If you look REAL hard ( I had the camera on the wrong setting! ) in the first picture you can see one of the proposed recipients of the revenge......a turkey......at least his eye.
The second picture is the same view after he and his sorry buddies messed things up.
When the turkeys started talking in the trees at about sunrise Saturday morning my first thought was that it'd make the morning more interesting if they'd fly down in my direction and then feed through the creek bottom I was watching. About 15 minutes later that hope was answered as 4 or 5 of them came wandering along pecking and scratching.
I figured they'd wander on through in a few minutes.....but......being birds....they did not do as expected. Rather than move through and off they set about, over the course of the next 3 hours, working over the whole creek bottom seldom being where I could not see or hear them for more than 15-20 minutes at any time.
It was during one of these quiet moments that I realized that the movement I'd just seen was not a turkey but a deer leg. And then the sun glistened off something up above the leg......antlers! And not just legal antlers but big antlers...( for the NE FL area at least ).
He was in the thick stuff to the left of where my gun is pointing. Over the next 15-20 minutes I got a full view of his head once and then, after loosing him for a couple of minutes, a couple of seconds of full body as he walked between 2 trees. The whole time he was feeding on acorns and acting very calm, at least for a large buck.
As the wind was in my favor, and as he was feeding right where I had walked not 2 hours before I knew he could not smell me. Truth is that after the first 10 minutes or so I was sure that if I just stayed calm and ready I'd get a clear shot eventually. It's not like he was a long way off, maybe 30-50 yards most of the time.
In fact based on the general direction he seemed to have come from and the general direction he seemed to be moving I guessed that he was going to step across the creek in just a couple of minutes and then I'd have a clear shot.
And then I hear turkeys coming..........as did the deer.
He froze. I know this because I could see one leg.......not moving for over 5 minutes. As the turkeys got closer it became obvious that they were going to get right between me and the deer. Which they did.
Last thing I saw was his rear end a time or two as he slowly walked off back the way he had come.
This spring the turkeys in that area will get some special attention.
And yes......if I'd had the old Mossberg with 000 buck...oh well as usual...."IF".....
