All posts by Shawn West

I've been tagging along hunting with my family and friends since I was eight years old. Over twenty years later I still hunt waterfowl, wild turkeys, deer, and small game whenever I get a chance. "Get Out & Go Hunting" combines my two passions, hunting and writing about hunting. Hope you enjoy it, and if you like what you read, please subscribe to have posts delivered to you via e-mail or feed reader.
2014 turkey odyssey, turkey and turkey hunting

Keeping it All Together

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I was doing a good job of holding things together.  Really I was.
A couple of weeks ago I saw my first strutting turkey of 2014.  It was nice; a bit of an omen that spring was breaking through the tenacious, unrelenting grip of this frigid and nightmarish winter.  It renewed my optimism for the speedy return of spring gobbler hunting, but I didn’t get too carried away.  After all it was just one bird.
Then it got warmer, and the snowbanks at the foot of my driveway began to shrink.  And I saw more birds, although another strutter eluded me.  But seeing big groups of hens out picking in fields that were surrendering their soils for the first time since mid-November was still a pleasant sight.  Numbers seemed strong and the hope was that plenty of birds survived to breed again this year.  A few days later I went to the rural outskirts of Carp, Ontario for a work project and my nerves became slightly more jangled.  Not only was the sky there almost black with raucous hordes of migrating geese, I saw big flocks of turkeys on numerous country blocks as I drove the area, and the fringe benefit was that I saw many, many more strutting birds.  But these were birds I could not hunt, so the season still seemed distant and murky.  It grew warmer still and my entire lawn became visible.  I barbecued a sweet and delicious pork shoulder while I was wearing a t-shirt. Spring was here and I was planning a few drives down to likely hunting spots in Simcoe County so that I could scout out a wary old longbeard.  My father, brother and I chatted about plans for the season and what locales we’d be hunting and when we’d be hunting them.  It was all coming together according to plan.
Then the snow flew.  Lots of it.  Mercury plummeted.  Roads became icy.  Previously bare fields and pastures were dusted with a few more inches of the white stuff, and I was immediately disabused of all my hope, anticipation, and joy.
I went through the stereotypical cycle of loss and grief.  At first I denied that such miserable weather was coming, after all meteorologists are just talking heads that are never correct ion their forecasts, right?  Wrong.
Then I was mad and swore to everyone who would listen about how spring and summer were just going to skip Ontario this year.  I subsequently bargained with the unseen deities worshiped by us many who chase gobblers that they would allow for less snow than forecast.  My prayers went unheeded, as they always do. 
Up until writing this piece, I was mired in depression and longing.  I found myself trying to mollify my sadness with frequent trips to hunting stores, I nostalgically caressed my turkey calls, and thought of joyous times made up of early spring sunrises and the feathery burden of having a dead turkey slung over my left shoulder.  I even found myself using pencils and notepads at work to make the practiced strokes of a hickory striker on a gritty slate.  I was pitiful, just pitiful.
But today brought acceptance and closure because unless the sun explodes or the world otherwise ends, I’ll find myself hunting in less than two weeks.  Yesterday evening I saw a flock of turkeys in close proximity to one of my favourite hunting haunts, and that brought renewed optimism.  My hunting partner in British Columbia should be acquiring my license at just around the time this post goes into cyberspace; a trip of a lifetime so close that I can taste it.
Now I’m living by the Pollyanna principle again, blissfully ignorant to how flawed that approach may be.  I’m feeling good about the upcoming season, and I’m relishing the reconnection with hunting partners that has been hibernating these last long winter months; in fact the only thing that has me down is that I can’t be turkey hunting every day of the upcoming season.  The real-world boogeymen of work, family commitment, and maintaining legitimately meaningful relationships with loved ones have once again come back to derail my fantasy world of uninterrupted calling sessions in the woods and fields.  But those painful realities do that every year.  However, and I swear to heaven above that I mean it, if the weather this year so much as looks like it is going to be sideways on a day I plan on hunting, then I’m sure I’ll lose my mind.

