Alan Liere: Turkey hunting tests patience
It has been my experience that turkey hunting is somewhat akin to trick or treating when I was a kid – even when you dress up nice and do and say all the right things, there’s a chance the lady at the door will still give you raisins.
I got a lot of raisins in my sack during the turkey season that just ended – the same as last year. In fact, it took 11 months to forget about last year’s spring gobbler tribulations – the 3 a.m. alarms, the finger-numbing cold, the achy joints that came from trying to do a teenager’s day with a senior citizen’s body.
In the years that I’ve actually bagged a tom turkey, I have deceived myself into thinking I know everything there is to know about fooling these spring birds. Certainly I have all the right camouflage and gear. Then comes a year like last year when I developed several truly unique twists to screwing up a turkey hunt, followed by a year like this one when I couldn’t even screw up because I couldn’t find a bird that was remotely interested in my calling or my decoy.
By April 15, the first day of the 2015 spring turkey season, I’d forgotten what it was like to live on ibuprofen and coffee. My legs were no longer cramping up in the middle of the night, and it had been months since I’d had to excuse myself early from a social event so I could be in bed by 7 p.m. My enthusiasm and optimism were both running high … for about two weeks.
By the end of the second week in May, everyone but me had shot a turkey. I was depressed. It’s not that I particularly craved wild turkey gumbo as much as I was embarrassed to have my prowess so conspicuously challenged. By May 20, I’d averaged five scouting or hunting trips a week, often stumbling through soggy forests in the dark with a flashlight to find the spot where I “put the birds to bed” the previous evening. I had coyotes within 10 feet and I watched young deer frolic around my decoy. Good stuff. But turkeys? Nada. They gobbled. I called. They shut up and ran the other direction.
A friend suggested I was giving up too soon when a bird quit gobbling. And I must admit that when I’m up at 3 a.m., breakfast begins to sound mighty good by midmorning. I get bored and sleepy waiting under a tree when the woods go silent and my stomach thinks my throat has been cut.
With just a few days left in the spring season, I packed a box of raspberry-filled donuts and a book in my backpack. I hiked up the hill to my favorite tree at 9:30 a.m. on a soft, warm morning and made a few clucks with my diaphragm call. I then spent the next hour reading my book and eating donuts, pausing periodically to call again. At 10:30, I heard a gobble. I put the book down and clucked softly. A gobble cut me off.
At 11 a.m., a red, white and blue head materialized 50 yards below my hide. For 10 agonizing minutes the big tom strutted back and forth in full display, just out of range of my 20-gauge. Finally, he edged toward me and I shot him at 35 yards. Yes, I got a lot of raisins while turkey hunting this year, but just like trick or treating, once in a while there is a Big Hunk or a Mountain Bar and everything seems so right.