Hunt2Prove
On the Hunt for a Better Version of Ourselves, the Forests We Steward, & the Wildlife we Love!
In Pursuit of the Wild Turkey – What I’ve Learned in the first 15 Years or so
Tomorrow marks the close of the 2019 turkey season here in North Carolina. As a light rain falls, I catch myself staring up at the skylight of our camper watching as the individual beads of water join forces and trickle into a stream. In a heavier downpour the droplets would move much faster, like a steady stream or river in a hurry to get somewhere other than the sky. Today making it to the ground requires patience, bridled ever still by an occasional flow in the wrong direction.
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!
The DMV, Life, & Hunting
Just about everything in my life is in some way, shape, or form connected to hunting and creating the best possible habitat I can for deer and turkey. Last week I was blessed with an opportunity to head down to the local DMV office to acquire tags for our new gooseneck trailer – a trailer we needed to haul our tractor to and from the various lands we are fortunate to work on for the betterment of all things timber and wildlife. I wasn’t really surprised to find a line backed up to the door. After all, it was after 3pm on a Friday afternoon. And, even though I was lucky enough to be standing behind the man who wears too much cologne, I was handling this endeavor pretty well. Over the next hour people of all sizes, shapes, races, and walks of life were processed ahead of me. Finally it was my turn. I handed the man my paperwork – happy to finally be 10 minutes away from heading home with my weighted, multi-year tags and one step closer to actually using the trailer for the first time. Fortunately, it didn’t quite go as I’d hoped. When the clerk started running his fingers meticulously over every inch of the Manufacturer’s Certificate of Origin I got the feeling something was awry. I was right. The notary at the trailer manufacturer in Kentucky had forgotten to stamp the MCO – a measure required here in NC. Immediately my steam meter flew off of the charts. I called Gatormade a very angry and unhappy individual. Thankfully, the lady on the other end stood up to my near-tantrum and snuffed out my fuse. My attitude and sense of understanding was poor, my “I dare you forget to stamp MY MCO” type thinking just completely off-base.
Now, sitting here listening to the woods go to sleep hoping to roost a wild turkey for my dear wife, I see things much more clearly. In today’s world we have just about everything we want at the click of a button. If we want to rent a movie we type in our prime passcode and boom the movie plays with the click of a button. If we “need” a new turkey vest we add it to the Amazon cart and boom it’s there in two days, on credit I might add. Used to, it didn’t matter how early you got to the movie store on release day, there was a good chance you were going to have to wait a few more days to watch that new movie you’d already waited months to watch – someone had already beat you to one of the two copies Choice Video, the brick and mortar, had. There was no on-demand, no Amazon, only a bit more patience and understanding, like it or not.
I was reminded of something very important last Friday. We’re all human. We make mistakes each and every day, especially me. I had gotten near-about out of line because a woman had forgotten to stamp her seal on a piece of paper I needed. I took it personally. I let it rile me up and it shouldn’t have. What was waiting a couple more days going to hurt? I didn’t have some big, ten thousand dollar job to do where I needed the trailer right then, and I still don’t. I just wanted it done when I wanted it done because that’s what I’m accustomed to nowadays – instant gratification, my way or the highway.
In the end, shame on me for not being more understanding, especially when I look to others to understand my own shortcomings. Shame on me for being so self-absorbed that I forgot what it means to be kind and forgiving. Shame on me, I’ll do better. I’ll find that version of myself I’m hunting for – that version where I think less and less about what I think I need and more about what I already have right in front of me.
Photos from the Wilder side of Life!
