The Armchair Outfitter

For the past two years, I’ve been enrolled in Turkey University, also known as the School of Hard Knocks. The classes are pretty brutal, but at least I won’t have any student loan debt when and if I ever graduate. I took some entry-level courses years ago, but I dropped out after only a couple of semesters.

The first day of school this year was the opening day of the Tennessee turkey season. Cousin Tim and I were supposed to hunt Uncle Gary’s farm, but when I grudgingly awoke at 4:00, I could hear a downpour beating the house and the tin roof of the barn. Thunder rattled the windowpanes. After twenty minutes of indecision, I called Tim to see what he wanted to do about the weather and our scheduled meeting time. He agreed the conditions were fit for neither man nor beast, and we opted to sleep in and see if things improved. As badly as I wanted to start the season, I’ll admit I wasn’t terribly disappointed to get some extra sack time on the tail end of the seven hour drive from our home in Lower Alabama.

When we spoke again, the clouds had parted. For reasons I cannot explain, I told Tim I would be at the parking area in about half the time it would reasonably take me to get there. In spite of my gross miscalculation, I still managed to arrive before Tim at a little after 8:00. I pulled in beside another truck and waited. As I checked my gear one last time, I wondered who else could be hunting the property. On any given day, I’m often the only person on the whole place unless Gary or Tim is with me. Tim brought his truck in on two wheels, and we headed into the hardwood bottom. It didn’t take us long to run into Chuck Bodiford. Chuck went to the same high school as Tim and I, graduating a few years before either of us. Although I hadn’t hunted with him before, I was relieved to see him. We met and swapped information with him a couple of times last season, and he is a thoroughly decent guy.

Chuck had driven through the storm and waited out the rain in his truck. He had already called in a jake, but he opted not to take him so early in the season. Without really discussing it, we started hunting together. I hoped their combined turkey hunting knowledge would make up for my complete lack of experience. As it turned out, I could not have hired better instructors.  It was already too late in the day to try and set up on a roosted bird, so with turkeys on the move, we opted for the run-and-gun strategy.

Actually, run-and-gun in this case was more like easing quietly along old farm roads and calling whenever we came to the edge of an open area.  When I say we were calling, I mean Chuck and Tim took turns with friction calls.  From the top of a ridge, a pot-and-peg call carries a long way across rolling bottoms.  My best chance of the day came when we heard an odd, mechanical sound followed almost immediately by a shock gobble.  Chuck called, and the turkey gobbled a response.  Then the sound came again, causing the turkey to gobble a third time.

We dropped off the high ground into a ditch between an open field and the bottom.  Tim and Chuck sat on opposite ends of a downed pine obscured by low new growth pines that had sprung up in the area cleared by the larger tree when it had come down.  I positioned myself on the ground right in the middle of the horizontal trunk and set my shooting sticks up against the bark.  In full camo with the leafy bank behind me and pine branches around me, I was pretty well hidden unless I moved, and I had no intention of moving.  I put my cheek on the stock and looked down the fiber-optic open sights.  There was a dense screen of brush in front of us, and if the turkey broke through it, he would be no more than twenty yards away when he came into view.  I wouldn’t move anything but my finger on the safety and then the trigger when and if that happened.

I don’t know how long I sat there like that with my heart beating so hard I could see the movement in my sights.  Chuck called a couple more times, and it was clear the turkey was heading in our direction.  The buzzing sound continued intermittently, and each time we heard it the turkey gobbled frantically.  With every gobble he seemed to have cut the distance to us by half, as he was at least twice as loud.  Finally we found the source of the mystery sound.  A hawk in the treetops had designs on the same bird, and it was his calling that was causing the turkey to gobble and give away his position both to him and to us.  I have heard hawks scream before, but this wasn’t a sound I’d ever heard from an animal.  It reminded me of the buzz of electric current through a short circuit.  Whatever vocalization it was, it certainly galvanized the turkey, and he would shock gobble as soon as the hawk sounded for him. The hawk would then improve his position, driving the turkey closer to me and my waiting load of lead #6.

I have no idea why the turkey continued to respond to Chuck’s calling.  I can’t imagine he had any amorous thoughts at that moment, but maybe he was hoping there would be safety in numbers.  Just as the gobbler had to be within a few yards of coming through the briar thicket in front of our downed tree ambush, disaster struck.  The hawk had either triangulated the turkey’s position from all the gobbling or he could see the gobbler from his position in the tree tops, and he cut off the turkey’s route to the thickest of the brush.  Both gobbler and hawk reversed field and we watched the hawk in the trees as the turkey led him all the way around the rim  of a large open area.  This would be the only real running of the day, and we sprinted as one man across the open ground to set up on the opposite side.

We hoped to intercept the turkey in his efforts to evade the hawk, and we set up in a draw between two high ridges where we though the turkey would turn away from the open field and try to escape.  Tim and I set up in the narrow draw, and Chuck went up to the top of the opposite ridge and began calling again.  This time I guess the turkey had enough.  We waited for what seemed like hours, but he never came over the ridge that would have put him right on top of us.  I sat there on the ground behind the shooting sticks staring at the turkey decoy we had set out in front of me to place the gobbler for a perfect shot. I noticed something pattering in the leaves around me, and I thought it was beginning to rain. Something landed on my shotgun stock, and I saw it was a tiny white worm that had apparently hatched in some number in the branches high above me.  I thought about the line, “Maggots are falling like rain,” from a song by the theatrical metal band GWAR, and my mood certainly matched those dark lyrics.

