Sat last weekend in my pop-up blind all day on Saturday, but didn't see any turkeys. Had some fox squirrels harassing me, so Friday night I swapped out on of my broadhead tipped arrows for one with a field tip. One way or another, I was going to bring home some meat this weekend!
Got the blind set up and settled in for the day. Temp at daybreak was 21 degrees. Beautiful day. Nice and sunny with little wind, just a tad cool. A little after daylight I had a deer come in over on the right side of the blind, but I only had just the small window in front open, so I couldn't see what it was. The deer came in so far, but stopped and then went back the way it had come. I had the wind in my favor, so the only think I can figure is that it saw the blind and didn't like it. Oh well, I wasn't down there after deer anyway.
Before daylight I had swapped out the memory card in the camera and went through the pictures to get an idea when the turkeys were crossing through that flat. From the looks of it, around 3:30 - 4:30 PM was when they were coming through. On Friday though, they had come through at 12:30.
A little after 1 PM, I heard the turkeys coming down off the hill behind the blind. It sounded like there were quite a few of them by the amount of noise and the area it was spread out in. Just like the deer though, they came down so far and then stopped. It wasn't too long I heard them putting and they went off in the hollow off to the left of the blind.
What the crap!!! I thought turkeys weren't supposed to pay any attention to the little pop-up blinds? Apparently these turkeys weren't your average stupid birds, or they knew it was almost Thanksgiving one or the other. About 2:15 PM, I unzipped the window on the left side of the blind, got out my glass call, and did a series of loud kee-kee calls. Zipped the side of the blind back up and sat and waited, but I wouldn't have to wait long. In just a few minutes I heard the turkeys coming up the hill in front of me and off to the left. Got the Equinox up on the rest and was tucked back in the back of the blind, so that all the turkeys could see was just a black hole in the front of the blind.
Looked over beside the scope and could see 3 big gobblers making their way in, focussed on the blind. Looked 2 of them over in the scope and didn't really like their beards, so I moved over to the 3rd one. I had pictures of some that their beards looked to be 10-12" long and paintbrush thick. The last one I settled on looked pretty good so I looked at where he was. I had ranged the distance to a log that morning at 28 yards. He was standing just a little in front of it. Split the 20 yd crosshair and the 30 yd chevron in the scope, put it on him just a little to the right since he was quartering toward me, and squeezed it off. Saw the Luminock light up and then disappear.
At the shot, all hell broke loose! I leaned forward in the blind to look out and watch the turkey I had shot at to see where he went. There must have been 20 turkeys that were coming up that hill but hadn't gotten into my sight picture yet when I shot.
The turkey went about 15 yds and dropped. Looked at my watch and it was 2:23 PM.
After I got up to the bird, his beard had a little "ground shrink".
It wasn't quite as thick as I thought that it had been. Totaled though, the beard was 10 1/2" long, spurs were 1 1/4", and he was 20+ lbs (didn't weigh him). I hit the top part of the turkey's left breast going in, cut the heart almost in half, and the arrow exited just to the right of the tail in the back of the thigh.I'm tickled to death with the thing! This is the first one I've gotten with the crossbow, but it won't be the last! I've still got 3 more fall turkey tags that I can fill. The "bad" thing though is that this is the only gobbler I can get. The others have to be hens, or have a beard less than 3" long.
Guess what I'm going to be doing during the Thanksgiving vacation?
and Great story, thanks for shareing. 
At least with the broadheads, the bloodshot areas are cleaning up really well and the blood is washing right off.