Tony Farinella Jr. summed up spring turkey hunting when he emailed, “Nothing like the spring woods.”

“Birds were very vocal opening day of second season,” he emailed from Jo Daviess County. “Saw a nice tom enter a hayfield at 6:30 a.m. in full strut at about 120 yards. Watched him for over 30 minutes. Had two groups of hens walk towards him, but they turned at about 40 yards and kept feeding. I finally was able to get a shot.”

His tom weighed 24.5 pounds and had a 12-inch beard and 1-inch spurs.

Meanwhile, on the next ridge, his buddy Adam Funk bagged a 20-pound tom with a 10.5-inch beard at 6:13 a.m.

TOTW, the celebration of hunting for wild turkeys around Illinois outdoors and their stories (the stories matter as this one shows), runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times as warranted.

To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), X (@BowmanOutside ), Instagram (@BowmanOutside ) or Bluesky (@BowmanOutside.bsky.social).