Five-bearded gobbler falls to Carolina hunter

Hunters heard no gobbles at first light

Marcus Allen killed a big five-bearded gobbler on Easter Sunday. He was hunting with a friend in Northampton County on a day that started off as a dud but ended with a bang, literally.

Allen, who lives in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. said they started the morning off hitting a crow call on the approximately 500-yard walk to a swampy area they knew some turkeys were roosting. But all they heard was silence in return.

“We didn’t have any turkeys gobble all morning. We hunted down there for about an hour. Then we changed spots up a little bit and went up to a field. We finally heard one gobble about 300 yards away, and it only gobbled once,” he said.

After almost two more hours of nothing, Allen and his friend decided to call it a day. They were anticipating a typical early-morning hunt where a bird gobbles on the roost, flies down, and charges right to your decoys. So they were feeling pretty down at the day’s results.

But all that changed as they headed out.

Slow morning turns quickly into exciting hunt

“On the way out, we were driving down the path, and about 300 yards away was a tom all blown up with two or three hens around it. They were in the middle of the path we were driving on,” said Allen.

The hunt was back on. The two hunters eased out of the vehicle and into the woods, being careful not to spook the turkeys. They headed to a swamp line, set out a hen decoy, and called.

“We called two or three times and he gobbled. It wasn’t even ten minutes later, the turkey came running in. We saw him at about 75 yards out and he gobbled another time or two. He seemed to respond to the decoy, so we quit calling then and waited on him to get into shooting range,” he said.

Once the turkey was about 35 yards away, Allen pulled the trigger on his Mossberg. The disappointment he’d felt less than an hour earlier had turned completely around. But it got even better once he saw the bird up close and noticed it had five beards.

The five-bearded gobbler weighed almost 25 pounds, and the spurs measured 1-inch. The longest beard taped out at 11 inches. The other beards measured 9 inches, 7.5 inches, 7 inches, and 6.5 inches, for a total of 41 inches.