Based on the messages in my inbox and the stats on my blog profile, Get Out & Go Hunting has never been this popular.  This is good because I haven’t done anything with it in about four weeks.  A combination of broken leg, increased workload from my real job, crippling writer’s block, and the birth of my second child (just last week!) have waylaid my attempts to keep this ballgame current.

No more.

Following the theme of this post’s title, it has taken a broken leg to show me how much I really miss turkey hunting.  The season opened here in Ontario last week and I don’t even have the choke in my gun.  Getting around stealthily and safely is not an option right now, and my heart is filled with the yearning to get up at an ungodly hour, sit under a tree in the dark until the dimmest vestiges of morning show up, and then blaze away hopefully on turkey calls until a bird either shows up or I get hungry and frustrated.  Since I took up turkey hunting in 2007, this is the first opening weekend I’ve missed, and admittedly I’ve been a bit of a bear these last few days.

Emails from friends and readers (while appreciated, and even encouraged) have only depressed me further…what with their glowing stories of success or the exciting tales they tell me of the big tom that “almost” was.  Pictures of their beaming smiles beside the broad fan of a big tom, pictures taken in the sun-dappled verdure of the spring woods no less, almost push me to the precipice of binge-drinking.  The sleep deprivation of having an eight-day old in the house may also be a factor contributing to my pitiable state…but I do not dare tell my wife that.  After all new fathers are expressly forbidden from admitting that they are ‘tired’ at all, because in truth what have we really done that would make us sleepy?

But I digress.

Likewise for you my reader, it would seem that the meager information that I have placed on this blog has been highly in demand.  This little corner of the internet keeps appearing in Google searches with the keywords “turkey hunting simcoe county” or “bruce peninsula wild turkey” or for some strange reason “turkey calling contests”.  No matter.  Clearly, spring turkey hunting is on many a mind other than my own.  Hopefully, the people stumbling upon this mental effluvia of mine like what they read (although based on my subscriber statistics, not many do).  But it is the thought that counts and I’m glad to contribute whatever scraps of turkey hunting esoterica that I can.

So that’s what has been happening; thanks be to those who keep inquiring on when the latest post is coming out as you keep me thinking.  There’s a small light at the end of the tunnel too…I just may get a weekend or two of turkey chasing in late this May.  Perhaps that will turn around my mood and reignite some of the vim that has been sorely lacking in this forum.

But don’t expect too much…you won’t be disappointed that way.