Had to shoot a jake

I finally shot a turkey on my property last weekend but it was a real let-down for me. Instead of one of the big toms, I had to shoot a jake.

Last Saturday morning I was at my "blind" with my gun trying to see if one of those toms would come by close enough to get a shot. Just after sun rise I saw a lone jake coming down the trail towards me. From distance I could see that it walked kind of funny and had funny looking tail. As it got closer I could see that he was recently shot in the low/rear portion and his upper legs/thighs were messed up and had feathers missing from one side of the thigh and from tail. I was hoping he would go in different direction so I couldn't shoot it but he didn't and came right in front of my blind. I didn't want the bird to suffer so from less than 10 yards I put a load of #6 into his upper neck. He dropped and flopped for few minutes but it was dead.

I checked him out and his leg was not broken but a lot of that scale on the leg was removed. I think somebody shot him from too far and didn't hit the target correctly. He also had some damage to the skin on the left thigh but I didn't see any puncture marks on the flesh. I took his breast and it tasted fine. He had a 3 1/2" beard (wiskers?) and 2/3" spurs.

I'm hoping to get a final chance on a tom this Saturday morning. If one comes within 25 yards of me it's going down.