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Fullback24
King of Spring
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:34 pm
Posts: 456
Location: Trigg, VA
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 Re: Most embarrassing turkey hunt? This is a piece out of a book that I'm working on. One of these days, I'll finish it.
On my way to work, I pass by a peninsula every day. A peninsula of about 350 yards wide by roughly 1200 yards long. The peninsula has a couple of small knolls on it, but for the most part is mostly stands of Oak and Poplar flats, with one little patch of pines that is surrounded by Walker’s Creek at the southern of border of Giles County. Every now and then you can spot a few turkeys between the peninsula’s bordering creek and the main road, picking around and catching grasshoppers and other insects in a field, but close enough toward the peninsula that you know with certainty where they came from and where they’ll end up again before the sun sets. I had noticed this behavior for several years now, and my good friend Carl had noticed the same thing as he drives the same stretch of road to reach his place of employment, and has done so for the past 20 years or better.
I knew that he had noticed it as well, because the topic had come up in many conversations he and I have had concerning spring gobbler hunting. “I’ve always wanted to hunt that place” he would often say. And I would always agree with him. I suppose one reason that it looked so alluring, was that if there was indeed a gobbler on the peninsula, the hunter would have a 50/50 chance of being in the direction that the gobbler was willing to travel, added to the fact that the place would be rather difficult to get to. I’ll usually take 50/50 odds because under normal circumstances a hunter, if the quarry be a spring gobbler, is lucky to get that.
As I was driving home from work one day in March, I looked at the peninsula that both Carl and I had been lusting over, and decided I was going to try to find out who owned it and seek permission to spring gobbler hunt. My search started on my home computer, on one of the GIS websites and there I learned that a man from Maryland owns 60 plus acres of the peninsula. I was fortunate enough that the website had also listed his name and address. So, I then went to one of the many search engines on the internet and typed in the address, and it verified that man listed as owner of the land lived there and again, fortunately, listed his phone number as well. It is amazing and scary to me, the information that can be found on the internet. With hardly any effort at all, I had enough information to make a phone call, figuring the least the man could say was “no”, and if that was the case, I would be no better off than I was before I started.
Normally, in attempting to gain permission to hunt a piece of land, I would approach the landowner with hat in hand. I normally make an attempt to establish some common ground, perhaps people we both know or the weather. In a small rural county like such as this, everybody is almost kin to everybody (and if we’re not kin, someone has married into kinship), with the exception, of course, of the Yankees and out of town stragglers that, for some unknown reason decide to reside here amongst us poor poverty stricken types. I’m of the firm opinion that they’re here on some sort of mission to make our area better for all of us, make as much money as they can doing it, and then move on, to improve someone else’s quality of life at a later time. Normally, one of the first things these carpetbaggers tend to do is post their land, which helps us non-intellectuals, because we know that we need not bother to ask. That takes the burden of thinking whether or not to ask out of our hands and we should all be grateful for it. Regardless, whether hometown or yankee, if I cannot gain any ground by small talk and name dropping, since most of the areas that I try to gain permission, are either farms or large pieces of woodland, I normally offer up services such as putting up hay, fence mending, or wood cutting. The phone call to the landowner in Maryland, I thought would be rather difficult since he did not know me from Adam and I had absolutely nothing to offer that he would need besides friendly conversation, aside from the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about him.
I decided to make the call anyway. The gentleman was reluctant and was on defense at first, but after talking for almost an hour about the price of land rising because of “out of towners” buying it all up and a few of his fishing trips, I finally gained permission to hunt the peninsula for Carl and myself. The gentleman had obviously dabbled in hunting some, but was not a spring gobbler hunter, because he was asking me about how I went about the business of locating and calling in turkeys. At some point during the conversation, as I was describing to him some of the aspects of this game I enjoy, he finally waved us through the gate. I was almost giddy as I called Carl and told him the good news about our new spot to hunt. As Carl and I talked on the phone, discussing our assault on the beaches, some new questions unfolded. How were we going to get across the creek? And could we, by chance, gain permission to access it from the land end of the peninsula, which was owned by a different person. Again, our odds were 50/50 and in turkey hunting, as stated before, I’ll take it all day long.
