I sat in my truck, surrounded by morning darkness, sipping coffee from a stainless Gander Mountain travel mug. At the same time, one eye remained focused in my truck’s side mirror for any hint of the yellow low beams signaling my hunting partner’s arrival. I know we weren’t scheduled to meet at “the woods”--where I’ve hunted since I was old enough to carry a gun--until 4:00 a.m., but the idea of yesterday’s just-out-of-range gobblers roused me well before the alarm clock I had set for 3:15 a.m. So I ended up there, huddled in the cloth seat of my little green Chevy with the engine off, a cool breeze slipping through a crack in the window and carrying with it the silence of a yet un-woken forest.
When the familiar dance of headlights tangoed on the tree alongside my parking spot, I slid out of my truck and into the fully-loaded camo waist pack in which I had carefully stashed my array of turkey calls, license, and extra shells. Ted, a former teacher, now good friend and unflagging hunting buddy, emerged from his truck more alert than I. He stood nearly invisible in full Realtree garb, armed with our trio of decoys, a video camera, and enough camouflage burlap for a small emergency. Having bagged his twenty-pound tom last week, I was lucky enough to have my own established personal caller guiding me for the remainder of the weak long season.
As I popped the first shell into my still-unproven Remington 12-gauge with the familiar rhythmic metallic shlunk, Ted’s “mornin’, mornin’” opened the conversation of our second day of my second and still turkey-less season. Few words were spoken as we started for the ridge near the lofty treetops where the turkey troop we had been faithfully scouting had been roosting for the past several weeks. With a loaded shotgun on my shoulder and the sound of Ted’s footsteps beside me in the darkness, I ran through the routine which we’ve followed, moderately successfully, for the previous few hunts this season. We discovered the turkey’s roosting area along what we call “the bluff”--two gentle limestone-laden ridges leading down to a small water hole in a hollow riverbed. Since then, we’d been setting up our decoys as close to the roost trees as stalking allowed, which paid off for Ted. On the fourth day of his five-day week of relentlessly chasing turkeys before school in the morning, a group of four fully mature toms--with trophy-size beards dragging the ground--dropped down from the roost about 200-yards from where we had set up camp behind our decoys. With a little soft yelping, the toms forgot about their usual hens and headed our way to discover what must have sounded like a small flock of new, though somewhat tentative hens. I was busy imitating the birds by softly grating the wooden surfaces of my box call while Ted bounced soft tree calls and purrs from his well-worn piece of slate. In any case, the four big boys were all but pounding down the forest to come straight into our lovely brown Styrofoam hens, which appeared satisfied with the lone foam jake decoy with which we had them lovingly paired. Ted got his gun on his knee with his back planted solidly against a tree, watching them come in as I continued gently coaxing. Within ten minutes, he had picked out the biggest of the group, shot him, and we were on our way back to the trucks, a beautiful 20-pound bird with a 10-inch beard dangling over Ted’s shoulder. This sounded simple enough, I thought. If the theory worked then, why not now, barely a week later?
“Whaddya think today,” I mumbled to Ted as we reached the end of the trail, hoping that he’d have a fresh idea for today’s hunt.
“Why don’t we head down ‘round the same spot I got mine . . . but lets try to stay up a ‘lil higher this time so we don’t spook ‘em,” Ted replied. “I think they’re getting’ suspicious . . . and besides, we seem to have been disturbing their strutting patterns” he said, referring to the previous two days in which we spooked the roosted toms into flying clear across to other side of the bluff.
It seems our sneak attack had not been quite as sneaky as we first hoped, and the toms had been changing their daily routine of parading for their less-colorful female counterparts. But maybe, just maybe, it would be worth a shot to stay further back and set up on the ridge above the strutting area, rather than barging in on dozing birds.
“Sounds like a plan,” I answered, hoping that we could get one in range this particularly cold May morning. Before beginning our prowl along the field’s edge and down to the first level of the bluff where my ultimate goal was still asleep in one of the treetops, I followed Ted’s lead and slipped the camo face mask over my head. Usually annoyed by the spandex-like covering for my too-white-for-the-woods face, I found myself grateful for the extra bit of warmth it provided. In this case, a hunter’s boot sole hitting the forest floor marks a return to a sort of primitive human form: speech patterns change from the usual intellectual dialogue to a series of sentence fragments, slang, and eye nods where the more you smell and look like dirt and trees, the better your odds of getting lucky. With that final camouflaging touch, only the whites of our eyes remained as we crept into tom’s bedroom through the “back door.”
