In a perfect world

An already enjoyable hunt ends with a bang

The writer waited all day to call in this bird last Saturday.
The writer waited all day to call in this bird last Saturday.

If I could blueprint a perfect day, it would go something like this.

Opening day of spring turkey season dawned clear and cool. It was 36 degrees at the house, and 34 degrees at the gate of my hunting lease in Grant County. It wasn’t yet 5 a.m. when I reached my jumping off point, which gave me plenty of time to sip down my coffee and inventory all my gear.

My kit included five slate calls, including a Knight & Hale Yella Hammer, a Patrick Frachiseur aluminum slate, a Patrick Frachiseur Diamond Cutter Legend, an H.S. Strut Li’l Deuce and a call of unknown manufacture. That last one is an heirloom. Inside the clear glass is a breast feather of a Rio Grande gobbler over slate. One-third of the glass is actually a rough calling surface. On the bottom, in a recess, is the smooth bottom of the slate disc. The call changes pitch and timbre by using the top or bottom.

The Frachiseur aluminum call and the L’il Deuce make the sweetest purrs.

In another pocket is a Dale Rohm Wildcat Mountain Hunter box call made of real American chestnut. In another pocket is a big boat paddle of a box bearing the logo of the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation, and inscribed with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s mission statement.

I long considered this thing more a conversation piece than a serious turkey call. It squealed, with an overtone that sounds almost like feedback from an electric guitar amp. I finally figured out how to use it, and it sounds dangerously close to a real turkey.

In yet another pocket is a Sam Pope Pock’et Call, from Chattahoochee Game Calls. It sounds like a young hen, and it often gets a tom to gobble when nothing else will. I also have a Primos push-button yelper, as well as several mouth calls.

I carry all this stuff for several reasons. For one, my vest has a lot of pockets, and my personal credo is, “Never go to the woods with an empty pocket.” And, I use it. All of it.

Entering the woods long before daylight, I walked carefully down the trail to my hunting spot. The footing was slick, and the Christmas snowstorm deposited a tangle of limbs and small trees across the trail.

I had just settled down against a tree when the rest of the world arrived. Cars rumbled on the dirt road in the distance. Two guys made hideous owl hoots as they entered woods on a different club on the other side of the road. They sounded more like celebrants at a Hank Williams Jr. concert. No birds gobbled, which I thought curious and unsettling.

I heard the first bird gobble at about 6:30 a.m., and four others chimed in. They were all on the ground. Not a single bird gobbled from the roost.

One bird came quick and gobbled non-stop. I believed it was the same bird I called up as a jake on opening day 2012. That was a very vocal bird, too, and it appeared to have survived to this day. It got to within 75 yards and stopped on the trail where I came in. It turned north and gobbled with a fading voice. A shot rang out from that direction, and it gobbled no more. I heard the last gobble at about 7 a.m.

At about 9 a.m., I went to town for some breakfast and to run some errands. I returned at noon. All the other hunters were gone. The air was cool, still and clean as arctic ice. The sunlight had a crystalline quality, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

There is a little knoll in an oak flat that juts into a big pine thicket. It drops gently to a creek bottom and tapers down from the sides. I erected a pop-up blind for bow hunting deer, and I left it in hopes of killing a turkey.

First I planted a Primos She-Mobile hen decoy on the highest point, with the afternoon sun shining on its side. It was not clearly visible from the direction I expected a turkey to come, but it was visible from most directions. I settled into my little pack chair, unzipped most of the windows and took a short nap.

When I awoke, I took all the calls from my vest. For the next three hours I worked every one of them in 15-minute intervals, with no apparent effect.

At about 4 p.m., I considered calling it quits. The day wasn’t a total bust. Birds gobbled well early, and I had one legitimate chance. Maybe Sunday would be better.

Footsteps in the leaves snapped me from my reverie. They were approaching fast from the creek bottom, a hopelessly dense thicket of briars, brush and honeysuckle. That’s the one place I didn’t expect a bird to come from, so I hadn’t unzipped any windows on the back side of the blind.

The first bird sprinted to the decoy. It was a mature gobbler, with a long, wide, thick beard. A second gobbler looked almost identical, except its beard wasn’t quite as big. Neither of them ever made a peep.

I couldn’t shoot without hitting both birds.

“C’mon, man, move!” I hissed to the subordinate gobbler.

It stepped behind the bigger bird.

“Aww, you … Get out from behind him, dad gum it!”

Finally, it stepped to the side, just as the bigger bird started looking suspiciously at the decoy. It poked its head straight up. Oliver Winchester spoke once, and it was over.

The gobbler weighed only 15 ½ pounds, but its beard was 10 7/8 inches long pressed flat. The spurs were 7/8-inch long. The time was 4:13 p.m. I’d like to say I outsmarted a wily old tom, but really I guess I just outlasted him.

I took a knee and gave thanks. I tagged my bird and put it beside a sun-drenched oak log, where its feathers glowed bronze. The air was calm, cool and crisp, and the soft April foliage of the oaks filtered the light like glass stained emerald and gold. I sipped the moment like fine wine, and the glow lasted well into the night.

In my world, a perfect day looks just like that.

Sports, Pages 32 on 04/28/2013

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