“Hope springs eternal from the human breast” Alexander Pope
Spring gobbler season is two days away and I am excited. I have been thinking about this for a week and remembering that last year I didn’t feel this way. Somehow last year I just didn’t seem to have the old fire to chase turkeys over these mountains as in the past.
It’s Saturday, the season starts on Monday and my buddy and I are making a grand supper in camp, hot dogs with all the fixings, chili, onions, slaw, and catsup if you want to ruin a really good dog. We go over our plans for the next day which include checking out some new property we have cabbaged onto to turkey hunt, we are cautiously optimistic, we know the area around one of these places and it could be a real honey hole, but we have turkey hunted too long to get excited yet.
Sunday we are out fairly early with a full day ahead of us with only faint traces of guilt, knowing we will not be in church this day. We meet the land owner for the place I have long hoped to hunt. He is friendly and gracious and offers the run of his property, walking over the land with him to get an idea of the property lines I am a little overwhelmed, it is better than I thought. We say goodbye and head across the line into Virginia to meet with the outfitter that my buddy will be guiding for this week. He has lots of clients lined up for spring turkey hunts and I will be helping out as well if he needs me.
The area is beautiful but the weather is nasty and getting worse, the rains is coming down harder as we look over some of the hunting areas the outfitter may send us. The muddy timber roads are disintegrating and we have a wild ride in a couple places with one near slide over the hill episode. I’m pretty glad when we get off the mountain and head back to camp.
Opening morning I’m up at three AM and have a sausage biscuit ready when my buddy stops by on his way to the outfitters. I have some time at camp before I have to leave and go hunting and I get a call from the outfitter, the hunter my buddy was going to guide is not going hunting today and my friend is on his way back to camp to go hunting with me. Driving through the darkness I think of one of my turkey hunting buddies in Georgia who is going to the hospital early this morning to have surgery for cancer. I can only imagine what is going through his mind as we hurtle through the darkness to find a wild turkey.
We head out to the new property and we are not optimistic.There are tornado warnings and wind advisories on the radio. I get out of the truck and the wind is roaring, we start hiking and wonder how you would hear a turkey in this mess. Incredibly, we do. About an hour later I call and get excited hen calling down the hill, we set up and call back to them for a while, hoping they will bring Mr. Gobbler with them. As usual the turkeys don’t cooperate and the hens wander off to go do whatever it is that turkeys do.
Farther down the ridge we stand and listen and wish for more clothes against the cold and wind. A faint gobble around the hill from us brings me out of a cold induced daze. I heard a turkey! My buddy glances at me, eyes wide he mouths “Was that a gobble?” I nod yes and we both grab a tree to sit against. During the next hour I call sparingly and he says he hears two more gobbles, one fairly close. Finally my friend whispers he can see a turkey far below us calmly walking away. Did the gobbler get close to us and see something he didn’t like? Did he just walk off as gobblers do sometimes? Why didn’t I hear the other gobbles? Why are we out here freezing? It’s turkey hunting, there are always unanswered questions.
Tuesday morning I am back at the same place, it is twenty nine degrees, but as quiet as the inside of Grant’s Tomb. When I step out of the truck a turkey gobbles down below me and across the creek. I back track upstream and circle thinking I have allowed enough room so as not to spook the gobbler on the roost. After I cross the creek I start up the hill, it is steep as a horse’s face and I am stumbling in the faint light. I hear a couple turkey alarm putts and look uphill to see three hens coming out of the trees above me. Of course they sail around the hill straight for where I figure the gobbler is roosted. I know in my heart that it is over but I sit awhile and call some, finally I crawl out of there and head to the other side of the property.
I spend the rest of the morning walking and calling and sitting inpatches of sunlight trying to warm up. I don’t see or hear anything except a sizable herd of deer that almost step on me as they scramble by me running from something, but I don’t know what.
Back at camp in the afternoon it has warmed up and is beautiful. I get a call from John in Georgia; he has been released after his surgery and pending test results the doctors think he will be OK. Out in the yard the sun is warm on my shoulders and I think to myself that God is good.
If I am still here in the morning I will repeat the whole process, standing on a high place somewhere listening for the rattle of a cagey old gobbler turkey. As Mr. Pope told us long ago, hope springs eternal. Even for turkey hunters.
Larryocase3@gmail.com www.gunsandcornbread.com