I led the way to our chosen path down the stony bluff, followed by the shadow of a hunter. Moving cautiously, eyes constantly scanning the trees for roosted turkeys, we felt out our footholds on the rocks and earth down the 15-feet to our planned area. We both caught sight of several large dark masses of Thanksgiving’s celebrated bird in the basswoods, ironwoods, and maples around us. Once descended into the sacred zone, Ted took the trio of decoys, poked them into the ground on their single plastic leg, and snuck over to me. We proceeded to seek out a comfortable spot from which to call and wait, for we both knew that times of working in one location often topped four hours. Considering the amount of required silent sitting, choosing a spot that is not only well hidden, but also free of rocks, sticks, or other hazards to a hunter’s backside--and line of sight--must be conscientiously avoided. Ted discovered the perfect hideout, and so we ended up sitting slightly above and offset from our decoys, with a backrest of damp limestone, Ted with his array of calls and video cam handy, me with my 12-gauge locked, loaded, and resting on nervous knee.
Forty-five minutes later found us in the same position--just a little more chilled--and facing the first hint of sunlight leaving halos glowing around trees. With that, the few turkeys early to rise began calmly “cooing,” admitting the day and providing a wake-up call for fellow birds. Ted, fluent in the dialect of this national bird species, answered with a few light scratches and I followed suit several minutes later with some gentle clucks from my mini-arsenal of noisemakers. Silence ensued, so we waited and tried again in succession until we received the much anticipated response: the deep thunder of gobbling male turkeys cracking the silence of a waking wood, the bass voices catching me off-guard and making me shift my gun slightly as if I expected a turkey to pop up suddenly in front of me like a carnival amusement toy.
Our reciprocal communication continued for nearly the next hour, with Ted and I glancing at each other, smiling through face masks, trying to contain our laughter and childlike excitement at the proximity of so many gobbling wild birds. Shortly thereafter, a few of the jakes--noted by their physically smaller size in the tree and higher-pitched voice like that of a teenaged boy--began descending from positions to the left of us, sounding more like a herd of elephants being dumbo-dropped through the trees than graceful birds. Sitting amidst the snapping of branches, we thought we’d be tagging one that knocked itself out on the way down instead of leading a hunt. But, much to our delight, the first hens and jakes hit their earthen landing pad safely on the opposite side of the stream. This was a plus for us, knowing from past experience that jakes have the curiosity of a five-year-old child and will nearly sit in the lap of an unsuspecting hunter before recognizing the danger and then alerting the entire forest to the hunter’s position. Luckily, the mature toms we were patiently courting began taking note of the location of their harem, including our decoys--and us. At last, the men-turkeys began to drop down, single file, with the same grace as their younger male and female counterparts.
We both had our eyes directed on the two largest toms, one situated just to Ted’s left, the other to my right. The bird on the left descended first, but jaded our lovely plastic hens only to join the “real” hens on the opposite side of the creek bed. One chance remained for the big guy to come to my side, and that he did—just not quite where I had hoped. But, no one can predict the pastoral twists and turns hidden inside Mother Nature’s camouflaged sleeve.
With a great springing launch from the uppermost bough of the old maple tree, the turkey I was dead-set on hunting landed to the farthest possible side of his strutting area, about 150-yards from our seated position. In the tightly-choked turkey hunting world, he may as well have been a mile away, yet my hope did not flag. Simply having the opportunity to be placed in such a scenario--to witness a waking woods and all that it contains--is greater than the majority of society will ever appreciate.
