder if my new hat is lucky. A few months ago Linda from Mace Sports gave me a new camo cap with a moose on it. I hadn’t been wearing it hunting but after a day in the rain on Monday the hat I had been wearing was wet and who wants to wear a wet hat so today I wore the Moose Hat. This is the same hat I was wearing at a quail unlimited banquet last night when I won a rifle. So who knows maybe it is lucky.

With one tag left you know these next few weeks I’ll be wearing my “lucky moose hat”

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