hunting, them crooked gobblers, turkey and turkey hunting

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part Three: The Surprise Bird

February 2, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

While the previous two installments here were about birds that worked long, or that were repeat offenders, this chapter is about a bird that was in my life for all of twenty minutes, but it was still twenty very intense minutes that taught me a lesson that I put to good use in future seasons. Although this bird beat me, what he taught me helped me to kill other birds after him. This particular hunt took place on the Bruce Peninsula in 2008, and although I would tangle with a few other hard-headed gobblers up there in years to come, this was the first time a longbeard put a good flogging on my psychological state.

It was the perfect time of the spring season in Ontario. Sometimes the first week or two is still drab and cold on the Bruce, with patches of snow in the bush, and the woods shaking off the last lingering hangover of winter. I’ve been on damp, chilly, windy hunts under low slate grey skies on those early days, and although birds can be killed then, I’ve always had my success (or shall we call it luck?) later on in the season. Late season can be tough too, with the last week often inordinately warm and the biting insects really start to feast by then. But those middle two weeks of the five week spring season are just my absolute favourite time to be out there, and they are fast approaching pole position as my all-time favourite part of the hunting calendar, although a Thanksgiving waterfowl hunt still holds top spot…even if just barely.

I had hunted a field edge on the family property that Saturday morning in mid-May and had not heard any turkey activity at all, not even a lonely hen responded to my flock talk. After sitting from before dawn until nearly 10am, I made a plan to roam around the hardwoods to the south of the farm, with the hopes of at worst getting a line on a couple of likely spots for the rest of the season, and at best of striking a tom turkey with my calls. I was travelling without a decoy, and unfortunately, I had left my mouth calls in the farmhouse that morning, such was my haste to get out into the forest. But I had a box call and I had a slate, so I made for the hills. My uncle lives in the farm house year round and he had told us all of sporadic sightings of a nice gobbler as it crossed from our family property onto adjacent ones and back again throughout the late winter and into the spring. That longbeard was just doing what turkeys do, and the hope was that he was still wandering that local (albeit fairly large) area between the southern limits of Lion’s Head and the northern edge of the village of Barrow Bay. I had often wandered those fields and trails as a youth hunting rabbits, I’d chased ducks and geese in a few of them, and sometimes as a youth I was just hiking around behind my father so I knew my way around and I knew the properties I could frequent, and the ones I couldn’t. I had a spot or two in mind, for sure.

I made a large loop of the big woods to the south and east of the farm, calling as I went along, before coming out just west of a Bruce Trail parking lot. Not a single gobble had rung out, although I did kick up a few small groups of ruffed grouse and had spent some time watching two blue jays harass and chase each other through the budding green treetops. It was a fairly humid, somewhat grey morning, but sporadically the sun did shine through the clouds. When I broke out onto a gravel road, I unloaded my gun and slung it over my shoulder. Walking down the gravel road I resolved to cross Bruce Road 9 and stop in to a chunk of hardwoods where I had hunted a few weeks earlier in the season. I had experienced no action there on that previous day, but it seemed like a good idea; it would be a logical stop on the loop back to the farm for breakfast at the very least. Crossing Bruce Road 9 on the curve south of the Cemetery Road, I popped into the woods, loaded my 870, and began a slow walk inside the tree line. I had only walked for about ten minutes when I reached down and pulled out my box call. I ran a string of seven or eight yelps on it, and was just reaching down to put it back in my vest when a gobbler hammered at me. He was close enough that I could hear him clearly and I yelped once more, peppering a cutt and cackle into the mix. He hollered again, and he was closer.

For an instant I panicked. I had not really put any thought into what would happen if a turkey answered me and I looked frantically for a spot to get situated. I finally found a big stump that just a little shorter than my sitting profile, but amply wide. I ran the box call again and once more the gobbler answered. I was facing a rocky saddle and he seemed to be coming down a little bush road that came around to the left of it, so I nestled into the stump and pointed my barrel in that direction. I was fairly sure that this tom knew that the game was on, and I set down my box call so that I could secure both hands on the gun. He gobbled again unprovoked, and he was definitely close, so close that, aside from my heart beating in my ears, I could hear him walking towards me.