Another hang-up soon presented itself to this young hunter. From about 300-yards beyond tom’s position, a small group of hens, presumably his daily harem for the breeding season, began to call him determinedly. Torn between his usual women and these new mysterious loves beckoning his attention, the tom remained in-between the two, gloriously spreading the fan of his tail feathers, chest proudly puffed out and paraded in full strut, enticing the women to come to him. His “real” hens were stubborn old women and thus not ready to move, and our decoys of course, weren’t exactly able to hobble over to him on their stakes. The bold tom continued pacing back and forth for the next hour, stuck between two groups, each apparently as stubborn as the other. The phrase “Please, please, please, come this way” echoed through my head like a prayer for the better part of that long hour.
By this time, I had emptied out my entire pack of calls so that I was sitting amidst a miniature Cabela’s store: box calls, slate calls, aluminum friction calls, a shiny new Super Snuff Can tube, gloves, and knife all within reach. Despite the gadgets and technology, all the turkey would do is move 20-feet closer to where there rested a most inconveniently fallen log, and then strut back and forth repeatedly. At first, the scene was intriguing to watch—after all, how many people can say they sat motionless in the woods and observed the patterns of a wily, wild animal. However, after Ted the amateur photographer had shakily taped much of the strut show, we decided that something—anything--had to happen soon, otherwise this indecisive turkey would wear a hole in the ground halfway to China with the ritual wing-dragging in the dirt.
Though we were sure that the routine was certain to end soon, the strut-athon continued, with me getting continually colder and more edgy by the minute. I knew that Ted was feeling pretty dejected too. As a rookie hunter, I was so itching to shoot that I was ready to pop off a round with my shotgun—choked for a roughly 40-yard max range--at the bird driving me crazy nearly two football fields away, until Ted’s look reminded me of the utter absurdity of such an idea. Since it was about 7:00 a.m. and we hadn’t made any progress from this location, I decided the waiting must end. I turned to Ted, whose masked facial expressions suggested an edging feeling of disgust at our apparent failure. Knowing how stupid it is to attempt to sneak up on a bird with the hearing ten times that of our own and a line of sight extending nearly 300-degrees, I proposed my plan to Ted.
“How ‘bout if I try to sneak out of here and get around behind ‘em?” I whispered this as a question, though fully intending to act on the seemingly brilliant idea anyway, given the fact that I could no longer feel my legs.
“Might as well,” came the muffled response. I’m sure he was actually rejoicing inside that I had made a decision on my own, and a decision to get us moving from this limestone la-z-boy.
His shot back words of hunterly advice: “Just move slow…and if you scare him, we’ll move on.”
I oh-so-quietly demanded of Ted as I gathered a few pieces of necessary stuff without moving: “keep callin’ to him…keep his attention on you.”
And he responded with an “ok…good luck” and a hunter’s wink.
With that final bit of encouragement, I attempted to awaken legs stiff from the cold and cramped from remaining in the same position for the past three hours where I had melded as one into the dirt. I slowly slid snake-like and backwards up the rest of the bluff behind me, all the while keeping an attentive eye on the bird, who seemed oblivious to my movements. I left Ted behind with all of my calls except one, which I had slipped into the cargo pocket of my camo pants. I focused all my remaining attention on carrying the gun and safely placing my feet, for a cracking stick or displaced stone would certainly send the woods aflutter. As my boot soles touched softly on the grassy field, blazing their own trail, my heart pounded harder as I neared what should be the bird’s location. My insides knotted up in my throat and I feared that the drumming of my heart would alert the quarry to my position. I crept through that lanky grass as though my life depended upon each step. Looking down at my feet, I imagined myself as an ancient warrior moving through the true heart of wilderness in search of food and honor. I was sure that I would find both as this newly recognized connection with my lost hunter-self replaced the me of jeans and sweaters sitting in a classroom somewhere miles away. That socially correct life seemed drained of all meaning as I snuck up on another way of life unbeknownst to all who have not tread the path.
After my brief pause to contemplate the philosophy of life and hunting, I pressed onward as the silent killer in a bad B-movie. When I deduced that I should be about even up with my prey, I turn directly left and crouch-walked toward the edge of the bluff so that I could get a view of the bird that I hoped was still below. Only Ted and tom knew what I was sneaking up to, and I had lost contact with both of them. For those several beautiful moments, I was caught alone, somewhere between the human and natural world. For just a fleeting second, I was Emerson’s transparent eyeball, separated from myself, yet retaining an absolute vision of all that is important in life. Cautiously still, I crept nearer the bluff’s edge to where it descended 15-rocky feet to the turkey’s morning ground below. From my crouched position, 12-gauge in hand, I peered through my camo mask over the precipice to where I heard light leaf-crunchings and—to my great relief and utter excitement—soft, contented clucking from the beak of my feathered prey.
