Matt Liere: Taunts continue despite paying dues on turkey hunt

This year’s spring turkey season ended just as every other had for the last several years – with a bang – save for one slight difference: no turkey.

I missed a downhill shot at a Jake from 40-plus yards. A somewhat distant opportunity, but not beyond the reach of a 12-gauge No. 4.

I swear I saw the bird flip me the same after shaking off the shot, just before running to catch up to the rest of his ambushed buddies. End-of-seasonitis got the best of me, and now it was over. While disappointing to be going home empty handed, I felt a great sense of relief. My father was about to find out that I missed a turkey, and I couldn’t have been happier.

For the past five years, I’d managed to bag a bird, typically on the first day of the season. I hadn’t missed yet, and one year even got lucky enough to bag two turkeys with one shot. Dad had let me know early on, around the end of my third season, that he thought my head was getting “a bit too big for my britches.” Not only did the saying lack merit, it made absolutely no sense. Why would someone try to put pants over their head?

Regardless, it was Dad’s position that it wasn’t real turkey hunting until you’d paid your dues. These might include suffering biting black gnats, dark, rain-soaked mornings in intolerably cold conditions, monotonously long, birdless days, or blowing the perfect setup with a triple-whammy miss. Until these or similar circumstances occurred, you were only pretending.

Bagging a turkey after sitting for only 15 minutes in a hastily built blind from 10 yards out did not qualify as real in his playbook. So, despite the trophy tail fans proudly displayed across the walls in my house, Dad would just shake his head at them, proclaiming the same tired lines.

“Every turkey hunter …” he’d start off, pausing for effect before restarting, “… every real turkey hunter will have his day. You’ll pay your dues and miss one day, son. Every real turkey man does. When you do, you’ll know real turkey hunting.”

I smiled to myself as I picked up the decoy, thinking Dad wouldn’t be able to say it this time.

I was still in full camo and out of breath from my sprint down the mountain when I burst through his front door. Unfazed, he put down the newspaper as I gasped out the morning’s events – the setup, the calling, the waiting. I used great detail to set the scene, using wildly animated body movements for emphasis and sounds for effect, before pulling the trigger.

“And I missed!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms up in triumph.

“You missed? How?” he asked. “And why are you grinning?

“Well,” I stammered, “you told me that it wasn’t real turkey hunting until I missed. And I missed.”

I waited patiently for a smile to erase his stoic expression, signaling the approval I apparently longed so much. It never came.

He lifted the paper back up, hiding his face as he spoke from behind the print.

“That’s not turkey hunting. That’s turkey missing. And you shouldn’t be so darn happy about it, either.”

I realized my arms were still held aloft in the touchdown position. I lowered them.

“Besides,” Dad continued, “it’s 75 degrees on the mountain. That’s like hunting at the spa. You get your nails done while you were up there, too? Come talk to me after hunting in The Icebox on Mt. Spokane, or after you’ve …”

I shut the door behind me, cutting off whatever Dad had left to say, secretly wished he’d try to fit a pair of britches over his head.