I still had not laid eyes on him, and when he gobbled again I had another moment of panic. He seemed to have diverted from the bush road and he was now sliding towards the other side of the small saddle to my right. I’m a right-handed shooter, so that bird going to my right was the worst thing that could have happened. I secretly wished for a mouth call, just to see if a few purrs would have straightened out his line, but in hindsight I realized that he already knew where I was by ear, and that I was going to have to get creative.

He gobbled again and it was now obvious that he was going to pop around the bottom of the saddle in area that I couldn’t swing my gun into. I’d been in that crossed up position before while deer hunting, and now I found myself in it again with a fired up longbeard within twenty steps of me.

I resolved to scooch my behind around the stump so that my gun would point to where he seemed to be heading. I made a bit of headway, and I took my hand off the stock and placed it down to stabilize myself while I shifted. When my hand brushed and scratched a few leaves the bird went berserk; he bellowed a double-gobble and literally ran up over the top of the saddle, again in a place where my gun was not pointing. At least I had a visual on him now.

For a brief moment his eyes and mine met; I could see his fiery red head, the top of his breast feathers, and the upper part of his beard. His head craned back and forth and his body moved in a jerky, startled fashion for a few steps, and he began to putt loudly. I knew from that sound and body language that I had just a few short seconds to make my move, so I slid the safety off and tried to pull the “spin move” on him, hoping to put the bead on his neck and fire in one seamless motion.

I failed.

While I had visualized a smooth transition and a peach of a shot, he had dropped off the saddle and was sprinting back from whence he came before I had even swung halfway to him; I never even yanked the trigger. He gobbled as he ran, and I clicked the safety back on and sprinted the small saddle myself, just in time to see his sleek black back and red legs becoming one with the underbrush at a distance of nearly 100 yards. I swore, I shook my head, and I sat down on a rock near to where I had first seen him. I waited five minutes and ran a long string of yelps on my box call. Nothing. I looked at my watch: the whole thing had happened in under half an hour.

I hiked the twenty minutes back to the farm in that fog of self-loathing and hard, psychological self-analysis that any failed turkey hunter knows all too well. How had that all gone wrong? I went from having a lusty, willing gobbler essentially running to my calls to a fleeing bird that had me clumsily sprinting up a hill in desperation. Even for me that was “bugger up” of legendary scale.

Then it dawned on me that I had ‘overthought’ myself into failure. Now this is not something that I am the sole exclusive owner of; plenty of other hunters overthink. They believe they know better than the animal, and they try to outsmart a bird that while supremely adapted, unbelievably wary, and maddeningly unpredictable isn’t really that smart to begin with. Which actually makes it all the more frustrating when that gobbler kicks your ass. I’ve always held that the worst thing that can actually happen when you overthink a gobbler is that you still actually kill him in spite of your error. This just goes to cement a practice that is patently absurd.

Turkeys aren’t smart in the way we think of it. They are creatures of adaptation and habit, they have wickedly impressive eyesight and supernatural levels of hearing, and they have a memory and attention to detail that to my mind is unmatched in the inventory of game animals in Ontario, and maybe the nation at large. But they don’t do trigonometry, they don’t use deductive logic, and they don’t function on an intellectual plane of cause and effect so far as I can tell. All they have is one reaction to anything that seems even slightly abnormal: be paranoid and run from it like hell.

In the days, weeks, months, and let’s be honest, years since I’ve realized over and over again the things I did wrong that day, and forgetting my mouth calls on the table was probably the least of my errors.

First, I was prospecting for a gobbler with no actual plan of attack should one answer. Now, before calling I map out a few likely scenarios and setups should one sound off in response. On that Saturday in mid-May 2008, I may have been better off backing away slightly to a spot that wasn’t squarely facing a saddle; as I look at it now, I only had a 33% chance of having my gun in the right place when the bird popped up; if he came to the wrong side of the saddle I would have been crossed up, and if he popped over the top (as he did) I would have had to make a move, which I did and failed at in epic fashion.

Second, I was trying to be predictive in how the bird would react, and in so doing, I had actually forced myself into a reactionary situation. By trying to extrapolate (from no facts at all I might add) how this bird was going to behave on approach, I essentially put myself in a position that enabled my failure. The goal now is that when a gobbler answers, I try to put myself in a spot that has several easy outs. This includes concealing myself better, positioning the gun in a spot that doesn’t have me locked into one area only, and generally letting the hunt develop a little further before committing to a shooting lane or a physical position.