At first, I remained planted as still as the tree beside me, in awe at my proximity to this wild bird who had likely never laid eyes on a human. From my vantage point, however, all that was visible was the top of his fanned tail feathers in all their shimmering morning glory and occasionally, a glimpse of his oddly-bright white and blue wrinkled head. I was snapped out of my momentary reverie by the two other turkeys that had managed to sneak in to join big tom. I knew if I was to take a shot, the situation probably wouldn’t improve, though it would be a rather difficult sight through some brush, especially given the fact that the vibrant head appeared only momentarily as it wove in and out between brush and rocks. Besides, I knew that any sudden movement of my quickly tightening muscles would send the trio of birds into the sky with a flurry of feathers.
I gently eased around the tree’s girth, my head and back tightly against the thick tree, until my left shoulder pointed in the direction of my target. With bare hands now gripping the icy metal of the gun, I squeezed the barrel until my hands were white with adrenaline and cold, trying to keep from shaking with excitement. Raising the gun to my shoulder in a terribly slow, fluid motion that lasted for only a moment but seemed a lifetime, I rested my camouflaged face against the stock and felt the cool penetrating through the mask to my quickly reddening cheek. Tightly closing my left eye, I stared down the barrel and waited for the old turkey’s head to come into view. My breath came in ragged gasps, which I struggled to silence. When the head finally popped up again and remained for a few seconds, I fit the gun’s neon sights into one another with my right eye, held my breath, and squeezed the trigger. With a wallop that nearly sent me aback, the gun thundered its charge at the bird, and simultaneously, a frenzy of feathers floated on the air. In the mass of confusion, one bird took to the air on a low line toward where Ted was still patiently waiting and, as I scrambled down the rocks and dirt to inspect the scene, another lifted its heavy body off the ground and was gone. My heart fell as I saw this, for I feared that I had somehow missed my target, or worse yet, that I had wounded it. My greatest fear as a hunter was to hit and not kill an animal, for such an act would wound the intangible contract of honor existing between predator and prey. Barely able to catch my breath now from the excitement of the hunt, I clamored down the rocks, still clutching my gun. A sigh of great relief and then elation washed over me as I stood on the second level of the bluff—right where the turkey had been parading all morning—knowing that this hunt had been a success.
It had been a success not merely because my little yellow DNR tag was wrapped around a scaly leg, but because I had been initiated in the great art of natural reverie and perfection. I carefully knelt over the limp body of the turkey, now resting under the fallen tree that had been the barrier between the two of us earlier in the morning. As I hefted his weight over my shoulder, Ted came over with a large, telling grin on his face, for he too knew the feeling of induction into true hunting. We slapped hands like athletes victorious in the big game, yet we both understood something greater. Hunting is not a sport. Neither the animal nor the hunt can be reduced to the label of “game.” It is all much more. Sure, the idea of killing that which you have bonded within a moment of natural beauty sounds awfully morbid, but perhaps Keats explained a bit of this hunterly fascination when he gazed at a Grecian urn. It is that single moment before the kill when hunter faces hunted in a moment of understanding and perfect appreciation, caught between the worlds of living and dead, and outside the self that makes each day special and gives new meaning and appreciation to life.
Ted and I walked out of the woods that day with more than a turkey. We left with an unbreakable bond between two hunters who have shared some sacred secret that the rest of the world is oblivious to, for we alone witnessed the gobbles, cackles, and beauty of the nature’s morning birth on that chilly May day. At the registration station later that afternoon, we learned that my turkey weighed 26-pounds and had three beards, instead of the usual single beard. This was a remarkable first kill for a reverent turkey hunter. Newspaper headlines in the local Sports Section the next morning noted the biggest turkey taken in the area this season as a 26-lb. triple-bearded wonder taken by a 20-year-old-female hunter. But the newspaper only knew part of the story.