Two days later, on my way home from work again, I noticed a man in the yard of the “other” property and rolling the dice, I decided to stop and ask him how he felt about spring gobbler hunting. This fellow, in his early 50’s, was about as round as he was tall and was loading some wood that he had just cut on a trailer. This short visit did not go as well as the phone call to the gentleman in Maryland. Matter of fact, the visit got rather bristled as he tried to talk me out of hunting the piece of land that bordered him. Typically, when someone tries as hard as this guy did, to talk me out of hunting somewhere, I figure that he is probably not trying to save me from wasting my time. This guy began saying things like “ya’ll don’t need to hunt that, you probably got other places to hunt, why would anyone want to hunt that place…” and so on a so forth. To his credit though, he never once said that there was not any turkeys on that piece of land. The conversation left me convinced that the peninsula did indeed hold gobbling turkeys, and probably several of them, and I was about to infringe a piece of turkey hunting real estate that did not even belong to him, but he had the only key able to access it. I let him know, politely, that I would probably hunt it anyway, but, in an attempt to smooth it over, I told him that I would only hunt the place during the week, so I would not mess his hunting up on the weekends. That’s when he let me know that he was on disability because of his back and could hunt anytime he wanted. The poor disabled guy had just been cutting wood and loading it on a trailer. I thought to myself that anyone who could run a chain saw and load the cut pieces on a trailer, surely could beat out 40 hours doing something, besides getting money from the government. He then, in a last attempt, offered to let us walk in through him during the last week of the season (after he had hunted them all spring). That last offer sort made me mad, but I kept it to myself. He was obviously not very happy when I let him know that I’d be hunting there if I had to swim across and left the conversation at that. So here in lies the problem, we had permission to hunt a prime piece of turkey real estate that we could not access, short of getting wet. Finding a good place to hunt had started to turn into work.
After a few days of brooding over the matter, Carl and I discussed the situation along with the pros and cons about chest waders, canoes, inner tubes, and swinging bridges. We both agreed that a canoe would probably be our best bet since neither one of us owned a pair of chest waders and neither one of us knew how to build a swinging bridge, and neither one of us were going to invest the time or resources to learn how to build one. I could not tell the last time I saw an inner tube larger than a boat trailer wheel. Another call was made to a mutual friend of ours, James, and he let us know that he was more than willing to let us borrow his canoe. Since the problem of transportation was solved, we were in high cotton. James had let us know that all we had to do was drive to his house and pick it up whenever we needed it.
When the United States Marines stormed the beaches of Normandy, they did so with M1 Garand’s, rucksacks, and steel pots, rather than a turkey vest full of calls and shotguns. Carl and I had played our hunt up so far as to say that we were going to storm the beaches and wreck havoc on any gobbler that would be willing answer a call. My football coach in high school talked about the importance of practice, and more importantly, talked about how thinking, before and after practice, about blocking assignments and foot work would make us better players. He would tell about this study some university had done on basketball foul shots. Three groups of fifty students were chosen randomly and all were non-basketball players. One group of fifty would practice shooting foul shots for 1 hour a day. The next group of fifty would visualize and think about shooting foul shots for one hour a day. The last group did nothing concerning foul shots. At the end of an allotted time period, there was a test given to see how many foul shots could be made by each group. Obviously, the group that practiced performed the best. Just as obvious, the group that done nothing but drink cheap beer and eat pizza scored the poorest. Hypothesis would lead us to think that the visualizing bunch scored middle ways between the practicing group and beer drinking group. This was not the case however. The visualizing group performed a lot closer on the line to the ones that practiced than they scored to the partiers. I know that I had lay in bed at night envisioning a canoe silently cutting through the still water and come to halt as it grounded on the opposite side of Walker’s Creek, with two veteran turkey hunters stealthily making their way out of the canoe and up the bank into a stand of pines, like two Special Ops soldiers, moving ghostlike, into position to gain reconnaissance. I believe I had thought and played out our approach in my mind enough that I could have done it blind folded. Since our first invasion would have to be live, visualizing and thinking about the approach was all we had. I know that I done an awful lot of thinking about it. Carl and I had called each other just about every other night talking about, so I know he was doing a lot of visualizing himself. We were ready for our assault.
