Above pix of Capt. Quinton Thompson and turkey he harvested this morning 04-20-06 while hunting with yours truly on a special invite hunt and the results were amazing....not just the turkey harvest but the events of the hunt!

PS:  He left his seeing eye dog and red tipped cane at home on this hunt.  Grin if you must!

It was one of those morning with heavy fog and the ole long beards were not sounding off. We walked across a pasture whereas the fog was so thick you could hardly see 10 feet in front of you. When we were about 3/4 the way across the pasture, Quinton stopped and said, "Do you hear that bull frog"...I replied "that it didn't sound like no bull frog to me"  and he laughed stating "Porter, I thought you were from the country, that's a bull frog."   As we got closer to the sound I told him there wasn't any pond or water hole where the sound was coming from and about that time the fog had lifted a little and the bull frog in question magically turned into a 2000 pound bull steer and we could see the "steam" coming from his nose. Both our adrenalin levels rose quickly to maximum capacity and we both knew it would be a tough mad dash to get to the fence and clear the bob wire if the bull charged but luckily the "bull frog" stayed where he was at.  I will at least hand it to Quinton that he had the bull part right of the bull frog he thought he heard! I am still grinning when I think about that 2000 pound bull frog.

We walked at least a couple of miles on the hunt this morning....we set up a couple decoys in a power line right of way and Capt. Thompson was using his favorite call at the time and gave the most seductive sounding clucks, yelps you have ever heard; Ben Rogers Lee would have been proud of him for sure....we did hear one gobble prior to the set-up of the decoys and that was it as far as the ole boys gobbling....We both tried every call in our arsenal; box calls, slates, mouth calls and every type of call possible and maybe some new ones invented but no response from a gobbler.

We stayed for about an hour and I was positioned about 50 yards from Capt. Thompson but I thought I was much closer around 30 yards but there was not a good place to set-up and observe the immediate area. I was about ready to get up because of sitting still that long and getting very antsy when to my right I saw four long beard gobblers approaching the decoys at a break neck speed..... ....they were right in front of Quinton and I kept waiting for him to shoot and apparently he was waiting on me to shoot first and finally decided to take a shot...when I fired the boss gobbler I shot at didn't go down but everything "froze" for a micro second and then all hell broke loose ...Quinton dropped his ole gobbler like a log and my gobbler ran off like he had a jet engine up his rear...I fired until I ran out of shells (two more times) and my gobbler was still going when my SuperMag shotgun couldn't do no more! I am very glad Quinton didn't think to cut my shirt tail off...

He peeped out from the edge of the cover where he was set up fearing maybe another round would go off but he was safe because I was out of shells. ...He looked like a long neck turkey with all the stretching of his neck...go ahead and grin now because I still am.

It was one of the most memorable hunts in a long time seeing those long beards running toward those decoys and Quinton looking like "ET" stretching his neck out from cover.

From where Quinton was at he saw another gobbler and there were at least six gobblers within his gun range.

Quinton's gobbler had three (3) Beards measuring 2.25, 7 & 10.75 inches in length and the spurs were 1 inch in length...the ole boy weighed 18 lbs. but felt much heavier....