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Member Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 1863 Location: Wisconsin

The story I was to tell is boring, so I pulled this draft from the archives:

My Gun Click

Click is a long gun, a shotgun to be more precise. Click is my gun, but he and I parted ways many years ago. Click doesn’t work for me but he loves the company of an old friend and performs miraculous feats for him. My experiences with him have been dismal, but I kept ownership and sent his butt packing when he failed me for a shot at a live gobbler with the longest spurs I have ever seen, and Click will never be forgiven for such disloyalty. He served for years as a safe king until the opportunity to be rid of him came about.

Click is a gun that fits me and the friend that wields him to perfection. I had handled the same gun and model that belonged to John Henry and it was awe that described my happiness in the manner in which that gun fit and how it felt when mounted and swung. I didn’t need a new gun. I had oodles of guns in the safe that were gifts from previous generations of hunters that saw and witnessed the hunter in me. I’m grateful for every one of them and take very good care of them and take them for strolls through skeet fields and behind dogs that enjoy the smell of game birds in the forests and prairies. Click just mesmerized me and my want turned into a need.

Click is a 3-inch magnum 12 gauge Beretta Pintail semi-auto with a 26” tube choked barrel and a full camouflage pattern. His type was popular with the puddle duck friends of John Henry and as far as I knew those guns had been trustworthy and dependable; Click would prove otherwise. The Pintail was a short lived production for Beretta. Its feature that separated it from its semi-auto competition was the recoil system internal to the butt stock that became the platform for the Extrema and later the Benelli action. I got my hands on one before I knew their production numbers would be small and though I’m not likely to forgive Click for the fail-to-fire that cost me a huge bird, I retain ownership because of the joy that gun brings to me via the grins on the man that now wields it. His name is Long Tom.

There was a woodlot of fifteen or so acres internal to a field of 160 acres that was surrounded on all sides by paved roads in very-rural Wisconsin. The man that owned the house in the woodlot was a chainsaw wood carver, retired from a career in higher education as a procurement officer. He didn’t hunt turkeys but always welcomed me to hunt them when others were not, and I had helped a few gobblers die with my gun and the guns of others in and around that woodlot.

The morning the Pintail got its new name was gorgeous. It was just cold enough to keep the mosquito hatch from getting active until mid-morning and the birds were surely puffed out to stay warm until they could sun in the fields in an hour’s time. Fields around the woodlot had been disked in preparation for planting and the hens were taking the Toms for walks around the fields in search of grubs, grit, and waste grain so I knew that a hunt in the lot would have to be quick. There was a road going through the woodlot that had another that intersected it, and within a hundred yards of the intersection a gobbler was roosting and had claimed the whole 160 as his own. To hold that much territory was impressive, so I decided to target that bird in hope that he was a dandy.

I set a hen decoy in a breeding squat in the intersection of the roads so that when the gobbler flew down and walked into the road he could see the hen from either road and walk right into my lap. I was ten yards from the decoy and ten feet off the road which is much closer than I like to be only because the vegetation along the road edge was thick enough to block my vision if I was farther away. I chalked my box, buffed my slate and striker, and slipped my mouth yelper like a communion wafer on top of my tongue after pressing the water from between the reeds with my lips. The woods started getting loud with bird calls and frog peeps when the tom gobbled ahead of me in the cedars that lined the road. The road in front of me intersected the road that came from behind and to my left at right angles and the bird was in the quadrant of woods in front of me. My guess was that he would pitch down, walk to the road to my left, and walk down it to the hen at ten o’clock to my position. I was feeling pretty good about my chances when a hen started calling from her roost down the road to my right and was answering my tom.

