The Guide

The dogwood had shed all along the logging road that led to our listening spot. Its pale, unstained petals stood out even in the darkness. The ambient light gave them an almost glowing aesthetic. Though often associated with romantic evenings, it gave the moment an unexpected masculine beauty, much the same way my father’s florally carved holster held his duty weapon when I was a kid. Beautiful, but seemly out of sorts for its place and purpose.

The gobbler was late as we stood midway between the pasture at the front of the farm and the farthest food plot wondering if this would be one of the mornings that separated the definition of hunting from shooting. Nevertheless, once the tom started, he was consistent. After a few minutes of pointing, changing positions, cupping our ears, and other redneck forms of triangulation, I had a general idea of where the bird was. My guide, however, knew exactly where it was. The tom was roosted near a shelf that jutted out of the highest point of the farm. It was uphill for us and heavily wooded. We started the ascent at a normal pace on the closest logging road that went that direction. After 10 minutes or so of walking, we began the temporary trail blazing that so often accompanies turkey hunting the timber. That moment when you stray from the known path and start making your own as quietly as possible. The pace, slightly slower than normal, with pauses every 20 yards. Then 15 yards, followed by pauses every 10 yards with footsteps getting softer as we went. The gobbler was on the ground now, and almost certainly pacing the shelf above us. My guide had yet to make a call of any kind. There was no need to this point. With every pause in walking, there was a gobble. Our cadence slowed to only a couple of steps at a time as we continually rose in elevation, which eventually landed us on our hands and knees climbing over boulders as the incline increased.

I had known all along that we were almost certainly in violation of every turkey hunting handbook available, along with any other kind of tactical combat manual, by going directly at the turkey when it held the uphill advantage. I had quietly whispered the comment that “we’re getting close,” twice already. The third time I said it, was the exact same words as the other two, but this time with a connotation that I hoped came across as, “I know you have been turkey hunting longer than I have been alive, but we are getting too close for comfort.” I could now see the skyline above the tallest treetops on the highest point on the property and knew that we could not be more than 100 yards from this turkey. Not one to guide the guide, and with no time to debate it anyway, we crept gently a few more yards ahead before we finally began looking at the surrounding trees for a setup.

He sat down against a hardwood tree as broad as his shoulders and motioned for me to do the same on a tree 3 feet or so from his. At least I think he did. I may have read his mind.

I had many of the same calls and tools of the trade that he did, many of which he had purchased years before, but there was no need for them today as I relished in this hunt that I knew would one day be an impossibility. We had fought this battle together before under different circumstances with different scenery, and we were well aware of our roles.

The tree I sat down against was certainly suitable given the uphill landscape, but with a sapling of half-dollar circumference directly in front of me that would later prove to be almost ruinous. Five yards in front of it was another one of the very large boulders that dotted the landscape. I propped the gun up on my knee with the barrel just to the left of the sapling. I had a 50/50 chance of the bird walking either to the left or the right of it. My guide had yelped maybe twice before I had my answer. A feeling of despondent unraveling began falling over me when he said, “There he is. Do you see him?” I told him I couldn’t. “You can’t see him right there strutting?”

After having spent the past hour creeping, crawling, climbing and clipping our way to this point, I was disappointed in this sudden shift in momentum toward the turkey. The tom was directly behind the boulder in front of me. My heart sank as I knew the man not 5 feet to my right had a majestic view of a strutting tom walking a hardwood ridge close enough to hear footsteps, yet completely invisible to me. As if that was not bad enough, the footsteps crunched the leaves to the right of the boulder. I was going to have to move the gun barrel to the other side of the sapling. I pulled the gun into my shoulder with all my force trying as best I could to turn a 26-inch barrel into 20, but it was no use. The barrel was simply too long and was sticking past the sapling about 4 inches. I began pulling the barrel upward centimeter by centimeter and hoping that since I couldn’t see the gobbler, it couldn’t see me. He whisper-yelled at me “Easy!” There was no way around it, and I finally got the barrel where it needed to be just in time to see the first fleck of white movement appear from behind the boulder. The beak and eyes appeared. Two bobbing movements then produced waddles. I had never hunted with a red dot before, but I was about to be grateful for its precision. I had provided Mr. Tom all the chances I was going to and had seen all of the target I needed to see. With the bark of the shotgun, the bird disappeared. A long couple of seconds passed as I waited for some kind of inclination as to what had happened. Possibly even a second chance if one was provided. I heard, “You got him! Go get him!”

He had fallen off the ledge behind the boulder that had provided his cover, but in retrospect, had been the cornerstone of my camouflage. The hugs and congratulations commenced as my breath came back to me. The stories from both seats were worth telling at least twice on the walk back as I felt the uncommon peck on the back of my leg with each step. The sun’s golden rays lit up the pasture and bounced off the barn as we neared the house to share our blessedness with the rest of the family.

With every reminisce of the hunt, the improbability of its success became more evident. My guide later told me that he had attempted this maneuver about 25 times over the past 10 years or so, with no such luck. But as the old adage goes, there is no substitute for experience. He knew that turkey wasn’t coming down off the ridge no matter how much calling we did and that getting almost within sight of him was the only option. His patience and experience gave him the confidence to try it for a 26th time. Daddy is sometimes stubborn about things like that. And I was thankful!