But even then, turkeys will be turkeys, and I’m going to have to suffer them being frustrating and unpredictable. Because that’s why I love hunting them.

hunting, hunting ethics, random thoughts, reflections

Honour Among Thieves & Unity Among Hunters, or, The Seven Deadly Sins of Hunter Relations

January 16, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

As surely as there are death and taxes, you can bet that however, wherever, and whatever you choose to hunt that there will be someone out there that knows how to find fault with the way you do it.

I long ago got used to the opinions, taunts, jibes, and snide remarks of the taciturn, illogical anti-hunter or the misinformed and self-assured non-hunter (which are two distinct sides to the same coin), but it was not until I started this pseudo-public, completely unprofitable forum for my hunting stories, opinions, and general bunk that I came to realize how much hunters truly hate other hunters.

Now before you send the hate mail which would only go to prove my thesis, hear me out. I’ll also apologize for a moderate use of salty language in the following.

In observing this, I’ve found that there are a few ‘classifications’ for this hunting community ill-will and for lack of a better term, bullying, which I’ll outline now.

Jealousy

Some people don’t get to hunt as much as they would like, and others don’t get to hunt the species or areas that they would like. Sometimes this is a function of time, occasionally this is a function of funds, and sometimes it is mixture of both. Regardless of the cause, jealousy at the opportunity, success, or enjoyment that other hunters experience can be a catalyst for much resentment. The jealous hunter will scoff at others, and disparage their skills or outcomes, solely because the jealous hunter cannot or has not yet had that opportunity themselves. Consistently successful hunters have to deal with this as well, and can fall prey to all sorts of accusations of unethical hunting or benefiting from being in a ‘target-rich’ environment.

Low Self-Esteem

Related to jealousy, but with its own distinctive patter, hunters that don’t hone, respect, or value their own abilities often find every opportunity they can to denigrate and humiliate those with skills, no matter how modest or extravagant those skills are. This type of hater calls the seasoned marksman ‘lucky’ or ‘nothing without a scope on their rifle’. They may have never placed a decoy in their life, but they’ll tell you how your pattern isn’t working. They tell you you’re doing everything wrong, or too much, or too little, but they don’t ever do it themselves.

Competitiveness

Competitive hunters attempt, and are sometimes successful in their efforts to suck all the joy out of hunting for others. You shot a 10-point buck? They’ll make it their life goal to shoot a 12-pointer. Shot a banded mallard? They shot ten of them. Trying for a wild turkey Grand Slam? Well they have five of those and are working on an Ultra-Super-Extra-Difficult-Intercontinental-Mega Slam. I don’t have any issues with hunters driven to succeed; I know and hunt with plenty of those and in some ways I’m one of those myself. But when every personal goal comes at the comparison of the outcomes of others, I fear you may be missing the point of hunting altogether, or worse, you are using hunting to compensate for some psychological deficiency (see Low Self Esteem above).

Anger

Unbelievably, I missed a deer this year. Several factors I could not control, and one that I could (my decision to shoot at all), contributed to this. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to shoot deer, so I can safely say I was ticked. Maybe even angry. It happens. But within two hours, a steak, and a couple of beers later, I was fine. What I’m referring to here is not the attendant frustration that comes when you make a mistake. No, no, what I’m talking about now is the hunter that is always mad at something. They are mad at the weather, they are mad that game isn’t moving, they are mad that game is moving when they themselves aren’t there, and most of all they are mad at other hunters for having the temerity to hunt with, near, or remotely adjacent to them. They want all the hunting to themselves, and they are visibly and permanently enraged that anyone else impinges on their ‘right’. These people are not fun at all to be around, and if you find that no one wants to spend a lunch hour in a cabin with you, odds are you’re an angry hunter too.

Puritanism

It is the job of the puritan to keep hunting elite. Do you use a turkey box call? They use their voice, and think you should too. Do you shoot rifles at deer? They bow hunt and are smug about it. Did you pack mule into an elk or sheep hunt? Sacrilege, why you should have been doing it on foot, humping all your equipment in on your own back you lazy schmuck. See where I’m going with this? The puritan not only understand ‘fair chase’ but they feel it is their sole responsibility to define and enforce the standard.

Now, there is a difference between adherence to a high ethical standard and puritanical ways of viewing hunting, and this is often the grey area of the debate. Laser guided scopes, ultra-high quality electronic game calls, and high-definition camouflage and scent elimination systems often push that ‘traditional’ envelop, but there is a reason we aren’t all still chucking pointy sticks at mammoths. Progress happens and you can only avoid it for so long. Likewise pride is different from puritanism, but when you value ‘your way’ as the ‘right way’ or worse the ‘only way’, well then I haven’t really got any time for you.

