My good friend Gerry Glass invited me to hunt his farm in Illinois in 2009 and I called this monster Eastern Tom in for Gerry.
We had roosted the bird the evening before but was not able to pin point his exact location. He was roosted in the back of a point of timber where it tied into a large block of woods. With a pasture on both sides of the point we had a 50/50 shot at which side he would pitch to.
Well, we picked the wrong side and he landed in the pasture on the other side of the point from us. The wind was blowing 20-25 mph so calling was almost useless. I quickly made a plan to go after the bird as I knew we were not going to get him to come back from the place he just flew away from even if he could hear us.
We used the lay of the land to get ahead of him and set up again. we did a little calling and in just a minute he came strutting around the base of the hill. Gerry rolled him up with a load of Winchester #6 from my Remington 11-87. It was quite a long shot at 52 yds. but Gerry has always been a lucky hunter.
The Bird was a whopper at about 23 pounds, had 1 1/4" spurs and a 10 1/2' beard. He was a true trophy.
I did a fan mount for him and added the spurs along side the beard. It finished out really nice.
This is a mount that most anyone should be able to handle himself with just some minor tools and know how. I will be putting together a post with a step by step process for preparing the fan. This method is one of the easiest I know of you can have a fan prepped and ready for drying in about 20 minutes.
Good Huntin',
Larry S.
Here are a couple mounting kits if you don't want to go thru the trouble of making your own. The less expensive one is a wood look a like.
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