Hurdles and Challenges

The light breeze was blowing, cutting straight through my clothes, biting at my skin. And to think, the temperatures were in the mid-60s last week at this same time.

I sat shivering thinking how I had just gotten to my predawn listening post and how I would likely be sitting for a while before gobble time. I knew that I would soon be moving around chasing after gobbling turkeys and that would warm me up. I had visions of sitting against a tree with the fresh rays of sunlight shining on me knowing that would also bring warmth as well.

This would not be the first time Mother Nature cast challenges in front of my will to achieve, and I was sure this would not be the last time she would throw roadblocks in my way. Seemed to me at that moment, looking back at my life’s adventures, the inner sheer will to hunt has always found a way to survive within my soul. An impromptu smile creased the ends of my lips, and somehow, I found warmth in that thought.

My earliest attempts at turkey hunting were from the days of my youth. I made every mistake in the book – some mistakes so boneheaded that I’m too proud to admit. And I proceeded to repeat those mistakes over and over again, year after year, as if my unbridled youthful enthusiasm for chasing ol’ tom was somehow the root of every regretful, unsuccessful and frustrating duel I ever lost with those birds. It was a long learning curve before finally having success. I can clearly see now after all these years, the correlation between how the young man needed to grow older and wiser in order to develop the required amount of patience and maturity needed to build the necessary skills, knowledge and experience required.

I woke from my reverie to the realization that knowledge and experience were no longer detrimental challenges to the effort anymore. Now an old man, my hurdles were different. Gone was any doubt about which call to use and how to use it, or when to stay put and when to move, or how to read the turkey’s mood. If my dignity will allow the truth, I cannot remember the last time I heard spitting and drumming. If I could I eventually admitted to myself recently that ringing of tinnitus out of my ears, things would be better. I also have to look hard with extra concentration to see the sights on my shotgun when taking aim. And sometimes, I don’t always see things when younger men in my company readily point them out at a distance.

I eventually admitted to myself recently that my chosen tactics and strategies were more often than not based on low physical exertion rather than the boisterous energy of my youth. The bones ache, the joints crack and the body hurts within its own chorus of existence. And while I can explicitly regale you with stories of past hunting adventures, I sometimes cannot remember if I put shells into my gun or tied my own shoes. I am afraid these challenges are permanent, and it pains me to admit such.

The gleam of enlightenment was bright in my eyes. I realized that while the challenges of hunting the wild turkey had changed over the course of my life, they were still always there. Even when the adequate amounts of knowledge and experience existed within me to be successful, and before the beginning challenges of aging entered my life making things more difficult, the struggles of family, mortgage, career and other middle-aged maladies carelessly ate away at the available time and priorities at that moment. The old expressions, nothing in life is free and no one owes you anything, are likely universal cosmic truths. Even the relaxed lifestyle of a dog has to put up with the persistent irritation of fleas.

Just maybe the evolutionary challenges of turkey hunting and the essence of life itself can be relatable as parallel understandings. Maybe I am not wise enough to pick clean that bone, but to me, the struggles of life for our own existence and our reasons for living and surviving the human experience, while different for each person, the universality of having everlasting challenges still exists.

The first gobble of the morning sharply broke through the cold air, and the dimly lit morning brought me back to reality from my thoughts. With my arms wrapped tightly around myself, preserving a little warmth, I renewed my resolve to overcome and achieve this challenge by pulling my shotgun closer to my side as a reminder to focus on the task at hand. That turkey and I had a date with the eternal forces of fate, and I sure as hell needed to be ready because I knew without a doubt the bird would be.