Hypocrisy

Hypocritical hunters will criticize and lambaste other hunters for things that, admittedly, they have no problem with. Their issue and argument always seems to be that there is only a problem when you shoot a duck on the water instead of on the wing, when you shoot a big whitetail over a bait pile, or when youenlist an outfitter for a trophy hunt. They like to reserve special privilege to their own situation and worldview. Again, we all recognize hypocrisy when we see it, so start identifying it and cutting it out of the hunting dialogue.

Expertise

The most insidious of the groups of hunters hating hunters are the “Experts”, both of the self-proclaimed variety, as well as those acclaimed as experts by consensus. I would wager that the ‘expert’ class, or the ‘expert’ mindset is responsible for reducing hunter enjoyment more than any other of the above. I’m not talking about the benevolent, avuncular mentor that guided you to your first deer or took you pheasant hunting for the first time when you were a child. I’m talking about the ‘expert’ that finds fault in the methods, ethics, and outcomes of even the most earnest and experienced hunters. They are in your hunting camp and they are in magazines. They are online and on TV, and part of the hunting ‘industry’ at large is based on this servile toadying to the “expert” caste. These people hold others to a moral standard that they themselves have defined, and only they will ever be above their own judgment. They know the better way, the secrets, and the overall fashion of how this sport of hunting should be done because they are experts, and you never will know those things, because you won’t ever meet their standard of excellence. They take the democratic equality out of hunting, and they boil it down to a contest. In short these people are the embodiment of all the above types of unpleasant person, which makes them assholes to be around. Avoid them.

I guess all of the above is somehow tied up in the psychology of the kill in some way; maybe seeing someone else’s success or enjoyment of the hunting pursuit somehow diminishes the self-worth of people with the above character traits, forcing them to belittle others so as to aggrandize themselves.

I don’t know…maybe some people are just jerks and cannot help themselves. The truth is probably a fraction of both at play. The worst part about all of it is every one of the above traits (and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t discovered yet) is that they all serve the same purpose; to divide hunters against hunters. It may well prove the downfall of the modern hunting culture.

I also guess that there is a bit of irony in me taking the pulpit to sermonize and decry these types of hunters, but that’s not really what I’m doing with this piece (or at least I hope it isn’t what I’m doing with this piece). My policy has long been that so long as it is legal, safe, and that it most importantly does not negatively impact the public perception of the hunting tradition, then I don’t really care how you hunt, so long as you’re enjoying yourself, and I’ve been on record in this forum and other social media with that stance for a long time. I think we all have a bit of enviousness, puritanism, or self-exalting expertise about ourselves; that’s just how people are hooked up. The hard part is to set those traits aside when we’re discoursing and involved with other hunters.

Hunting is an intensely personal thing, and people forget their impact on others when it comes to things they are passionate about. I get it, and I know that it’s a fine line, but it may be the only chance hunters have to see the common ground between themselves.

hunting, them crooked gobblers, turkey and turkey hunting

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part Two: The Backdoor Bird

December 30, 2014 Shawn West Leave a comment

The first installment of this series was about a gobbler I ended up tagging, but this edition is about one I didn’t. On consecutive hunts this bird did the same thing to me. On the third hunt I tried to double-bluff him, and he still managed to trick me. Sometimes you can’t win and you just have to tip your cap and chalk up a learning experience.

My only proof that this was the same bird on all three occasions is that he did the same thing repeatedly; not to the point of predictability, as you’ll see, but consistent enough that I just had the feeling that this old gobbler was besting me over and over again.

And I didn’t like it.

When April of 2010 rolled around, I was hungry for success. The spring season of 2009 saw me whiff on a bird on the Bruce Peninsula, a bird that I’m sure I’ll write about again, and that year I made the mistake of fixating on a gobbler to the point of obsession. I didn’t get him and I didn’t even try to hunt another bird; I swore it was the last bird that I’d get into a personal battle with.

