It has been the most difficult turkey season I ever encountered. Gloria Jean tells me that it may have to do with the fact that I am getting too old to be hunting turkeys as I did 20 or 30 years back. Back then, I was writing about being a grizzled old outdoor veteran, and I'll be darned if I didn't actually get to be one.
In those days, I hunted in three or four states each spring, and a friend and I hunted in the magnificent, rugged Ozark Mountains and the Ouachita mountains of Arkansas. We never dreamed of having turkeys there like we do today here in the Ozarks of southern Missouri. We would stand on some high mountain at daylight in the middle of the national forest and if you heard one gobbler on another mountain, you went after him. And we did it on foot. I still have a disdain for those four-wheeler hunters whose girth almost always exceeds their I.Q. There will not be any ATV turkey hunting for me, even if I can't walk at all in 30 years.
There were so few turkeys in those wilderness places, and no hunters once you got away from the forest service roads. I was sitting against a tree this week thinking about those days. I had heard eight gobblers at daybreak. In the Ouachitas, you might hear two in one morning, and maybe another if you crossed a canyon and found another listening point. And still, we called them up and killed them.
My hunting partner was a young man by the name of Mike Dodson, today a Captain in the Harrison Arkansas fire department. Mike was one of the best outdoorsmen I have ever met, and if I counted a passel of close friends on the fingers of one hand, Mike would be one of them. We spent much of each spring guiding turkey hunters. I remember when Mike helped an elderly man who could hardly see and had a bad smokers cough kill his only wild turkey. It was a story I will have to write someday, nearly unbelievable. Mike actually sat behind the old man and helped guide his gun barrel while calling in the gobbler.
We would camp in some remote places in those mountains and watch spring come to Arkansas, and come back to camp in the evenings with stories about black bears and timber rattlesnakes and close calls with old ground-raker gobblers. Quite a few times, we would win the contest and hang 17- or 18-pound toms with 1 and 1/4 inch spurs from the cross-pole. Those were the dark-tailed true wild gobblers without any domestic blood, and without any pastureland to feed in. The biggest toms seldom attained 20 pounds.
So now we arrive at turkey hunting today, and I am sitting against a tree listening to gobblers which see more hens in one morning than those Ouachita gobblers would see in a whole spring. One morning, I watched a big tom strut for two hours only 70 yards away, and never gobble once. The following day, honest to goodness, I watched another gobbler that never strutted at all, gobble a hundred times at the same distance. Despite my most seductive calling, neither moved. That happened at least a dozen times this season. And lest you forget, I ain't no beginner when it comes to calling gobblers. I wonder if I forgot something I use to know and can't remember what it was? It seems that comes with having a harder time climbing mountains and crossing deep valleys.
One morning, I watched an old tom gobble and strut only 60 yards away, while a hen that was with him came to my call, piddled around only 10 or 15 yards away, then saw me and flew back and told him I was there. He shut up and they both went the other way. He needs to stick with that hen, women like that are hard to come by!
Early in the season I passed up a gobbler which walked past me at 30 yards because he never gobbled, and he had no beard whatsoever, even though I am sure he was a mature tom. If I could do things over again, he wouldn't be out there in the woods today.
My friend Dennis Whiteside, who killed a nice gobbler last year which I called up for him, decided he would try it on his own this spring. He went out with me and we headed different directions along a forested ridge top, and an hour later he scratched out an imitation of a hen turkey on a little call I made for him and two gobblers in the valley below answered him. Dennis sat down, called again and in less than 15 minutes, had those old toms right in his lap. That tells you something about turkey hunting. It tells you there's a lot of luck involved, and while I don't want to sound like I am whining about my bad luck, that is exactly what I am doing.
I never had such rotten luck during one turkey season. I never worked so many birds I could see and which didn't move one inch. Maybe it is time for something like that, because most of my life I have been so lucky at things like that. But as Gloria Jean points out I never was this old before. And when I pointed out to Gloria Jean that she ain't exactly a spring chicken herself, she responded that I have always been a whole lot like a spring turkey, and always will be. I took that as a compliment.
Certainly turkey hunting this year seems to be for those who are not such purists. I guess I should start using a decoy. Maybe corn would help. I finally killed a turkey last week which came to my call without gobbling, and that isn't suppose to be the way it is. I couldn't help but be disappointed! I want one to come a mile and a half and gobble 40 times and walk up in a full strut, in the woods somewhere where there isn't a pasture within five miles and dogwood blossoms drift to the ground in the lone ray of the morning sun shining between big oaks, while a barred owl hoots in the distance.
But still, there is much to be thankful for. I have memories of the Ouachita mountains before the Forest Service butchered those high ridges, and nights around the campfire with old Clyde Trout, and Mike Dodson, and the would-be'ers who came to hunt with us, as Clyde called them. There were just enough gobblers, the ones who got away and the ones who didn't. It doesn't matter that I can't cross those wilderness valleys as fast as I once did, I can still walk a long way on a wooded ridge top, and I got in one more great, glorious spring turkey season with some success after all. I thank the great Creator for that, and hope He will overlook the things I said whilst I was kicking stumps during the worst part of the season.
But lets don't have any more seasons like this one past. Let's get back to the way it ought to be, with gobblers which come to a call like they use to. These turkeys I have killed lately won't taste as good as they use to, and I won't remember them long. It has to do with short-term memory, recalling the good old days, and being after all, a grizzled old outdoor veteran.
My address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 and the e-mail has been changed....lightninridge@windstream.net
Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. —