Tim and I had just gotten up for a stretch when a turkey flew silently over the ridge and passed within 20 yards of both of us.  I had my shotgun halfway to my shoulder when I realized it was not the gobbler we had been waiting for but a hen.  I don’t know that the gender would have made much difference, as I would have hesitated to take a shot at a bird on the wing even at that close distance.  It was more surprise at seeing such a large animal so close without a sound and an upland hunting reflex that caused me to begin my gun mount.  Tim and I stared wide-eyed at each other as our brains caught up with what had just happened.  She flew over us and right at Chuck, although he never saw her.  We called him on his cell phone and he came down the ridge to meet up with us.  As we had covered a pretty good bit of ground and it was getting nigh unto lunch time, we started back toward our trucks.

The sun was now coming on full bore, and I was ready to get somewhere near a cold drink and a air conditioning unit.  Chuck had the point position, and as he was bending down to step through some low brush not far from where we had set up our first failed ambush, I saw the black and copper forms of two turkeys walking perpendicular to our course.  They were no more than twenty yards ahead of Chuck, but in the tangle he was busting through, I knew he couldn’t see them.  I was about fifteen yards behind him, and I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t very well shout, “Hey Chuck!  Be real quiet, there’s some turkeys right in front of you!”  On the other hand, if all parties continued on their respective courses, either Chuck would run over the turkeys, or the turkeys would run over him.  It turned out I didn’t have long to deliberate.  The turkeys made us for bad ju-ju, and they took flight.  I lost my appetite for lunch when I saw the long beard clearly dangling from one of them as they kicked in the afterburners.

Because of the high ridge in front of us, we couldn’t tell where they had gone.  I figured those turkeys would be in the next county, but Tim didn’t think the  gobbler would go far if he got separated from the hen.  I clearly remembered them taking slightly different tacks, so Tim and I high-tailed it to the ridge top.  Chuck took a long looping route through the bottom to keep pressure on the birds in case they had turned and gotten into the thick stuff.

Tim called a few times and got an answering gobble from the bottom to the left of an old road that runs roughly along the crest of the ridge.  Chuck was approaching from that direction, and the turkey sounded like he was between us and where Chuck would begin getting into the really gnarly thickets.  I set up on that side of the road with my gun on the sticks and my back against a huge oak.  I was just far enough off the road and covered by the thick trunk of the tree so the sunlight streaming from the open road behind me wouldn’t silhouette me for the benefit of the gobbler.  Tim set up on the opposite side of the road to try and call the turkey past me.  His focus would be on Tim’s calling, and he might stroll right into the end of my ported choke tube.

Tim called at intervals of a few minutes, getting softer each time.  The turkey gobbled a couple more times,  each time getting closer to me and my ready gun.  After one set of Tim’s yelps, I heard another gobble, loud and strong, over my right shoulder.  I don’t know if the bird on my side of the road opted to close the distance to his lady love by flying, or if the boss gobbler had decided to move in from the opposite side, but I never heard another peep on my side of the road.  The bird on Tim’s side, on the other hand, was H-O-double T hot, and he was coming.  I scrunched up as small as I could behind my tree and turned my face away from the road.  I knew Tim wouldn’t take an unsafe shot, but I couldn’t see the gobbler.  As badly as I wanted to see this turkey, I was terrified any little twitch on my part would ruin it for Tim.  The turkey gobbled louder and closer.  He was angry now, and I wondered why Tim didn’t shoot.  We were so close I heard Tim’s safety click the instant before the woods exploded.

I yelled, “Did you get him?”  There was no answer, but when I turned around, Tim was leaping over a dead-fall.  In one step and two short bounds, he was standing over a gobbler.  I ran across the road and stared at the first gobbler I’ve ever seen on the ground.  I said to Tim the turkey looked like he was trying to get organized to leave, but when he flopped onto his other side, his head lolled and I could see Tim’s shot had found its mark.  Tom Turkey was dead; he just needed a minute to realize it.

Looking from the still flopping turkey to where Tim had been sitting, it was no more than ten yards.  Call it seven, although I didn’t see where the turkey was when he took the shot, he couldn’t have been much further.  The dead-fall and briars that prevented the turkey from seeing Tim had also prevented Tim from getting a clear shot until they met at the crucial juncture.  Tim said he knew the turkey was close because he could see the sun reflecting off his coppery metallic feathers.  As soon as the gobbler’s head was clear, Tim sealed his fate.

We shook hands and both let out the breath we’d been holding for what must have been a while judging by the volume of air.  Hefting the bird by his feet, Tim said, “Do you think he’ll go fifteen pounds?”  I took the turkey’s full weight, and I answered, “I’d say more than that.  He’s heavy.  I don’t know what he weighs, but he’s closer to twenty than to fifteen.”  If I get any grade for that day, it should be for judging the weight of turkeys once they are in hand.  The Ramer Quick Stop scales put Tim’s prize at an even twenty pounds.  As for the rest of the course, I’ll have to take an Incomplete until the Fall semester.

Faculty Photo: Professor Tim Null is on the left smiling like he has just killed a turkey.  Professor Chuck Bodiford is seen on the right smiling like he wishes he had just killed the same turkey.

The beard on this boss bird measured 9 1/2 inches, and both his spurs were 1 1/8 inches long.