The opening weekend saw me stationed in Oro, Ontario, not far from where I had shot my first gobbler in 2008. I got in extra early on that grey and foggy morning, and with a pair of snips I had trimmed myself a recessed nook in the side of shrub line. Winter had clung on late, and there were no buds or camouflaging foliage on the shrub, but I nestled myself back into the boughs with just the fore-end of my 870 sticking out. I shouldered the gun and gave a couple of swings just to make sure I could cover most angles of approach should a tom show interest, and satisfied that I was stealthily hidden away, I started some light calling. Even though it was grey and damp, with a morning rain ceasing just prior to my arrival, as always the spring morning greeted me with songbirds and the stirrings of wildlife, and while no gobblers responded immediately off the roost, some fresh tracks in the muddy road and some pre-season sightings in the area buoyed my hopes that I would score on my first hunt of the year.

Off and on I yelped, occasionally ramping up the urgency and the volume before mellowing the sounds off into some clucks and purrs. The soft boughs of the shrub were actually quite comfortable and I lounged back into an almost reclined position, while chickadees flitted and fluttered around the area. One of the little clowns landed on my shotgun barrel and turned his head back and forth inquisitively at me. Determining I was not a predator, he hopped along the rail and off into a nearby branch. I smirked and my mind drifted away. Had the sun been out I may have been tempted to take a mid-morning nap.

In this blissful frame of mind, I was hauled back to reality by a movement to my left. At the field edge, well out of range, a small clan of turkeys was marching my way. There were four birds, and the back one was most certainly a longbeard, although to that point I had not heard any turkey vocalizations of any kind all morning. The gobbler was in half strut as he followed three hens across the field and I could tell from their route that they would pass me out of range. I yelped softly and the birds didn’t even look my way. I ratcheted up the volume and the hens looked over but stayed on their determined course. Reaching a hill opposite me and at a distance of almost 100 yards, the hens popped into the woods and the gobbler took one look back my way before dropping his half strut pose and loping into the tree behind his girlfriends.

They had approached with no gobbling from the tom, no yelping from the hens, and no interest at all from any of the birds.

About half an hour later I heard some distant clucking and yelping as the birds worked their way through the property, and I let loose a string of cutting and yelping designed, if for no other purpose, than to get the tom to gobble, but that effort again fell on deaf ears. I resolved to put another hour or so on the hunt before working my way back out of the woods to my vehicle, and though I called twice more, nothing answered.

I was at the point where I was just taking stock of the morning, and was very near to getting up to stretch my legs when I was overtaken with a preternatural sense of a presence. It was not some supernatural moment, it was not clairvoyance, but it was just a sense that I was being watched. I’ve felt it before while hunting, and I’ve felt it before when I haven’t been hunting and I uneasily dismissed it that morning. I went back to thinking about the rest of my day, when the air was split by a long, rattling gobble from behind me. It was close, much closer and louder than I had ever heard. A tom turkey had essentially snuck up on me and had gobbled in my ear from inside of five yards. I was startled and instinctively whipped my head around, which was enough movement to give the gobbler as much information as he required; my last sight of him was a sleek black form bobbing rapidly away through the hardwoods. I spun around and rushed to my knees, but even a snap shot would have been impossible. Instead I just swore and tried to get my heart out of my throat. The walk back to the car was a slow, cautious one, but I never saw or heard the bird again that morning.

Two weeks later I was back on the same property, but I had moved to a different spot, more towards the row of trees that the birds had crossed to on the previous hunt. Whereas the first hunt was grey and damp, that second day found me sitting in the glorious sunshine of an early May in Ontario. The weather was much improved, but the turkeys were still as reluctant as before in gobbling. Finally after a few hours of fruitless calling I heard a tom sound off in the distance. He gobbled again and was closing the distance, and he seemed to be making a broad circle on my left. A large swampy bottom with a narrow creek runs along one edge of the property and in my mind’s eye I could envision the bird taking the long way around that wet hole. I moved my left shoulder in the direction of his anticipated approach, and brought the gun to a half-ready position. He was still gobbling every so often and I had resolved not to yelp again; the goal being to make him hunt for the phantom hen that I was imitating.