I use the box to let the gobbler know a hen was closer and hoped that he would see the decoy and step up to breed her. He gobbled strong back at me and the hen started getting upset and expressed her anger by cutting at me when I scraped a few yelps off of the box. I set the box down and got my gun on my knee and pointed in the direction of the decoy to my left and stretched six rising yelps off the mouth yelper. The gobbler liked those sweet nothings and double gobbled before the hen picked up the pace. I yelped three more times and cutt at the hen in hopes of inviting her to a hair pulling when I heard two more gobblers farther in the hen’s direction but across the road and into a cedar swamp.

The next time I heard the gobbler was when his wings beat against the limbs of neighboring trees as he sailed to the floor of the woods. He started drumming and it sounded like he was right in front of me when he gobbled. If he walked to a road, it looked like he would be moving straight to me through the woods in front of me just across the road. I kept my gun pointed at the decoy and threw a few yelps to the left of my gun and up the road to the decoy when I heard a gobble from my right.

My body orientation was perpendicular to the road in front of me and my gun was pointed to my left and quite comfortable for a right handed gunner. I had the butt tucked in and my cheek mounted looking in the direction of the decoy when I caught movement from my right. When I cut my eyes to my right I saw two gobblers walking in on the road ten feet in front of me. I was pinned down but good because their path would take them in front of my barrel; I only had to make a shot with a full choke at twenty feet when the time came. I had a few narrow seconds to plan the shot when I glanced at the legs of the toms and saw the length of the spurs of the bird bringing up the rear of the two.

At this stage of my turkey hunting hobby I had thirty-five years in the books and I thought I had seen and done all there was to do and make all of the mistakes a hunter can make but I was quite unprepared for what my glance at those hooks set off in my brain. One time in my hunting twenty years before this story I had the pleasure of handling the legs of a turkey that had solid black spurs that were just shy of two inches long, so I knew what such a sight was. I had described this sight to others over the years and now that I was witnessing this sight again I was enjoying my chances of hauling such a bird home in the bed of my truck. My luck continued as the first bird saw the decoy and went into a half strut at the same time that the big bird stopped and stretched to get a better look. It was early, but the light pipes on my gun were lined up and read green-red-green with the gobbler’s head on top of the red when I pulled the trigger.

Years later Long Tom was thinking about buying a Beretta Extrema as a combo duck and turkey gun and had the good fortune of sharing those thoughts with me before he spent the money he had saved for the purchase. I told him he needed a gun safe worse than a new gun, and asked him why he thought he needed such a new toy. He responded with the logic of all true duck hunters that a third shot was mighty handy to correct a bad lead or dispatch a swimming bird. I thought about Click again, relegated to the rear of the safe so I didn’t have to handle him when I dug out the gun of the day. I loved the way it fit me and thogugh I had killed a nice pair of gobblers with it that wasn’t enough to balance its shortcomings. I told Long Tom that if he would pay to have it shipped to him that he could use it all he wanted provided he used the gun money to buy a safe to keep it in. I also asked Tom to sign a paper that deeded the gun to him should I kick before I asked for it back, and that asking for it back required a two week response. He gladly signed the paper and I put a copy into my safe.

Tom is pretty tool handy and my thoughts were that Beretta products are shipped in containers from Europe and require cosmoline treatments to keep the salty crossing from affecting their metal products. At my suggestion he took the gun apart and cleaned all of the parts of cosmoline and lubricated it like it ought to be. Two weeks after his cleaning of the gun he killed a double on Teal and his love of the gun has since surpassed mine. I see Click now and then in pictures featuring various game birds and Long Tom always wears that possum grin that friendly rivals wear when they know they are getting the best of the other. He pays careful attention to the maintenance of that gun and it functions flawlessly for him like a dog at hand. Secretly, as a friendly rival, I wish upon his possum grin that that old gun will fail him one day and instead of going bang it goes “Click.”

Great stories Two Pipes, you missed your calling.
Here is my pics if I can get them to post.

Still not quite enough foliage for me to use the 16. I used the 12.

Got him fired up again almost 9:00 across the hollow, he shut up about 9:30 . He
showed up 10 min. later, another 40 plus steps.

Griff

I got this all messed up as the internet explorer shut down on me.

