Was able to get out on Friday to try and get on the birds again. Ended up being a pretty tough hunt! Decided I enjoyed writing up the account of it, so here it is. Its long again, but maybe all stories should be!
My morning began the previous morning when I was able to go listen for birds at dawn. Standing in the same place I had the Friday before when the turkeys just wouldn’t shut up I listened to the songs of the whippoorwills give way to the melodies of the multitude of other songbirds. I heard one gobbler, and not until 6:10. I drove the road. Stopped a few times and listened. One other bird made his presence known, and he did so with vigor and frequently. I had an idea of where he was, but had never been there myself. I didn’t have the, probably, most important item in my vest with me (as I didn’t have my vest with me), so I wasn’t able to look at my maps and stick a pin where I thought he was.
Once I got the maps in hand I found that the old Foot Travel Only road, that heads North from the East-West “main” forest road, curves back to the west a ways before heading east along a high ridge. That curve West would allow me to get above the birds that were gobbling that morning. I figured that would be a good thing, and called hiking up that road before dawn “Plan A”. The overall plan included heading to my Jefferson National Forest spot after work and listening before dark, then sleeping in my car. The birds went to roost silently.
I was left almost completely indecisive. Do I go with “Plan A”? Do I stay where I am knowing of the number of birds I heard the previous weekend from this one spot? It is supposed to be windy tomorrow, so will I even be able to hear the birds in the AM?
Waking up the next morning at 4:45 everything felt right. It was dead calm in the open hardwoods and the whippoorwills were singing their hearts out. I strapped put on my loaded do-it-yourself turkey vest and stood 30 feet from my truck. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly “Plan A”, but it was familiar. As a human, I have a small fear of the unknown. I was fairly sure the birds would light up around me as they had the weekend prior so there I stood, improvising “Plan B”.
One whippoorwill stuck within a friendly distance of 30-50 yards of me and made sounds that I had never heard before. As the light began painting over the black Eastern horizon I turned on my listening ears. All I could hear was my little friend, singing his never-ending song in the pre-dawn. As a disclaimer, I have always loved the sound of whippoorwills. This guy, though, drove me nuts. He was incessant, and seemed to be begging for a round of magnum 4’s. As 6:00 drew near, I was starting to worry I might never hear a gobble. I played the Barred Owl song tune my mouth. No takers. At 6:10, I scratched my nose and thought I heard that sound, but wasn’t sure. Even if it was a turkey it was a mile away. There, again. So it’s a turkey. But I would have to drive and hike a ways to get to him, so I waited to see if anything else would sound off nearby. By 6:20, only hearing the one bird put me in my truck and driving to bring “Plan A” into action. 200 yards to the Northwest of my truck, I paused on the Foot Travel Only trail to listen and call. I didn’t have to call to hear a bird across the bowl that was formed by the ridge I was on and the ridge the road would follow when it turned back East. While I knew where the bird was, there was no getting to him in a “head-on” fashion. If I followed the road, I would eventually end up above where he was consistently sounding off, and could make an attack from there. “Plan C”, a slight deviation from “Plan A”, began with a hustling walk on the FTO road. It seemed untouched, except for some half buried, glass beer bottles and a pair of youth sized, heavily insulated gloves laying beside a plastic Pepsi bottle. There were no boot prints. Only a slightly noticeable deer trail skirted the several storm fallen trees that gated the road every couple hundred yards. This, I felt, could only be a good thing.
I finally reached the curve back East. That point in the road provided a perfect setting for the fresh turkey scratchings that were scattered along the hardwood-studded, flat ridge top. At that moment, “Plan D” would be to come back to that spot and sit it out in hopes that a bird would come scooting through there. “Plan D” would never come to fruition.
The bird kept gobbling, and I kept walking. Although I walked and walked, he never seemed to be any closer. I figured it was the terrain and the beginning whisps of breezes that were marring his sound, and I kept walking. I came to the top of what would turn into a saddle below me, a small point in the road gave me a beautiful view of the sunrise over the ground between me and where I had walked. I put my Zink Lil’ Green Machine in my mouth and gave a few yelps. Five seconds later the bird gobbled again, this time seemingly four to five hundred yards up the road and below me. I kept heading up the road, nearing almost 2 miles of travel and 500 feet of elevation gain. The end of the road came suddenly in the midst of a clear cut that was no more than 15 years old. The trees were shorter and denser than the surrounding, open hardwoods. I walked down hill, figuring it would open up and provide some better looking habitat and, hopefully, that darned gobbler. Coming to the bottom of the cut area I found myself on top of a saddle that would drop down 30 feet to a big flat below that was not yet visible to me. A draw came up on my left side, on the other side of which was another big flat at my elevation. It was here I decided to try calling to see if I couldn’t get something to talk back.