His gobbling stopped and the woods were silent for fifteen minutes or so, and all the while I was peering to where I thought he should be popping up. My arms complained and I got impatient, so being the relatively novice turkey hunter I was back then, I chose to let out one single cluck. He gobbled immediately from the spot where I had last heard him, and then I promptly heard the clumsy beating of heavy wings before the literal ‘whoosh’ of a bird landing on the trail behind me told me all I needed to know. As soon as the gobbler’s feet hit the ground, he gobbled again and once more he was directly behind me and closer than I could have imagined. This time I did not jerk my head around or scramble to rush a shot, but I found myself hopelessly crossed up. My left shoulder was pointing exactly opposite of where this tom had hit the ground, and my mind was whirring as I tried to deduce my next move. While I was deducing my next move, I could hear the bird’s feet on the dried leaves and new grass, and he began clucking inquiringly. From what I was hearing, he was pacing back and forth on the trail behind me, sure that he should have been seeing a hen turkey. I was suffering from a case of “paralysis by analysis”, and while I shook nervously and tried to will him into the open, he just got bored, gobbled once and trotted off into the forest again. Once more, I regained my composure and stalked out of the woods, setting up twice to blind call hoping he’d come back to me, but an hour later I found myself at my car, with my mind racing at the events that had just transpired. In two hunts I had been approached to within feet by a tom turkey and both times he had showed up precisely behind me. I was beginning to make the same mistake I made the previous year.

This bird was getting under my skin.

I hunted the family farm on the Bruce Peninsula the week after that, and while unsuccessful, I did at least ease my mind about that ruthless old tom in Oro. I spoke to my Dad and a couple of other turkey hunters and although I’m still reluctant to call what we came up with ‘a plan’ I will say that I got some good advice for going after him. The following weekend would be the final one of the 2010 season and I was getting close to having to gnaw on another spring turkey tag.

I made the woods extra, extra early and snuck in silently to a spot between where I had first had the bird sneak up on and the second spot that he had ambushed me at. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to yelp until I either heard gobbling or the sun rose, whichever came first, but in the end I didn’t really need to make a choice. I had been sitting for less than five minutes when a bird gobbled from the roost.

He was seventy or eighty yards (by my ear) onwards from where I had sat down, and it sounded like he was roosted right over top of the same swampy bottom he had flown across two weeks prior. He gobbled a few more times before I yelped at him, and he hammered back, cutting me off in the process. I peered through the treetops hoping to spy him, but I could not get a line on his exact whereabouts. After a half hour of intermittent tree talk, the tone of call changed and I could tell he had flown down. My only hope was that he had flown to my side of the swamp and not to the far side. My suspicions were soon confirmed as I heard him sound off in the hardwoods ahead of me. I again brought the gun to half-staff, waiting to make a positive ID on him. He gobbled hard and then something startling happened, again. Another bird gobbled, once more from behind me.

This bird had never made a sound on the limb, and now he was closing the distance behind me once more. He gobbled and the original bird answered, and I was in a conundrum. I had still not laid eyes on the first turkey but the one from the rear was closing the distance more rapidly. It was decision time once again, and for the umpteenth time I made the wrong one. I chose not spin and face the bird closing from the rear, but instead I remained steadfastly focused on the gobbling turkey approaching from the front. They both gobbled again, in a sing-song fashion, when I realized something terrible was happening. The bird in the ‘front’ was sliding off hard to my left, his gobbled still came closer but he was making for a spot…you guessed it, behind me.

I did a quick butt-shuffle trying to spin and keep my front shoulder facing him, but eventually the two birds met up. I know they met up because they gobbled wildly when they did.

It sounded like laughter.

They headed back into the hardwoods and out of earshot. It wasn’t even 8am and I was thoroughly defeated. The mosquitoes had been feasting malevolently on my hands and neck the whole time this raucous show was going on, and I was frankly just fed up with turkey hunting for the year at that point. I got up, made it to my car, and drove to a public land spot in the Simcoe County Forests near Elmvale, but my heart really wasn’t in it by then. The whole time I sat in the woods there, I was thinking about what had transpired in the woods back in Oro.

Part of my problem is the thinking, I guess.

I learned a lot about the frustration inherent with hunting turkeys that season, even though I felt that I had learned everything I could from the prior spring. I knew the bird wasn’t ‘smarter’ than I was per se, and I knew he wasn’t a mind reader. But I did know for certain, even if I couldn’t prove it, that the “Backdoor Bird” as I came to call him, was just flat out better than I was at the predator/prey relationship. I kept reliving (and still do) those mornings, and I just can’t seem to pinpoint where things went wrong or what I could have done differently. It is possible that somebody might have killed him in the years since, but I secretly hope he eluded all of us for as long as he could. Despite the frustration of the moment, now these few seasons later I can say it was a fun time hunting him; a true learning experience.

