Social distancing Oceaola!

[GhostBear]

Good morning my Jersey homies! With all this social distancing, I decided to go and see if I could find and "distance" a turkey! And it worked!, I traded some boat work to a guy in exchange for an Oceaola turkey hunt on 6,000 a.c. of private land near Naples, and it paid off big time, we had birds gobbling off the roost at first light, but they hened up right away, so we went field to field to see if we can get into some, and we did, we came to a field and saw 3 hens just feeding along when out came to beautiful long beards! Both looked to have 10 plus inch beards, but could not get them to move our way, so Jim and I went around to the end of the field where they where going to cut them off, one Tom broke off and came out way but just walked past us without even looking at us, the other bigger tom was strutting for the 3 hens out on the field, stalking is legal here, so I belly crawled over 300 yards to get closer, as I was I got to see him breed 2 of the 3 hens, but after all the crawling I never got closer than 60 yards before the hens took him out of the field. By now it was noon, on private land you can hunt all day, after lunch we where back at it, and by 2 p.m. we found a lonely tom and after a brief conversation, he was on the ground! My first Oceaola turkey and a good one! He sported a 9" beard with sharp 1" spurs, and tipping the scale at just under 18lbs.

[Shootstraight]

Sweet and congrats on a nice gobbler man! Who would ever thought there was some good hunting near Naples.

 

SS!

 

[Gobblengrunt]

Great job, beautiful bird!  I have to kill an  oceaola to complete my grand slam.  No traveling for me this year so i stick with easterns for now.  Love those dark wings!

[GhostBear]

Just now, Gobblengrunt said:

Great job, beautiful bird!  I have to kill an  oceaola to complete my grand slam.  No traveling for me this year so i stick with easterns for now.  Love those dark wings!

I need 3 more to complete mine! Lol, I'll get there some day. Lol

[GhostBear]

2 minutes ago, Shootstraight said:

Sweet and congrats on a nice gobbler man! Who would ever thought there was some good hunting near Naples.

 

SS!

 

This guy is living the friggin dream! He has exclusive hunting privlages to 6k ac! And we barely even scratched the surface! When I go back to keep my end of the deal and get his boat up and running after he's taking me fishing for peacock bass! I mean wow I get to scratch of another bucket lister!

[Tbryant]

Awesome bird. I had plans to hook up with friends this year to shoot my first Osceola before I graduated but that fell through. You deal with any snakes while out there? The cotton mouths were real thick up by me. 

[GhostBear]

1 hour ago, Tbryant said:

Awesome bird. I had plans to hook up with friends this year to shoot my first Osceola before I graduated but that fell through. You deal with any snakes while out there? The cotton mouths were real thick up by me. 

No snakes, as I was crawling after that tom I was worried about fire ants! Lol

[Rusty]

Very nice GB!!  

[Kype]

congrats

[gobblergetter]

Nice 

👍

[Fred Flintstone]

Nice Tom!!

[JimmyScags]

Nice Tom, congrats!

[JHbowhunter]

congrats Paul - that is pretty cool. 

[thefirstndsecond]

Awesome!

[Grassmans]

Congrats !!