Turkey hunting in class by itself

Getting a turkey early in the season made this one of my favorite turkey seasons.

I hunted hard to kill a bird opening day. I hunted the rest of the season for enjoyment.

We have a very short, very intense turkey season in Arkansas. For many hunters, it lasts only six days - the three weekends. For many, it’s only the three Saturdays because Sundays are often reserved for family and church. Some sneak in a few afternoon hunts during the week after work, but when time is short, morning is best because you have a better chance of hearing a bird gobble.

Hunters kill the biggest number of gobblers on opening day. After that, the chances diminish greatly. For one, fewer birds are alive. Two, hunting pressure disperses the remaining birds and disrupts their daily patterns. They move away from troublesome spots. Also, the most vocal birds get killed. Those that remain are quieter and a lot harder to hunt.

I started hunting turkeys in 1999 and killed my first bird that year in Roger Mills County in Oklahoma. I hunted with Danny Pierce of Reydon, Okla., and Steve DeMaso, who was the quail biologist at the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. I remember every detail about that hunt - the sounds, the smells, the way my heart pounded when the bird appeared in range. It is also why I have this lifelong love affair with that part of Oklahoma.

I’m looking at that bird’s fan now. It hangs on the wall over my desk, attached to a plaque made of old barn wood that my wife fashioned into the outline of Oklahoma. She hand-painted the date and place.

Since then, I’ve killed more than 20 birds, but I have never killed a turkey at sunrise. I have been thrilled at the sight of mature gobblers strutting and drumming at the sound of my call, but I have never bagged one. The monster gobbler I missed at sunrise on opening day of the 2001 spring season in Missouri haunts me to this day.

I’ve killed all my birds in midmorning and late afternoon. That is arguably the hardest time to hunt because gobblers often come in silently and get away before a hunter can react. For reasons I can’t explain, it’s my best time. Sometimes birds gobbled while approaching, but mostly they didn’t. I just saw them before they saw me. I killed some birds from a popup blind, but not always.

Sometimes I killed birds despite myself. The 2-yearold tom that I killed to tag out during the 2004 Missouri spring season comes to mind. I called it in from nearly a quarter-mile away and bagged it, even though I wasn’t wearing gloves or a mask. That’s the hunt where I established the intense, 15-minute call and-wait pattern.

What is it about turkey hunting that is so intoxicating? Part of it is the challenge of calling in one of the wariest creatures in the forest. Part of it is getting it to do the counter intuitive, which is to come to a hen call. A gobbler expects a hen to come to him, not the other way around.

For me, the thrill is in solving the puzzle. You have to find a bird, and then find out where it wants to go. I do this on the fly because I don’t scout the woods before the season. I know my woods by heart. Even so, trees fall and block trails and thickets grow impassable from one year to the next. Those things affect how turkeys use an area, and I must adapt.

Also, we have to remember we’re hunting a bird. A turkey suffers from acute chronic attention deficit disorder. Anything can distract it, and anything often does. It’s hard to keep a turkey on task.

As for the puzzle, I learn something new from every hunt, but nothing I learn ever applies to the next hunt. The birds always find new ways to confound. Deer puzzles are easy to solve. The answer key to turkey puzzles changes daily.

Now the season is finished, but I am already looking forward to the 2014 spring season. I love all hunting, but I think about turkeys all year long. Pierce and DeMaso told me it would be that way in 1999, and they have my eternal gratitude for introducing me to this grand, maddening, all-consuming sport.

That’s not right, either.

Turkey hunting isn’t a sport. It’s a lifestyle.