This is the ammo. Federal Flitecontrol wad. 2 ozs. # 5 shot 3 in. The wad was laying about 4 ft. in front of him.
1300 Win. with a model 12 forearm modified to fit. 24 in slug bbl. that quit shooting accurate, sent to Briley, had a .665 Rhino screw in choke installed, it shoots great.

Griff

I got first blood this a.m. on my new MP-18 Baikal 20 and a homemade rivercane yelper. The bird is a rare subspecies of the Old Mossback subspecies and is tail less. Wink

He had a few tailfeathers but during a misplaced step during his flop, my boot pulled out the few he had. I did not shoot his butt off in the literal sense. I didn't realize he was sans fan until I got home. His equipment otherwise was decent. I made the yelper last week and noticed that birds would respond to it better than they would slate, box or diaphragm. I suspect this is because those calls are what most of the birds I've sat down with have heard a lot of this season. The rivercane has lower volume and softer yelps and clucks than other calls I use and it has reinforced the fact that a gobbler can hear better than I sometimes think. It takes about two minutes to put one together and the cane grows in a turkey woods near you. No other calls were used in the harming of this turkey.
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Member Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 1863 Location: Wisconsin

Way to go Gil! May I pretty please see a picture of that yelper? Reno

Here go, Reno.
The smaller portion fits inside the larger section about an inch. To snug it and prevent the 5 minute epoxy from running past the smaller section, I trim a piece of masking tape to make a strip about 1/8” wide and long enough to wrap around the end of the smaller cane so that it “snugs” fit when pushed in. After applying the five minute epoxy, I manipulate the call to make sure the bead of epoxy stays put where I want it. I have a quart of Minwax Spar Urethane from another project. I dip the call into the can, small side first and with 18 gauge wire wedged in the bottom end, dip the bigger section in. The wire is long enough to make a vertical support so that the spar urethane dries evenly. Dipping into the finish coats both inside and outside and no brushing is needed nor do fingers touch the wet areas of the call during the process. The lip stopper is a quarter inch faucet washer. Boot lace lanyard held in place with 18 gauge magnet wire. The smaller the diameter of the call, the softer and lower the volume. Dry and sandpaper the cane before assembling the call.
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Joined: 22 Jan 2015 Posts: 345

SO how does it work?

The tip is placed between the lips, usually off center line of lips and a rapid "kiss" is made by sucking in air. The hands are cupped on the other end as a sound chamber.
I returned to the scene of the poultricide today and found the feather pile and my boot removed more feathers than I realized. In addition to the smaller feathers, there were 11 full-sized tailfeathers. Heard three more birds in the general area and flat missed one at 25 steps. Stupid turkey hunter/idiot-at-large tricks at play.
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Joined: 28 Aug 2014 Posts: 924 Location: Eastern Tennessee

Gill, That looks like my back yard did last Sunday. My wife was not happy!

Joined: 12 Mar 2012 Posts: 684 Location: Ontario

Nice bird Gil! My season opens Monday morning. Can't wait.

Decided to start off this season using a Sterlingworth 16 gauge with very recently re-blued barrels. Last bird I got was with an A grade 12 so time to move to the sub gauge.

Can't wait. All this pics and stories have been driving me mad.

Member Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 1863 Location: Wisconsin

Gil, that bird looks a lot like an Osceola. Reno

James, good luck with the old Sterly. Today, temps will hit 90. Birds are starting to ramble as hens are now sitting. Gobbling activity is on the upswing. Gil

Glad I'm not alone in sinning! I took a bird last week with a 12 gauge (my Dad gifted me with it five years ago when he quit hunting, it was his waterfowl back-up gun). I've wanted to take a turkey with it since he gave it to me - this was my first with this shotgun. I'll be back out in another week to finish the season with my Browning Auto-5 in 16 gauge. OH

O.H.
Man, those are some nice hooks. Looks like a 1300 as well.

Griff