Which is a short trip, given the lunacy that my turkey hunter’s brain lives with day to day.
2014 turkey odyssey, turkey and turkey hunting

Friends Helping Friends

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There is a unique element of uncertainty in my upcoming trip to British Columbia, and while it has not been causing me stress, it has been on my mind.
That uncertainty is that, in some ways at least, my friend Chris and I have no idea what we’re doing.
I can’t speak for myself, but I know my man Chris is a capable woodsman, and that I can rely on his knowledge of the area and his geographic prowess in that regard to be a strong guide.  But Chris, whose skills in the Kootenay forests are attested to by his success on whitetails and his adventures in mountain stream fishing, has never hunted, scouted or targeted wild turkeys.  He gets the easy part.  He just has to drag me up and down hills and I’ll soldier along unquestioningly.  He also gets the fun bit, which is discovering turkey hunting with no prior conceits and with his childlike wonder unspoiled.  He gets the joy of buying a stack of new equipment, and the whimsical anticipation of hearing that first resonating gobble as it floats through the hill country.
For me, things are slightly harder.  I, for one, have a bunch of turkey seasons under my belt and a handful of birds that I’ve brought to their demise.  I’ve also missed birds, bumped birds, set up too close to birds, missed birds again, and generally had turkeys whip me thoroughly on several occasions.  This has made me love the sport even more, but also left me respectfully bitter to the tricks that wild turkeys unwittingly pull on us who hunt them.  And yet somehow, for the first time ever, I’m the old hand in this partnership.  Chris has managed, and I imagine will continue, to look to me for answers, anecdotes, and advice as we lead up to the hunt.  This makes me uneasy.  I haven’t figured out Eastern turkeys thoroughly, and now I’m trying to get into the walnut-sized brain of a Merriam’s.
I guess in a lot of respects turkeys are turkeys wherever you go.  They’ll roost in trees and they will look for strut zones, food, and water.  If I yelp, they will gobble.  And if I screw up they’ll flog me in much the same way that they have for the last seven springs since I caught the turkey-hunting disease.  But they live in a different environment than the rolling pastures and mixed forests of Central Ontario, and to discount that as a factor in their behaviour would be a grave error on our part.  So I’m reading, and I’m learning, and I’m trying to get what I can from whatever turkey hunting videos I’ve already watched hundreds of times.
In Chris’s defense, not all the pressure is off him.  I’ve known him for thirty-two years, and I know he wants to give a good account of himself and his little part of the Canadian wilderness by putting me on birds.  We’ve even discussed his initial reluctance to carry a gun. I’ve told him that his being unarmed isn’t an option; if I can’t get a crack at a bird and he can, he had better hammer down and fill his tag because sometimes you don’t get many opportunities in a season.  For his part he seemed amenable to this arrangement, and he’s deep into the gear acquisition phase of being a developing turkey hunter.  He’s got some calls on order, and he’s even ordered a book for his reference and education.  He knows as well as I do that a large portion of his education is going to come in the unpredictable lessons of the field, but we all have to start somewhere so a reputable handbook certainly won’t hurt.  He’s done yeoman’s work in getting me all the licensing information, travel advice, and in sending me several Google Earth coordinates in an effort to familiarize me with the terrain and country that we’ll be traipsing about in for those four days.
Hopefully my advice to him on turkey hunting has not been ‘disinformation’ so far; his independent research will either corroborate or refute my expertise to date.
But I guess, that’s also the beauty of what this trip is going to be.  Chris’s local knowledge combined with my lessons learned from several years of hunting hard gobblers on public land in Ontario serves to make us one experienced Western turkey hunter.  Provided neither of us gets in each other’s way, the sum of our parts will make us more than we could be individually.

Will this assure of success, fun, and a delicious wild turkey dinner?  If we want to score on all three, the answer is probably no; even in my wildest dreams I’m expecting this to be hard hunting with a moderate to low expectation of success, but I think we can bank on the ‘having fun’ part.
2014 turkey odyssey, turkey and turkey hunting