April 16, 2010 was a Friday, and at about 0530, with a canoe in the bed of the truck, Carl’s headlights were shining down the road on the west side of the creek. Carl parked in the widest spot we could find and we both rolled out like a couple of kids that had just been let out of a car at an amusement park after riding for 3 hours to get there. We finally gathered our selves enough to unload the canoe out of the truck and get it down to the creek side without making a bunch of racket. We carefully and quietly took it down the steep bank and placed it in the water at a point to where a long rock protruded out into the creek and made a small eddy or cove, perfect for getting in and out of a canoe. Phase 1 of our mission was complete. We quickly scurried back up the bank to grab our guns and turkey vests.
When we arrived back to the canoe with our stuff, I put my turkey vest on and laid my shotgun in the bottom. Carl kept the pitiful excuse for a watercraft stable by holding it tight to the rock, while I was going about the business of trying to get in and settled. I should have known something was wrong when I could barely fit my feet in between the seat and the front of the canoe, which eventually I realized later, was actually the stern end. This basically amounted to a horse’s rear end trying to get into the stern end of a canoe, backwards, and it doesn’t add up any way you measure it. I did manage to get both feet in the small space and my butt on the seat, still, at this point, thinking about what a turkey haven we were heading to, and what trouble those gobblers were about to be in. I was obviously putting the cart before the horse. I motioned to Carl to climb on board.
When Carl took both hands off of the canoe, it was like turning out a bucking horse from the shoot, and I was on top of it. To say that I was trying to maintain balance would be a gross understatement. To say that I was fighting it would be more realistic. The only thing that I didn’t say was “whoa, boy”. I did not keep time and I am fairly certain Carl didn’t either, so I’m not sure if I made it the full eight seconds or not, but all at once the horn blew and the clowns came running. I remember having both hands on each side of the canoe, holding on for dear life trying to stay in. I also remember, about one second before it flipped and threw me out, being exactly ninety degrees from upright. That one second seemed like five minutes at the time. The last thing I remember was thinking was that this was going to leave a mark. At approximately 0550 I was standing in Walker’s Creek in water up to my neck unable to breathe or talk. I had not anticipated the water being that deep and certainly not that cold. In fact, I had not even considered the depth or the temperature of Walker’s Creek as participants, but they somehow managed to substitute themselves into the game.
Carl pulled me up out of the water and asked if I was OK. All I could do, like a fish out of water, was move my mouth open and closed. I could not breathe nor talk for several minutes. I just stood there and must have looked pitiful as water was running out of my Mossy Oak clothes and sounded like water being poured onto a rock from a five gallon bucket. I was about half stooped over and my arms out, away from my body. After about 5 or 10 minutes I was able to speak and had at least caught my breath. Carl asked if I wanted to go back home. My judgment must have been marred, as I was still thinking about the gobblers on the other side of the creek. I said “let’s try it again”. Astonished, Carl reluctantly said “OK”. So we decided to take another stab at it. Somehow, we were able to climb back in the canoe and still facing out the back, we managed to paddle over to the other side of the creek. Carl paddled the whole length and I, as if it were helping, sat with outstretched arms like a performer on a high wire at the circus keeping balance. I felt like Rose on the front of the Titanic. When we reached the other side, I finally heard the beautiful sound of rocks dragging on the bottom of the canoe and I knew we had reached the opposite side of the creek. I jumped out and began pulling the canoe up the bank, standing in water about ankle deep. Carl then whispers “swing the canoe around so I don’t have to get my feet wet”. It was still dark enough that he could not see my face turn 3 shades of red as I was biting my lip. I was too cold and wet to think of something smart to say and since we had yet to have any sort of disagreement between us, I mumbled under my breath similarly to a brother who had just been told by his baby sister that she was telling mom. Besides that, Carl is about 12 years older than me, and I’ve always been taught to respect my elders.
