Hunting & Fishing 2025 Filled Tags / Grip & Grins

[Anb618]

2025 is here boys.

No Grip & Grin here, hunting by myself.
Punched my IL turkey tag.
250mm beard, 22mm spurs. Unknown weight. Having BBQ pulled turkey for dinner.

IL assigns 5-7 day “seasons” beginning April 14th in the North zone. I’m working Mid shift right now and drew the short straw in the tag lottery; wound up with a 1st season tag and scheduled to work all 5 days of the season. Sat on Monday morning but there wasn’t much for gobbling so I quit early and went home to bed. Yesterday was rainy and super high winds, so I didn’t go out and went to bed. I got off work this morning, changed into my camo in the locker room, and rushed out there angry I was missing first light/fly-downs. While I was getting out of the truck I heard a gobble, looked over and saw this Tom crossing the road about 200 yards down. Tossed out my Jake/Hen decoys 60 yards from the truck sat down and hit a few cuts and a yelp. Didn’t even have time to load my shotgun before he came sprinting into the decoys. I got out of the truck at 6:40, he was beating the hell out of my Jake decoy and flopping on the ground by 6:45.

Good luck all in 2025!

 

[Kayakfish1]

Shot my first ever turkey this morning hunting with my soon be father in law, we hunted almost every day this week trying to get on them……we have a real nice gobbler we’re trying to get on but for a first I’m thrilled with this one. 1 3/8” spurs, 11” beard, the good old 870 loaded with Kent’s ultimate turkey molly-whopped him at 21 yards.

 

[zeroz]

Nice work boys. Took the old lady down to Bama and she whacked her first eastern. She's gonna do some collage thing with it. Had me boraxing all the pieces instead of just the fan and beard. It'll be interesting to see what it turns into. We were going to finally get out in CO this weekend but we got 8-10 inches of snow yesterday.

 

[Kayakfish1]

Nice work boys. Took the old lady down to Bama and she whacked her first eastern. She's gonna do some collage thing with it. Had me boraxing all the pieces instead of just the fan and beard. It'll be interesting to see what it turns into. We were going to finally get out in CO this weekend but we got 8-10 inches of snow yesterday.

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Let us know how it turns out! I am drying out my fan, wings, and feet, also I’m going to clean the skull up.
Haven’t decided exactly what I’m gonna do with it, I plucked all the feathers from his breast, neck, and around his fan….i might do one of these when I get everything done

 

[zeroz]

Let us know how it turns out! I am drying out my fan, wings, and feet, also I’m going to clean the skull up.
Haven’t decided exactly what I’m gonna do with it, I plucked all the feathers from his breast, neck, and around his fan….i might do one of these when I get everything done

I think something like that is what she has in mind. She said something about doing it in a shadow box to keep some depth to it.

I think the skull adds a cool accent to a fan mount. I did hers when she got her first Merriam years ago.