Gaining Momentum

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I’m just over a month from opening day, and pretty much every weekend of the season is now booked.  That opening weekend is earmarked for sitting under a tree and trying to lure an early season tom into range is pretty much a given.  I’ll be guiding around a friend who missed last season via the birth of his first child on the weekend after that.  Then I’m off to BC for a much anticipated hunt (more on that to come below), and then we get a three day weekend here in Ontario, which only means three days of turkey hunting and barbecuing in the evening.  If I haven’t tagged out by then, and odds are I won’t have done so, I still get one more full weekend and a bonus day the week after that since this year the Ontario spring season closes on a Saturday.  By then the mosquitoes are usually so horrendous that I almost hope for rainy mornings and windy days, just to keep most of my hard-earned blood inside my veins.  This year, a Thermacell is on my wish list.
So from the above, I guess I am by definition a weekend hunter.  I have no other choice, since I’m not smart enough to be a billionaire and not handsome enough to be a trophy husband.  But that’s okay, since I’ve never used the words ‘weekend hunter’ as a pejorative term.  One of the lies I tell myself is that if I had the means and resources to hunt every day, I may find it boring or somewhat like a chore.
Of course, we all know that isn’t true.
I’m always thinking of hunting, using my hyperactive imagination to run through hundreds of ‘what if’ scenarios and set-ups.  I’m also constantly on the lookout for new gear, and aside from the Thermacell that I keep procrastinating on, this year I will require a durable, airline-capable hard gun case.  I fly often in my line of work and I’ve seen the abuse that the baggage handlers of every airline subject baggage to.  I don’t exactly “baby” my Remington 870, but the thought of it being flung and bounced around by anonymous airline staff makes me cringe.  My analytic nature (combined with an unhealthy addiction to online hunting stores) has led me down several paths in researching the purchase of a gun case, some of which are hopelessly too expensive others which are obviously too flimsy for effective.  I’m down to three options, so now I have to actually go to a store and inspect them myself.
I’m down to Pelican, SKB, and Plano cases.  All have their benefits.  Pelican cases are essentially bomb-proof, but will cost a portion of a mortgage payment.  They also suffer from the notable handicap of not being available at any nearby dealers, so I have to factor the shipping of some seriously oversized equipment into the price.  Plano cases cost the least, but all the reviews I’ve read indicate they are a bit on the flimsy side.  I own a cheap Plano case already, but it was never intended to fly, it was more of car-case.  SKB seems to have the case that fits the logical niche between the two, but like the Pelican case, seems to only be available as a shipped item (in from the USA so far as I can tell) so again this will add to the ultimate cost factor.
Decisions, decisions.
On another turkey gear note, my accomplice for the upcoming Merriam’s turkey hunt is well on his way, having purchased a box call, some mouth calls, and a crow call.  Some heavy duty turkey loads and a facemask are all he needs now (unless he’s outfitted himself with those too, in which case he’s golden).  I, of course, have much more in the way of turkey vest-cluttering debris that I have to attempt to pack out there, but who knows, maybe this trip will make me a more lithe and sensibly outfitted turkey hunter.

But not likely.

2014 turkey odyssey, hunting, turkey and turkey hunting

The 2014 Turkey Odyssey Begins Today

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In reviewing past posts to this forum I’ve noticed a distinct trend.

The last few years, right around February, I start to go stir-crazy and begin writing about turkey hunting.  I write about preparations, I write about memories, and I write about the malaise and madness that precedes any turkey season in my household.

And this year it will be no different.  Except that it will be different, and here’s why.

This year I’ll be pursuing the second bird in my goal of harvesting a Grand Slam, as I go after a Merriam’s turkey in southeastern British Columbia.  This all came together earlier this week, and it has been the dominant thought in my brain ever since.

From a hunter’s perspective, this is going to be my ‘trip of a lifetime’ to date.  I have been fortunate enough to have a lifelong friend (we’ll call him Chris, because that is his name) who is currently living in the Kootenay region, and he’s an avid sportsman.  Once I made the connection between his location and the availability of Merriam’s turkeys in his part of the country, it was just a matter of time before I finagled my way into a turkey hunt with him.  Chris has been a lifelong angler, and in the last few years made the leap into the hunting fraternity.  That he has harvested more deer in that short time than I have in a lifetime doesn’t grate on me at all.  But, you see, despite his successes on whitetails and his enjoyment of upland bird hunting, Chris has never turkey hunted and this is where the adventure takes on another dimension.  I absolutely want to harvest one of those dark, hardy mountain birds with the ivory-tipped tails; I want it in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time.  But as anyone who has chased gobblers knows, there is also a keen desire to introduce others to the ecstatic joys and crippling defeats of turkey hunting and that’s what I intend to do for Chris.

