FULLY INVESTED

Turkey hunting isn’t just a season for Dave Murphy. It’s a lifestyle.

While some hunters are riding golf carts during the off-season, Murphy is dragging a cultivator behind his four-wheeler to groom and plant food plots on his 20 acres in Stevens County.

He and his hunting partner, Larry Walker, have spent their weekends building a dream cabin – not the kind that would fetch a big price from Yuppies flocking to Idaho lakeshores, but rather a cabin that would capture a hunter’s heart.

The insulated one-roomer is compact, easily heated by a small stove that consumes little firewood and little time to cut and split it.

It has bunks, a loft for the kids, lanterns, a gas cooking stove out of Walker’s old camper and a nice whitetail buck on the wall.

Best of all, it’s at the end of a road where no one else will interfere with the pursuit of game. The cabin is situated with a covered porch where Murphy can sit in a chair and practice his archery skills in the evening while listening to turkeys going to roost.

Trees have been cleared or thinned in some places to make room for food plots and let sunlight to the forest floor.

“We brought in two different (private) biologists to get ideas on what to plant,” he said.

The plots bulge and narrow as they wrap around trees, bend around brush and ease up to thickets to provide food for turkeys and deer without sacrificing security.

One could see how this relationship of food and cover worked on Saturday afternoon, when a hen turkey stepped out of the woods and into one of the meadow-like food plots. She scratched and pecked at the mix of sprouting grasses and forbs and the grains that remained in the soil from last year’s crop.

As we watched from the cabin’s front window, a party of three clumsy jakes came into the opening, jousting and jockeying for position before joining the hen to feed.

The beauty of the design was demonstrated when something out of our sight spooked the birds. They turned and sprinted out of the food plot, but they had to go only about 10 yards to cover, where they stopped, stretched their necks, looked in all directions until they determined all was clear. Then they relaxed.

“No matter how big a field or meadow is, the turkeys usually use the edge,” Murphy said. “We’re not just creating food plots here. We’re creating habitat.”

Murphy works as a computer networking technician for School District 81 during the day and moonlights as a rep for Primos, a company that makes game calls.

“Dave has so many turkey calls, his vest weighs a ton,” said Walker.

But unlike many hunters who might have the money and curiosity to simply acquire a lot of calls, Murphy has practiced and mastered every one of them.

I joined him on Saturday to see how this man with years of turkey hunting experience would prepare for the Sunday season opener. After all, he would be guiding a distinguished guest.

The National Wild Turkey Federation this year has been looking for expert hunters to help disabled Iraq war veterans get out and experience a proper turkey hunt.

Murphy was paired with Ryan Elkins, 26, who suffered disabling wounds to his body and head from an explosion while doing a sweep for roadside bombs in 2004.

When the men drove from their Spokane Valley homes to Stevens County Saturday, it was obvious to Elkins that preparations for the hunt had been in the making not for days, but for years.

“Turkeys have patterns,” Murphy explained as they walked around the property to see where Ryan would be hunting the next morning. “That doesn’t mean they’ll do the same thing every day, but by scouting them you get an idea of what they do and where they are likely to show up at different times of day.

“That’s one of the big mistakes unsuccessful hunters make. They might know where the turkeys are going to be first thing in the morning, but if it doesn’t work out, they get anxious to get back to McDonald’s before they stop serving breakfast.

“The gobblers often respond better to calls later in the day.”

As they picked out the spot for a blind, a tom could be heard gobbling in the distance, louder and louder, indicating that it was moving our direction.

Murphy said it was time to go back to the cabin and hole up to avoid spooking the birds.

Elkins smiled and said the gobbling was starting to make his trigger finger itch.

“I just love hunting,” he said. “I donate blood to a plasma center every week so I can buy hunting stuff. Being in the Marines, I’m not afraid of needles.”

Despite year-round effort to groom their patch of turkey hunting paradise, Murphy and Walker were going to give Elkins the first shot at a gobbler on opening day.

They pegged where the turkeys went to roost that night and retired to the cabin, where Elkin went through a duffle bag full of camo clothing and gear local sporting goods stores had donated to honor his sacrifice for the country.

Murphy showed him how to condition his glass striker call. They stirred up a meal of canned stew, polish sausage and French rolls.

“It was a great hunter’s meal,” Elkins said. “But it was a long night. They set the alarm for 4:30, but I was wide awake at 3:30.”

Being on private property with little chance of luring another hunter into a dangerous situation, Murphy planned to use a gobble call first thing in the morning and a gobbler decoy over a squatting hen decoy.

“We have this one big old tom out here we call L.B.,” Murphy said. L.B. could stand for Long Beard, but it doesn’t. The family paper translation is “Lucky Bugger.” The tom has used it smarts to narrowly outfox Murphy for several years.

“Seems like he’s always got this hens, so you can’t call him away from them,” Murphy said. “But he’s very aggressive to other gobblers. So we’re going to give this a try and see if Ryan can end the bird’s lucky streak.”

The hunt went like clockwork. In the blind by 5:20 a.m., the first jakes were within shooting distance by 5:40.

“Ryan is a Marine, he trained to be patient,” Murphy said.

“I waited and it paid off,” Ryan said. “I finally got a chance at a big one. One shot. He had a 9-inch beard and three-quarter-inch spurs.

“I’m hooked on turkey hunting. I don’t know how it could have been any better.”

Producing those types of hunts year after year for himself and friends is no accident, Murphy said, adding,

“I live for this.”