I hit the call, yelping at a decent volume. I was immediately answered by a booming gobble no more than 75 yards in front of me on the not-yet-visible flat. Excited, I dove for the first tree I could see, which was 2 yards in front of me. As I began to sit down, I could see the outskirts of the oak flat below, and heard hurried footsteps in the dry leaves… going the other way.
Did I spook him? No… no way. I called. Nothing. I let the idea of spooking the bird sink in for 15 minutes while I sat dumbfounded. If I had simply dropped to the ground, even without a tree behind me, I would have been fine. The bird would have had to come up the rise and would be at the end of my gun barrel when he reached the top. If I had just gone to the tree behind me, I would have been fine. But no, I went forward and showed myself to the bird below. Or maybe he heard me walking and picked me out as “not a hen”. Either way, I had spooked him.
I stood up and called because, well, because I did. Was that a gobble to the West from whence I came? I waited. This time, it was distinct and only 200 yards on the flat opposite the draw. I scampered into the draw and began my ascent up the other side and, not wanting to show myself to the flat over the top, picked a tree and faced uphill.
7:30. The time I sat down, scratching the leaves from the base of the tree like a hen so that I could sit without crunching. 7:31. The time I called and the bird gobbled up on the flat directly West from me and only about 100 yards. I scratched the leaves. I hunkered down on my gun. I waited. 7:33. The time the bird gobbled again at the same distance, but another 30 yards to my right (his uphill). 9:45. The time he mercifully shut up. He had never been more than 125 yards away. I would call, he would gobble. I would wait. He would gobble again to the right or left. He was in his strut zone, and refused to leave it. I stood up and figured I had two options. “Plan E”: I could head back up to the road and see if I couldn’t get around him and cut him off, as the last couple gobbles pinned him heading directly West. “Plan F”: I could go downhill and walk through the descending flat and see if I couldn’t catch a bird in the open. I voted for “Plan E”, and headed uphill through the denser, younger trees that provided cover from the flat where the turkey probably still was.
I reached the road and made my way West, covering my boot tracks going the opposite way. I reached a wide, flat draw about 250 yards from where I hit the trail and snuck down in it about 50 yards. Pausing, I gathered my diaphragm in my mouth and gave a few soft yelps. Not hearing anything in return I cranked up the volume, cutting and yelping at the top of my diaphragm’s lungs. The bird gobbled, which almost caught me by surprise. I couldn’t believe I was actually able to get around him! “Plan E”, working!
He was about 200 yards to my Southeast, and a saddle separated me from the flat I knew he was on. I waited for the wind to cover my sound, and hustled up the saddle and sat down on top, 30 yards from the edge of the rise. As I did so, he gobbled once more. I could see the outer edges of the flat I believed the bird was on and hoped to be able to see him coming. And I waited. 10:30. The time I realized it was pretty well over between me and Ole Tom. He had not made a sound since I sat down. His stubbornness and persistent “you-best-come-to-me attitude” had me defeated.
I proceeded with “Plan F” from there. Walk 100 yards and stop, wait for the wind to die down, call, and repeat. At one point, I came to a large boulder amidst the hardwood trees and climbed to the top. I called from there but, of course, nothing responded. A young dogwood tree 30 yards from me innocently showed off its fresh blossoms, and the wind had a warm feel to it. I reveled in this little piece of heaven for five minutes before climbing down and moving on.
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Finally, I popped out of the forest onto the main Forest Service road. It was 11:45. I called, and heard nothing. At this point, I was satisfied with “defeat” and the idea that the hunt was over. My face mask necklace came off as did my gloves, and I reached into my vest and pulled out my water bottle and the Nutty Bar that had been in there since a week before. Breakfast on my hike back to the truck was nothing short of delectable, and maybe only because of my level of hunger.
From what I have learned, I called this day a “typical” one for the turkey hunter. It isn’t every time that the plans you have made before you step out of the truck in the pre-dawn are even attempted. You roll with the punches. You feed off of the adrenaline rush that is that sound we all crave, and getting close in hopes of sweet talking that bird into gun range.
And no matter what happens we live. And no matter what happens we learn. And if to live and learn is not our goals in life, then something isn’t going right. And some of us make excuses as to why we aren’t living while we are learning, or learning while we are living.
My excuse for not walking out of the woods with the heft of a turkey over my shoulder: That darned East Wind.