From my personal perspective as a writer it is a veritable gold mine of inspiration.  The process of booking the trip, assembling the gear, packing, tracking down licenses and tags, transporting the weapons, the committing to memory and documenting of the unique beauty of that part of Canada, and ultimately the hunt itself will be fodder for post after post on this humble corner of the internet.  If my fingertips could salivate at the prospect of so much writing, they would.

For those unfamiliar with the Grand Slam concept, it is the harvesting of all four sub-species of wild turkey. The sub-species in question are the Eastern, of which I’ve shot a handful now, the Merriam’s, which lives in pine-covered, mountainous Western regions, the Rio Grande found throughout the west and mid-west United States, and the Osceola, a bird localized only to the Florida peninsula.  Only the Merriam’s and the Eastern inhabit Canada, so there’s a special sub-category of Grand Slam called a Canadian Slam, that to date has only been claimed to have been completed by seven people.  If I can tag a Merriam’s I’m one step closer that select club.  But the history of Grand Slams and their relative ease or difficulty is a tale for another time.

The key thing is I’m going.  Convincing my employer, and more importantly my spouse, took some doing, as I am unbelievably busy with the former and often at odds about hunting trips with the latter.  But this is a limited time opportunity, and I just had to make it happen.  My dad has always said that there may come in a time in a man’s life when he reflects on the past, and the worst thing to have to do is to sit and regret a life’s opportunities not taken. With that said, since I have the means, the time, and the desire, there is literally no reason not to book the flight and get out there.

Chris and I have already had a few chats about this trip, and aside from the chance to travel and share the Kootenays with a friend who not only stood at my wedding, but one who also got shamelessly drunk with me on several occasions in our rebellious teen years, and who has known me literally since pre-school, the greater excitement is in getting him geared up and ready to go.  As shown in previous posts, I am a confessed gearhead and nowhere do I have more goodies, toys, gadgets, and accessories than in my turkey vest.  Since I have accumulated this small fortune of equipment organically over the last eight years I hardly expect my comrade in arms to gear up completely in just a few months.  But for anyone starting out as a turkey hunter, as I told my friend, a box call, a locator call of some sort, a face mask, and some turkey-specific shotgun shells is enough gear to start out nicely.  A box call is the easiest interface by far to make convincing turkey sounds, and a good crow call can be used at almost any hour of the hunt to prospect for gobblers.  The utility of a good face mask goes without saying; ditto for reliable shotgun shells.

Then we just need birds.

I’m not particularly sure as to the relative abundance or scarcity of turkeys in Chris’s area, but he’s indicated that he’s got a line on a few likely spots.  Public land is in abundance by all accounts, and in some rudimentary topographic map research I’ve done seems to point to mixed upland forests interspersed with clearings as one of the more dominant terrain features.  There are spots in the area that just have the look of a gobbler’s haunt, and the hope is to get a scout/hunt in on the Friday afternoon when I arrive, then just hitting the woods hard for up to three days before my return flight late on the Monday.  Reviewing the terrain has also opened my eyes to the sheer ruggedness of the area.  For an Ontarian flat-lander like me, this is truly a high country hunt, and even though there is much higher country even further to the west of this trip’s home base, I imagine there will be some up and down climbs required to get onto birds.  For my part, I’ve been hitting the treadmill since my tolerance for climbing mountainsides and delving into valleys could be politely described as ‘inadequate’ after a deer season and Christmastime that was filled with rich meals and plenty of liquid celebrations.

Like everything else in my life, my goal is to embarrass myself as little as possible and vomiting from exertion in front of one of friends is not on bucket list.  So that’s the plan.  Stay tuned for updates as I stroke milestones of the list.  Next up, wrangling a travel case for my shotgun.  Perhaps a bit of a test-and-compare piece for my next post.

So come April, I’ll be opening up this year’s turkey season in Ontario in late April, and then part way through May I’ll be running to BC for this hunting smash up with a chum.  Birds notwithstanding I am already anticipating four epic days of laughs, scenic vistas, good eats, and plenty of time afield, and I look forward to putting all those memories in here.

Because creating memories and sharing the hunt with friends and family is what it is all about when I get right down to it.