Usually my Dad always has good advice in these situations. But that time, after I lamented my poor luck and the uncanny instincts of that old tom, even he seemed to be at a loss for ideas. Dad just smiled and said it best.

“Sometimes they do that.”

hunting, them crooked gobblers, turkey and turkey hunting

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part One: There’s Always a First Time

December 24, 2014 Shawn West Leave a comment

Although Get Out and Go Hunting has taken a brief hiatus (forced by the fact that I have a cripplingly busy winter schedule with my real job; this blogging doesn’t exactly pay the bills), fear not for I have returned just in time for Christmas.

Consider this my gift to you. A last-minute, thoughtless gift that you probably won’t really use and one you will have a hard time re-gifting to others. I’m sorry in advance.

My pining for turkey hunting has come early this year, and I cannot precisely pinpoint the source. Usually I don’t get all antsy to be sitting under a tree on a verdant spring morning until sometime in the frozen depths of February, but this year, I’ve just been sitting around in the evenings, and the mornings, and the lunch hours just reminiscing about gobblers. So to slake my anxiety I’m going to recall stories about my five favourite gobblers.

Today, I will share the tall tale of the first gobbler I ever shot solo.

I came late to turkey hunting. Ontario had been offering a spring gobbler season in one form or another for almost twenty years before I started in 2007. My Dad had been after them for many years by that time and had a nice few gobbler tailfans already nailed to the drywall in the garage, with the year and date of their harvest scrawled beneath each one. In that first rookie turkey season for me I made a whack of mistakes, spooked a bunch of birds, called too much, and nearly got skunked before Dad and I had a frantic tandem kill on a public land turkey (the tale of which will serialized here for posterity at a later date). Still, even though I had come into turkey hunting later in my life, I was hooked completely with the experience. Early spring mornings lured me in, but thundering gobbles and intense close-range longbeard action cemented the addiction.

In 2008 I was focused, and I swore that I wasn’t going to find a way to cock up shooting a longbeard that year, but by the second last weekend of the season I had so far failed even in that respect. I had bumped two gobblers, shot over the head of a third at 35 steps, and had one sneak in silently behind me and gobble in my ear at just ten paces. I was beginning to think that like my deer hunting career, my enthusiasm and early promise were going to be false indicators of success as a turkey hunter.

The second last weekend of the 2008 season was in reality the last weekend for me, with my wife’s sister getting married the following Saturday, and with my work schedule not allowing any other days off to ramble after a strutter. It was crunch time.

My Dad, my brother, and I made our way to a local landowners bush lot early that Saturday morning, and in the dawn I worked some light yelping on a mouth diaphragm. Not getting much response, I reached for my box call and sawed away a slightly more aggressive string of raspy yelps, with a bit of cutting thrown in.

Nothing.

I laid the calls down and slumped at the base of a pile of old, balled up page wire fence and discarded tree limbs. I was set up inside a field edge facing north, and the sun rose slowly over my right shoulder; a treeline separated the field I was sitting on from another un-huntable field further north, but aside from the distant braying of Canada geese and the morning serenades of the sparrows and finches, the woods and fields were quiet. I was still of the neophyte opinion that every yelp I made should get a response and to hear my calls dissipate into the air without a lusty gargle from a fired up tom turkey was disheartening. Some time passed, twenty or thirty minutes perhaps, and then I heard a faint gobble from beyond the northern tree barrier, or at least I thought I heard one. Moments later I heard two gobbles from the same spot, only these were closing the distance to me. I don’t remember with precision what time it was that this happened, and I can’t even really remember the exact spot these calls originated from, but I do remember very deliberately reaching down and picking up my box call to yelp back, and before I even finished the string of notes, I was rebuked with what I was swore were three hefty shouts from beyond the treeline in front of me. But that couldn’t be, we hadn’t seen three gobblers together on this property, or any adjacent ones, all year.

Still it sounded like ‘they’ were coming.

I laid down the box call and positioned myself with two hands on my Remington 870; it was not mounted to my shoulder but I was ready in case it had to be. One turkey popped out of the trees at a fast walk about two hundred yards away. I was elated to have had some interest in my calling. Then another one hopped out of the woods behind it and flapped its wings before falling in line behind the first. I was even more excited…I mean, TWO GOBBLERS! I had called up two gobblers! When a third came out of the woods in full strut, I think I whispered a silent thank you to the turkey hunting gods. As the trio of longbeards began making their way arduously across the field towards me, I very (very!) slowly began inching the gun to my shoulder. I had a monopod attached to the barrel, and it was already in the down position so I had a limit to how far I could swing from left to right, but the birds were making good headway in my direction so I was not worried.

