It was April 2012, and I had finally gotten to the point where the bursts of noise from my diaphragm call sounded like a young, vocally challenged wild turkey. I dropped down from my truck and back up again as daylight was breaking. A quarter-mile later I was where I wanted to be, so I guessed. With a Tom gobbling 150 yards to the North, I sat down beside an American Holly and began letting loose with my calling. The dense understory across the old woods-road separating me and the bird was in desperate need of being knocked down by the tires of a skidder dutifully dragging the fresh cut pine that a second thinning would afford, followed by a walloping prescribed fire. I barely knew that then. What I did know was that I was “hot and ready” to kill my first turkey and my calling was even hotter. Looking back, that Moore County Tom was Hot too! He must have gobbled 50 times while closing the distance. When the bird shut up, I didn’t. I called and called and called some more. Knowing what I know now, he was within 30 yards when we made his last 5 or 6 thundering gobbles. Silence. Five minutes later I began my walk back South towards Underwood Road without a turkey. I thwarted that opportunity with an over-abundance of calls and a severe lack of patience.
My day wasn’t quite over. I pulled into “Granny’s” on the Lee/Harnett County line around 10 AM. As I stepped out of the truck to remove the leafy wear suit I was still sporting, I heard a bird hammering 600 yards away near the back field. I couldn’t believe it. A second chance. By 10:30 I was back in the driveway grinning like a guy who’d just got his first kiss, my first ever wild turkey on the tailgate. The best part about that day was sharing the experience with my daughter Savanna. She was 2 1/2 then and actually willing to smile for a few pictures with me and a dead animal.
My fascination with turkeys began somewhere around 2004 in Deep Gap, NC. After seeing a flock of 50-60 birds on a mountainside one morning, I went to Wal-Mart and bought one of just about every call they had. Still, funny enough, I never went into the woods in relentless pursuit until that spring in 2012. Had I gone earlier, I might have learned a little bit more about life and turkey hunting much sooner, trading some of my most rocky years for more time in the woods and a better grip on the things most important.
The best advice I could give someone new to turkey hunting is this – it takes patience and a desire to learn, in most cases by trial and error. To kill wild turkeys also means expecting the unexpected. I’m not some wild turkey guru with all of the answers. Just a guy who loves to photograph, hunt, and eat them and to share my experiences with others. I’ll never win any calling competitions – I’m just good enough to kill turkeys and that’s alright with me. I have learned, quite successfully I might add, how not to kill turkeys. My biggest mistakes have been over-calling and not having the patience enough to hold tight to a good set-up. If you hunt these majestic birds long enough you’ll realize quick, fast, and in a hurry that you are NOT going to kill them straight off of the roost each and every morning you head into the woods. For me, personally, I have only been present on such an occasion a handful of times throughout the course of my addiction. They don’t always gobble all of the way to you, and sometimes they don’t gobble at all. I’ve had more success with softer calling and mid-to-late morning birds than I have in the first hour after sunrise. Why? It’s pretty dang tough to outdo a live hen. I have better luck once the First Ladies of the day have gone off to nest, which leaves Toms looking for love in all of the wrong places.
One of the best things about turkey hunting, perhaps one of the reasons I love it as I do, is the fact that, sometimes, you can do just about everything under the sun wrong and still get lucky enough to be successful. You can’t say that about much in life. But, in turkey hunting, all it takes is a lonely bird and a little luck. Good Luck & Good Hunting.
P.S. – Congratulations to our very own Chance Curnutte! More important than the last day of turkey season, he graduates from North Carolina State University tomorrow with a degree in Wildlife Biology. I am proud to know, work, and hunt with you! You will do great things!