After I had made sure that Carl stepped onto dry land without getting one drop of water on his boots, I began the process of stripping off my clothes and wringing, what seemed like, gallons of water out of them. The sky was turning that light shade of grey on the horizon, and I was hoping that I could get them wrung out and back on before it started breaking daylight, but not so much to begin the assault on the gobblers. Typically, men are not the most proud of themselves when they are cold and wet, which is totally opposite from the good looking gals in white t-shirts during spring break. The same ones that are standing on a stage, posing in front of hundreds of boisterous guys, ready to get a pitcher full of ice water dumped on their chests. Not only that, but another fear had reared its ugly head, and that was the fear of someone spotting us from the road and starting some viscous, unwarranted rumor. So I was working like a mad man trying to upgrade my status from absolutely soaking wet to just plain wet, as well as to avoid giving anyone an excuse to go to the local sporting goods store and say they saw two hunters on the creek bank and one was completely nude and barely legal at the time.
After my clothes had finally been wrung out and put back on, we started up into the stand of pines anticipating the first gobbles of the morning. We walked very slowly and quietly to get to a knoll that we decided beforehand, would be a good place to listen. The only sound made from our approach was the water squishing out of my boots with each step as we stalked through the soft pine needles. When we had reached the little knoll, we stood still and listened intently. My boots squished each time my weight would shift. After about ten minutes of listening, my damp clothes began to wick the heat away from my body and I was getting colder by the minute. Right on the brink of shivering, I began walking around Carl in about 30 yard circles to try to maintain some body heat. Our excitement began to fade with each minute that passed without a turkey gobbling. Our turkey haven was beginning to turn into a dud trip with each passing second of silence, and our high expectations began to turn into disappointment. Finally, a lone gobbler sounded off in the distance. We quickly made up some ground on the gobbler, realizing that he was at least three to four hundred yards away. We moved to an open flat and decided to set up and call to see what was going to happen, figuring the gobbler was either going to move toward us or away from us and the woods were too open to try to get much closer.
We sat down and got situated. Carl was sitting at the base of a big poplar to my right. I had sat against a large white oak. I was reluctant to sit back completely against the tree since my jacket was still extremely damp, and the dampness made drops of water run down the small of my back. So I sat, very lightly to avoid losing anymore body heat. We both put our face nets on. Mine was still full of water and making my nose, ears, and neck cold, as I could feel water running down between my shoulders. Since my box call and slate call had been submersed in water about a half an hour earlier, I could have left them back at the canoe to avoid carrying any unnecessary weight. I typically carry three or four different kinds of mouth calls and since everything else was wet, I figured that I would have to rely on those for the day. I began digging through my soggy vest in search of my favorite.
After placing my mouth call in between my chattering teeth, I thought that doing so, was an amazing feat that I had not bit my thumb off. I looked at Carl and he gave me the thumbs up, signaling that he was ready and I offered up the first seductive tree yelp of the morning. They went unanswered. We sat a few minutes, and since it was already nearing fly-down time, I threw out some excited cuts, as a hen flying down from her roost. This roused a gobble from the tom and I knew that he was on the ground now. About five more minutes had passed and I was getting ready to yelp again, when I heard the most disappointing of sounds in the turkey woods, and I am not talking about an alarmed putt. The sound of a shotgun blast came from where the gobbler had been, and echoed slowly past us. My heart sank and I am sure Carl’s did as well as we looked at each other. If I had a dollar for every hunt that ended in with a gunshot from another party besides the one that I am involved with, I wouldn’t be rich, but I could certainly buy a steak dinner. We sat there for awhile, in silence, both of us obviously disappointed that this turkey haven, this promised land of turkey gobblers had let us down, well below our expectations.
