You Just Never Know…

Forty-five years of turkey hunting create a number of advantages for the hunter. Four-and- a-half decades of calling tends to build at least a degree of proficiency on a variety of instruments. That much time in the woods will necessarily produce some small insights into the behaviors of meleagris gallopavo. You probably know the limits and capabilities of your shotgun by your 45th season. As indicated, a number of advantages developed over a long period of time.

There is another side. I won’t call them disadvantages, exactly. Let’s identify them as habits or biases. Both are in play when you have spent so much time chasing turkeys that you could believe that you have actually learned how to hunt them. Their unpredictability makes that kind of thinking a mistake. It also sets you up to be humbled and grateful for the fascinating, ever-changing delights of pursuing America’s grandest game bird. Consider me humbled and grateful at the conclusion of my 45th spring turkey season.

When someone begins an essay with ’45 years of turkey hunting’ … two thoughts come quickly to mind. One, the writer is terminally ill and wants to pen a retrospective to serve as a legacy of his long career as a turkey hunter. Not true in my case. I’m pretty healthy for a 66-year-old. Two, the writer desires a forum to extol his accomplishments over that long career, boring the reader with a list of victories in the field. Again, not true here. My failures far outnumber my successes concerning the hunting of the wild turkey. In fact, the balance sheet so favors the failures that I would prefer not to go into any further, embarrassing detail.

No, this discussion concerns neither the legacy of a hunter nearing the end of his pursuit, nor a retelling of the many hunts over the decades that produced a photo opportunity at their finish. This composition is about how, after so many years of toil and trouble in the turkey woods, the 45th season for this aspiring nimrod produced two hunts that completely surprised him, challenging his ingrained habits and biases.

I am blessed to have an extraordinary place to hunt in South Florida. I even wrote about it for this magazine (“Places,” Nov.-Dec. 2017). It’s so special, in fact, that I have returned to the same several acres every spring since 2011. My friend, Stacey Howell, introduced me to the area those 12 years ago, and I now wonder if he wishes that he hadn’t. He can’t get rid of me or move me away from this distinct and fixed location that we call The Killing Place (with good reason).

There is one element of the property, though, that has been frustrating from the start. The birds just don’t gobble much … at all. Truly. In the 11 seasons leading up to this one, I had only harvested two toms that gobbled in response to my calling, and their answers were few. I am not a wildlife biologist. Neither is Stacey. That has not prevented us from speculating endlessly on why these turkeys are so quiet. From an abundance of predators, to local hunting pressure, to a condition of South Florida … the rut is spread out because of the semi-tropical weather and the need for an intense, compressed gobbling/breeding season does not exist the way it does in northern states. We don’t know, and neither do a number of actual biologists that we have queried. We do know this: they are generally shut-mouthed enough that we considered naming my spot The Silent Place.

So, naturally, the first hunt of the 2022 season produced a huge and welcome surprise. Turkeys gobbled on opening morning. Several, at least five or six in multiple locations, all within calling range. They gobbled to my owling. They gobbled to each other. They gobbled to my tree calls. They gobbled to my yelping. One gobbled all the way to the gun just minutes after fly down. I even heard turkeys gobble at my shot! I was stunned. My equilibrium was disturbed. Not so disturbed that it interfered with the unalloyed joy of picking up a monstrous, old Osceola with dagger spurs and three beards. But still, I was a little wobbly walking back to the vehicle with my prize, wondering happily what had happened to the expected quietude of my special place.

Texas is known for loud and boisterous turkeys. Over the decades, my experience confirms this expectation. It is especially so on the farm that I hunt in Bell County. Yes, I am inordinately lucky to also have a special hunting place in the Lone Star State. Again, I wrote about this property for Turkey Call (“A Perfect Day,” March-April 2022). In that article, I described standing at my favorite listening spot at dawn on the day before the opener and hearing at least six gobblers sounding off in three different directions. And, that was just an average morning. I have heard up to a dozen from that same spot.

Four weeks after the splendid, surprise gobbling in South Florida, I got a much different and unwelcome surprise in central Texas. No gobbling from the roost at first light the Friday before the Saturday opener. None. In 10 years of hunting this area, that had never happened. Not once. I knew there were gobblers on the farm. I had laid eyes on two the previous afternoon. There was nothing wrong with the weather conditions, in fact I considered them ideal. The birds simply went against custom and stayed quiet.

I know the property well, so I decided to plan a setup for the opener in a little glade where I consistently see turkeys, without the benefit of audio confirmation of their presence. As an aside, Tom Kelly has written about the impedimenta that we all seem to burden ourselves with as modern-day turkey hunters. Since I couldn’t carry Kelly’s typewriter, it would be foolish to write about something he has already dealt with in print (somewhat like a house painter touching up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). But I recalled his words as I dragged my chair, decoys, blind-building material and various other equipment to my setup the afternoon before opening day to have less to carry the next morning. It makes a man wistful, remembering the walk into the woods with just a call and a shotgun 40 years ago.

Day broke on Saturday still and cool and … silent. In the stillness, I did my usual sequence of soft tree calls on my pot. No response. I yelped with my mouth call after a suitable interval. Nothing. Fly down time came and went and the silence lingered. As the sun barely edged up to the horizon, without any warning or sound, a strutting gobbler appeared in range to the north. He moved quickly to my decoys, presented himself between a hen and a jake, tail fan backlit by the hint of that rising sun, and I pulled the trigger. His image, displaying himself between those decoys in the pale, fresh sunlight, is etched in my memory in permanent ink. Much like my Florida gobbler, this Rio was an old warrior with deeply curved hooks, a brute that pulled the scales down below the 25-pound bar. Humbled and grateful, indeed.

Turkeys in south Florida don’t gobble much. Turkeys in central Texas gobble a lot. I think. Maybe. I could be mistaken. You just never know …