They closed to within 100 yards or so, all the while alternating between gobbling and strutting and spinning, before hanging out at that distance for about ten minutes. They then began marching a line parallel to my position until they were right in front of me, but still at least fifty yards from being in range. By then I was getting worried. If they slid any more to my right, I’d have to move to put a bead on them, and with my monopod rooted to the spot that was a task that would be difficult to execute without spooking them into the next township. I was distinctly aware of a few trickles of sweat inspired more by the circumstances than the pleasingly warm May morning as they rolled down my cheek, and my one foot was beginning to go tingly from being tucked under my other leg for some time. My arms and shoulders were just glorious though, I had that damned monopod to thank for their freshness.

I made a light yelp and cluck on my mouth call and all three birds hammered back simultaneously, making any adrenaline response I had been having kick into overdrive. I was filled with a sickly sweet anticipation that I have come to know very well since; it is the excitement of anticipation mixed with the absolute dread of buggering everything up. It was intoxicating, and for a moment I was afraid to blink or exhale, lest those wary birds make me for the predator I was and have them make tracks elsewhere.

Then, glory of glories, one of the birds started to break the line and walk my way, this made another bird start over as well. The third compatriot, not wanting to be left out, tried to run ahead of the other two and in short order I had three longbeards bouncing their way towards me at a dead run, gobbling the whole time.

I slid the safety off silently.

All three broke into a strut in a phalanx at roughly thirty yards and the monopod held my bead in a space between two of them. I was beginning to rue attaching that contraption to my gun. The gobbler that to my eye was the largest jumped and swung a wing at one of the others and both the subordinate birds broke strut. It was fascinating to see the pecking order so instantly displayed, and while the one bird stayed in strut safely to my right in a spot where my monopod wouldn’t allow me to get to him, the other two birds began clucking and purring inquisitively. I had only called two or three times since they had broken into the field, but they had marched and trotted right to the exact spot where their ears told them a hen should be waiting.

Since I had no decoy, the birds saw no hen, and I could tell that the two subordinate gobblers were becoming a little agitated by this, since the tone of their purring and clucking was becoming more, shall I say, urgent. The big fella just strutted and spun in one spot the whole time. As the two other birds putted around I noticed that one of them was on a path to walk directly in front of my gun barrel, while the other began picking at some new grass on the field edge. I figured quickly that the spot the one bird would pass would be well in range and just as he approached that spot were the vectors were to converge I bore down on the bead. That slightest movement made him lift his head to full periscope and he looked back over his shoulder towards the strutter.

It was the last thing he ever saw.

At the bark of the gun, the strutter leapt into flight and flew over my head into the bush at a height of no more than ten yards. Had he been a Canada goose, I could have dumped him easily. But he wasn’t a goose and the law says we can only shoot one turkey per day in Ontario so I listened to his wingtips tickle the trees as he powered out of earshot. The other gobbler alarm putted and gobbled off through the low brush to my right, and I watched his shiny black back merge into the woods and fade off into the sun-dappled understory behind me.

A still, black form was laying in the grass at the field edge, with the white bars of one wing held up stiffly like a signal flag. I slid the safety back on, stood and slowly paced off the distance to the lifeless bird. At twenty five steps I put my bootheel on his neck and grabbed his legs below the spur. He lamely flogged my shin with his wing for a moment, but he was soon still again. It was all just too much for me, and standing there with shotgun in one hand and gobbler in the other I let out a war whoop that came from some previously untapped part of my brain.

I was a turkey hunter right then. Before I had been in practice, an apprentice at the feet of mentors and magazines and often contradictory advice and opinion, but at that moment I’d tasted solo success and no matter what the future held I knew I had that one moment forever. I’ve been hunting after and writing about gobblers for six seasons since then and I’ve shot other birds since, but I still haven’t found the words that adequately define that moment of ‘the first time’.

I probably won’t ever have another hunt like that, and in some ways I hope that’s the case. That ‘first time’ was just too picture perfect to sully it with duplication.

As a footnote, that blasted monopod has not been re-attached to my gun since.