It had been 40 minutes since I first heard a distant gobble echo through the forest on my opening-day hunt. Suddenly, a split-tailed tom appeared among the trees as if from nowhere. The bird approached silently, slinking through the timber, weaving in and out of tall ferns and briars. When he paused to study my hen decoy at 20 yards, I fired and dropped him. From the time I first saw him until he walked right into my setup, the longbeard never strutted or made a sound.
I had first located this mature bird, lacking a few tail feathers, two weeks prior when walking a 40-year-old growth of Douglas firs in search of elk sheds. Although I’d been scouting turkeys for nearly two months, I had yet to see a bird. And when I saw that one—moving freely through the timber—I decided to change my entire scouting approach.
I focused my efforts inside the timber rather
