3:15am came far earlier than I had anticipated, but I was
galvanized to put in a hard last shift before flying out that night. I was feeling the pressure to show my friend
Chris that I actually knew how to hunt turkeys, and I believe (although he
didn’t show it) that Chris was feeling the pressure to put a gobbler in front
of my gun barrel.
We made the trailhead in a chilly and dim pre-dawn,
previously determined to make it to a clearing for an initial set up on birds
that we hoped were roosted nearby. We
began to make the uphill walk to the clearing, and after 300 yards or so, I
stopped and got out my barred owl call.
I heard a distant coyote bark just before I made a call, and then, as my
owl call broke the still dawn air, I heard the sound that I had been hoping for. A tom gobbled, and he was inside 100
yards. I turned to Chris and gestured to
him that a bird was gobbling, but he thought I was referring to the
coyote. I was shocked that he hadn’t
heard what I had. I owled again, and
nothing responded. Chris was ready to
move on, and I was questioning my own sanity…I was absolutely positive that I
had heard a gobbling turkey.
The bird gobbled again on his own, and this time I was sure
Chris heard it. His eyes told me so.
I’m pretty sure I was grinning like an idiot while we
exchanged hand signals outlining where we wanted to set up on the bird. We resolved to move quietly back down the
trail to a small clearing that had a convergence of game trails on it, where we
set out my two Zink Avian X hens and got ourselves situated under some broomed
out Douglas fir trees. It had been a nightmare
deflating, rolling, and packing around the decoys, but I was quite pleased to
have them at that very moment. Within
minutes of setting the decoys out, I saw a light frost developing on their
backs. In the excitement of a gobbler
sounding off from the roost, I had not noticed that the air temperature was
hovering in the mid-single digits.
The bird gobbled steadily as we set up, and after we were
comfortable I did some light calling on my box call. The bird hammered back and then really
ratcheted up his gobbling. I didn’t have
any trouble keeping tabs on him when he flew down, and slowly but steadily he
began to make his way down towards our position. Two game trails that I could see converged on
the clearing about twenty yards from my position, and as the gobbling came
closer I could picture the bird coming down the left side trail, and twice I
could hear him walking on the other side of a small ridge. He moved back and forth, concealed by the
ridge, gobbling often. I moved slightly
to get my gun in position, hopeful that by the time he could see the decoys, I
could see him.
If he cleared the trail, he would be in range for certain.
I held the gun steady for what seemed like an eternity, and
since the gobbler didn’t own a watch and presumably didn’t care about my
aching, trembling arms and increasingly frozen fingertips, he made arduously
slow progress towards our set up.
Then I heard a deer snorting behind me. Close by.
Think inside of twenty steps. I
turned my head to see a doe whitetail standing in our scent column, blowing an
alert over and over again. This went on
for a minute or so, and the next time the turkey gobbled, he was farther
away…then further still. I lowered my
870 and yelped excitedly on my pot call, throwing in some aggressive cutting.
The next gobble was closer but more to my right. I shifted slightly while the bird gobbled
again and again, seemingly hung up out of sight behind that blasted ridge. I still had not laid eyes on him, but I was
beginning to get a feel that this was as cagey a public-land bird as I’d hunted
anywhere in Ontario. He gobbled hard and
kept making a racket, and keeping an ear on him wasn’t tough, but soon my worst
fear was fulfilled.
I heard a hen yelping near to our setup, and then I heard
his gobbling change. I was certain that
she was taking him away. Over and over
he gobbled, each time further up the hill from where he had been just moments
before. Then he went silent. He had found his hen, and gobbling just
wasn’t something he was interested in doing any more. My heart sank, and I looked over to
Chris. We nodded to one another before
slowly gathering the decoys and strategizing our next steps.
We decided to make a circle around ahead of the birds, and
we dropped into a gully off the trail so we could move unseen past the
birds. After moving a few hundred yards
back up the trail, I blew a crow call and the turkey let one solitary gobble
slip out. He was perpendicular to our
position, across the trail, and well inside of forty yards. We decided that the best move was to have me
crawl up onto the trail side, and hopefully yelp the bird into range with a
mouth call. I silently shed my vest,
decoy, and coat before beginning a slow, ten yard belly-crawl up onto the edge
of the road. I poked my head around a
stump and saw a turkey fifteen steps from me.