We sat there and just listened for several more minutes and the damp clothes and sudden loss of adrenaline were beginning to take their toll on my body temperature and I began shivering. I motioned to Carl to get up and told him that I needed to walk some in order to generate some heat. We quickly found a 4-wheeler path and started making our way toward where the turkey had gobbled that morning, knowing all the while that our efforts were probably in vain. As we walked in the daylight, we noticed that the woods were absolutely gorgeous with large open flats and very little underbrush, perfect for a strutting gobbler. The sun started to shine, as the morning fog began to lift off the creek bottom. We sat down for a bit in a small open spot that looked inviting to me due to the sunlight. When we sat down, I began to laugh, almost uncontrollably, thinking about all of the events that had transpired during the morning. I have always enjoyed watching baseball and football follies over the years, and if there was any way we could have been filmed, we would have surely made the hunting follies highlight reel. I began to shiver again so we got back up and started to walk. I was curious to see where that gobbler had been.
When we crested the next knoll, I told Carl that the turkey must of have been in this general area, somewhere. Then we both, almost simultaneously spotted a small homemade box blind made of two by fours and plywood, painted olive drab green, brown, and black. As we approached the blind, about twenty yards in front of it, was a huge area where turkeys had been scratching. As I looked closer, under the scratching, were kernels of cracked corn laying all over the place. This obviously made it clear to me as to why the fellow tried to discourage us from hunting this area. I quickly regained all of the heat to my body as my blood boiled. I walked over to the little blind and found the fresh Remington Nitro Mag 4 shot hull that was lying inside. Like detectives, we pieced the hunt back together. The hunter had obviously walked in well before daylight to get into the blind without being detected by the turkeys. The gobbler, judging from the size of the area of scratching, had a large harem of hens. The hunter, either waited for them to come to the knoll, or he sat in the blind with a galvanized bucket half full of corn and shook it to consummate the deal quicker. If he chose the latter, he had taken the bucket and the yellow yelper out with him, and I hoped it was weighing him down. Since I’m not at all a fan of a rifle in the spring gobbler woods, I gave the victorious cheater a bit of kudos for at least using a shotgun, but just a very little bit. I still, out of spite, hoped that the flopping gobbler had spurred him in the hand when he went to retrieve it. It appeared that our work here was done, and Carl and I decided to head for home.
As we walked back towards the tip of peninsula, I was dreading the ride back across the creek. The walking and the sunlight had started to dry me out a bit. We neared the approximate place where we had set up on the gobbler, which by now, was probably at the nearest check station, with a group of old men gathered around listening to the story of valor the crooked hunter was surely telling. The same story which I had still hoped ended with “and when I got to him, he spurred me in the hand”, as he showed the men standing there with eyes wide and mouths open in awe. I noticed the place where we had set up earlier that morning, recognizable by the matted down leaves at the bases of the trees, and I thought I heard a gobble. I asked Carl if he had heard it, and he agreed that he had heard something. I cut on the diaphragm call and sure enough, a gobbler responded back. As we began to scramble to get set up, I told Carl that the bird sounded like he was standing in the canoe. As we sat down, Carl was again to my right. I could not help but wonder if this gobbler had seen the proceedings of the morning, and had just now composed himself enough to quit laughing and proceed with his normal business. I also wondered if gobblers could gobble with sore ribs.
