Springtime Blues

So this weather is officially ruining me.  In my neck of the woods, there’s no forecast for a let up in this ungodly rain until at least next Tuesday.

I might consider building an ark...finding two of every animal would probably be easy, with the exception of any damn wild turkeys, because since my encounter just over a week ago it appears that they have all migrated to sunnier (and drier) climes.  I’m not even seeing hens, and I seem to be a hen-calling expert for God’s sake.

Yep, drizzle and thundershowers off an on all the way through the Victoria Day long weekend=hard slogging for those hunting wild turkeys.  Of course this may all change, but it probably won’t.

Everyone I know is telling me not to put too much stock in the forecasts because “no one can really predict the weather”…ohhhh, I beg to disagree.  When it comes to predicting the kind of weather that makes turkey hunting a baffling ordeal, these weathermen (or women, I’m an equal opportunist in the blame game) have my number.  Sure they’re wrong all the time when I need a warm sunny evening for a soccer match, or if I need rain to help my lawn grow, but as soon as I want calm, dry, semi-mild days for turkey hunting their meteorological instincts miraculously become bang-on and all they see in their crystal balls and Doppler radars is rain, and wind, and more rain, and maybe some lightning to really make it interesting for those of us carrying around 28 inch steel gun-barrels.

Bastards.

And this is the best damn time for turkey hunting!!  Arrrgh!  The leaves are on just enough to help with hiding a hunter, but not quite dense enough to conceal the movement of an approaching turkey.  The weather is mild enough to make hunting with just shirtsleeves and vest comfortable, but not so hot and sticky that the blackflies and mosquitoes reign hell on the unsuspecting turkey hunter reclined against a tree. Best of all, a lot of hens have been bred and toms are out trolling for available jennies…at least the gobblers not fully educated by this point are out trolling.

And I here I sit in my dimly lit basement, playing my harmonicas and tapping listlessly away at a keyboard amidst a pile of turkey-hunting gear, pining to hit the woods but imprisoned by precipitation.  I can hear you hard-core guys (or at least more hard-core than I) scoffing at me now…

“Suck it up princess, a little rain never hurt anyone” they’ll say.  Others will crack out this gem…”You can’t shoot a turkey if you’re sitting on your couch” or my favourite “Turkeys don’t mind the rain, they’ll move around anyways.”

All this may be true…in fact I’m sure it is, but it is the crippling combination of cold, wind, and precipitation that has made this last week (and by the looks of things, next week) into such a hellish experience. 

If a turkey could hear me calling to him over the howling wind and driving rain, I certainly could not hear him gobbling back.  If a bird were out wandering in this morass of unpleasantness, I’d be so dang soaked and wind-bitten by the time I stumbled across him (again, because hearing a bird gobbling is a near-impossibility right now) that I’d be hard pressed to hold my gun level, what with my uncontrollable shivering.  And worst of all, after every hunt I have to take my 870 apart (admittedly still a better prospect than disassembling an autoloader) and dry/clean/lubricate the whole darn thing and then put it all back together…as I’ve said before I’m not what anyone would dub “mechanically-inclined” so this is really a comedy of errors for me…except a comedy is funny; this just makes me borderline suicidal.  For this reason, this last one is not an experience I relish doing more than two or three times a year…I’ve already done it four times this turkey season.  Bah.

Okay, I’m done complaining.  The weather has been bad, but I can’t control that.  Unless I can find a suitable one off day, I’ve made peace with being holed up in my basement watching turkey hunting videos…fair enough Mother Nature, fair enough.

The darkest hour is just before dawn, so they say so here’s hoping that this uhh…fecal…weather is just a blip and that it moves on before expected.  Maybe I’m just building up good karma in my cosmic ledger and I’ll be repaid with being able to shoot some kind of mutant 25lb tom turkey with four beards and 2-inch spurs on the last minute of the 2011 season.

That’s pretty unlikely, but hope is all I’ve got…hope and the unfortunate mental illness that is being an addicted turkey hunter.