It was the hen and she was oblivious to my presence. I purred and yelped aggressively and she cut
me off every time. I was hoping she
would come onto the road and drag the gobbler behind her. Instead she headed back further up the hill
and into the woods, yelping and complaining all the way. I still had not seen the gobbler, and in the
whole conversation I’d had with the hen he had not gobbled once. I was
beginning to fear that he had left the area.
I reverse belly-crawled back down into the gully, and we
planned our next move…again. I was
certain the gobbler had made for the hills, and I was thinking of making a very
large loop to a spot over a mile away.
Chris had similar ideas but his range was more limited; he was pitching
a spot just over a few hundred yards ahead where the pine ridge that the bird
had been hunkering in transitioned into a more open, meadow-like area. He knew the lay of the land and I would have
been a fool to second-guess him.
I’ve never moved so quietly and rapidly as I did to make the
spot Chris had in mind, and we once again set out the decoys. We resolved not to call or make a sound for
at least twenty minutes, and for that whole time I was cursing the turkey
hunting gods. I cursed them for sending
the deer by to snort at me, I cursed them for the wily old hen that had led
that gobbler astray, and I even cursed them for providing the gobbler in the
first place. After all, my hopes had
been raised, only to be dashed cruelly.
It had been a hard three days of hunting and my feet hurt, which I also
blamed on the turkey hunting gods. I had
temporarily forgotten about the beautiful scenery, the abundance of wild game,
and the good times spent in the woods, the truck, and the kitchen with a great
friend. But getting beaten by a turkey
does that to a man.
Almost in disinterested fashion, I yelped plainly on my pot
call after twenty minutes of abject silence.
Before I finished the sequence a hammered gobble cut me off. The game was back on and the gobbler was in
front of me inside of sixty yards.
I shouldered my shotgun again, and within seconds I saw the
heads of two turkeys pass quickly through an opening forty yards to my
right. I turned ever so slightly to get
the gun downrange on them, while the bird gobbled again unprovoked. I could see the broad tail fan of a bird that
went in and out of strut, and the bright red head of the turkey began to
approach one of my fake hens. I saw the
bird gobble again and I began to search with my eyes for an opening that would
allow me to slide in a shot.
Another fir tree obscured the gobbler from my sightline, but
it also meant that he could not see me. Eventually,
I could see the bird’s fire-engine red head moving out from either side of the
tree as he approached my decoy, and I kept the front sight on his throat as he
closed the gap. Finally, at thirty
steps, and with both his head, and his tail up in half-strut, I could restrain
myself no longer. My shotgun barked, and
the bird dropped out of sight. I stood
up and made a run to an open spot (although in truth, I don’t really remember
my feet touching the ground) and I saw a turkey sprinting off before getting up
and flying back into the pines from whence the birds had appeared.
Had I missed?!
About to swear out loud at my incompetence, I looked to my
right, and there in a depression next to the tree was the still, lifeless shape
of a Merriam’s gobbler. From my seated
position I never would have seen him fall.
“Did you get him?!” was the cry from where Chris was sitting. Apparently he couldn’t see the downed bird
either.
“He’s down!” was all I could shout back. I let out a whoop of joy and Chris came
running over for high fives and slaps on the back. I wonder if he felt his feet touch the ground
either.
 |
| Seemed like the most appropriate time to take a selfie. |
He was not a typical bird, and at first I thought he was a
jake. He barely had spurs at all (only
1/8 of an inch on each leg) and his beard was just a 3-inch stub, but he had a
full, even tail fan with the tawny, pale signature feathers of a Merriam’s
gobbler. On closer inspection, the beard
was rotted and frayed at the end, and my suspicion was that it had frozen or
otherwise been broken off (a sentiment echoed by all my turkey hunting brethren
when they saw it). But I wasn’t on that
trip to shoot a monster longbeard, or a sharp-spurred limbhanger. I was there to take on a Merriam’s gobbler on
his own turf, and with the help of my friend, I had succeeded. I pride myself on being eloquent and
articulate, but in those moments (and to be fair even still, a whole month
later) I didn’t have adequate words to describe the feelings. I was exhausted, elated, and on the brink of
crying tears of joy. This was a bird I’d
wanted to hunt for a long time, and the only other subspecies of wild turkey
other than Eastern that lives in the cavernous expanse of wilderness that makes
up Canada. I could say now that I’d
achieved a turkey hunting goal, and that Chris and I had done it with our hodgepodge
mix of local savvy, woodsmanship, and turkey hunting experience respectively.
 |
| The only shotgun I've ever owned, with the only Merriam's I've ever shot |
 |
| Sweet Relief |
There was nothing that could break the good vibes that
afternoon.
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