Still another time, I'd been dropped off at first light to listen for gobbles. I finally heard one, very distant, and started hiking down a clay road that led in that general direction. At a fork, I hit a gobble on my box call, and got a gobble in return. Still distant, but now I knew which fork to take. I headed farther down the road, hit another gobble to locate the bird, and got nothing in reply. What the heck? I fired off another gobble; nothing. So I hit some loud, raspy yelps. A loud, urgent gobble echoed in reply! Still a ways off, but closer.
I hot-footed it down the road. I spotted a high point on the road and decided to set up just off the road at that point to wait for the bird. As I approached, my bobbing head peeking over the rise in the road, another bobbing head peeked over the same rise, towards me. It was my gobbler! The bird had been coming to me as fast as I had been going toward it. He spotted me, of course, then turned and ran away down that road with a swiftness that would make a track runner green with envy. I swear that sucker stood four feet tall and moved like the wind, if not faster.
Such has been my experience hunting turkeys. Oh, there have certainly been many other experiences, far too boring to relate... and then there are all the times when I had ample opportunities to kill illegal turkeys and didn't - but a nice, legal bird that plays by the rules, answers my calls and comes when he's supposed to, where he's supposed to? That, to me, is an entirely foreign concept. Perhaps one day I will know what that's like, but until then I suppose I'll just continue to add to my litany of campfire-tale failures, and depend on store-bought turkey to provide me with fowl to eat.
Here's hoping you have better luck than I in the turkey-hunting woods!
- Russ Chastain