I began to yelp to the gobbler and he responded very favorably, as he cut me off. The game was on. This was what we had come here for. Maybe we had been too quick to be disappointed, as we had let the master baiter get the best of us. We were going to get the last laugh. I started to seductively work the gobbler in by some soft yelping and contented feeding purrs. He seemed to get hung up in the stand of pines for a little bit, but after a few minutes, he had worked it out, and was now making his way towards our set up. After about 20 minutes, I could hear the big boy drumming as my eyes scanned frantically for him. Finally, I got my eye on him as he materialized through the pines in full strut. I could tell when he relaxed that he had a long paint brush for a beard. I stayed fixed on his big white head as he was about 70 yards out. He stood and looked for a while, scanning for the hen. If he would have kept moving along the route that he was using, and made up about half that distance, I would have had the chance to end a, not so graceful day on a high note, but he didn’t. For reasons, that only turkeys and God know why, instead of walking out the top of the ridge he decided to drop down, I supposed in an attempt to circle me. Carl, again, was set up 25 yards off my right shoulder. I then conceded that this was going to be his bird as it appeared to be walking into his lap, and the gobbler put me into a position to where I could not shoot. All I could do was become a spectator now and watch the show.
When the gobbler reached about 35-40 yards, he quickly came out of strut and threw his head up. I tried to calm him down with a purr. He made a motion as if he was going to leave, but he was not to the point that he wanted to run, as he done a little half circle. I whispered to Carl “shoot, SHOOT”. Carl’s Mossberg roared. Then I watched the big gobbler take wing and fly across the creek to safety, and I faintly heard the music from the Price Is Right, right after the contestant loses their chance at a new car. It was a clean miss as his pattern had hit a sapling dead center that was about 15-20 yards in front of him.
Carl looked at me then threw his hands up in the air as a gesture to ask “what next”. I just sat there, again almost laughing uncontrollably at our horrible luck for the day. I lay back in the leaves for the sun had warmed things up a bit, and just looked up at the cloudless sky, trying to absorb all the heat I could. I had been dumped in the creek. We were snookered by a baiter, and now big old fat miss on a big gobbler to top it off. Carl walked up and sat down next to me, still with the look of disbelief and offered me a pack of nabs, as if they would make everything better, which I supposed was a nice gesture. That pack of peanut butter crackers must have been in his vest since the late 80’s. Looking at them, I concluded that I could have probably ate them by poking a pin hole in the wrapper and squeezing the contents out into my mouth like a tube of tooth paste. I thought about it, but declined, not wanting to feel obligated. Carl sat down and began apologizing, “Man, you done all that work to get that gobbler close and I blew it. Man, I’m sorry.” I just lay in the leaves and still looking up into the Heavens and without looking at him, I offered up my condolences. “Well, calling gobblers in and missing them, is just a part of it”, I started. Carl has hunted spring gobblers long enough to know this. “But the thing that burns my ass up is that it happened while I was sitting here soaking wet and half froze to death. That doesn’t happen every day.” I had to at least get a small jab in even if the bell had rung.
Carl and I got up and proceeded to walk back to the canoe. In the daylight, it was easy to see that we had had it backwards to begin with. They really are much more stable when the passengers are situated in them correctly. I can say, however, that I have not been in a canoe since, and currently have no plans to be in one anytime in the foreseeable future. We paddled back across the creek and managed to load everything back on the truck without either one of us breaking a leg or arm. Although the day did not quite pan out the way we had envisioned in our minds, that day is as etched into my memory as a name on a tombstone, and will stay with me as long as long as the tombstone does not read my name. On the ride back to the house, Carl and I laughed and talked about how, one of these days, I will eventually come to visit him at the nursing home (since he is 12 years older, I’m banking that he will be there before I will), and we will relive the day we stormed the beaches as if it happened the day before my visit. Of course, me visiting him at the nursing home; was yet another jab after the bell.
"I hope all of you seen that, because I will NOT be doing it again" Jack Sparrow
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(no joke) to the bottom, losing half his feathers (a distance of over 100 yards) and when I finally got to him he had no beard and weighed 10 pounds. It was a VERY long climb back to the top and an even longer walk back to the truck. My Dad laughed the entire way and kept asking if he could carry the turkey for me to help ease the burden of such a "heavy" turkey. UGH! 
