The turkey gobbled at everything that morning.  He gobbled at crows.  He gobbled at the sound of car horns and semi-trucks jake-braking on the highway.  He gobbled at the sound of my sweet tree yelps and fly down cackle.

 

He gobbled at everything, then flew down and rudely walked away into the cutover on the neighbor’s property, issuing courtesy gobbles to each of my calls as he left.

 

He kept up the pace of his frenetic gobbling even when he was certainly out of earshot of our setup.  Even so, I kept calling.  As Alexander Pope so eloquently wrote in 1732, “Hope springs eternal in every human breast.”

 

Pope must have been a turkey hunter.

He could turn around, I reasoned.  He could come back to the hen he had answered so passionately on the roost.  He could.  He could.  A few minutes later, the Mississippi Monarch’s triple gobble was followed by the resounding boom of a shotgun, so much for hope springing eternal.

 

What could I have done differently to have lured the wily tom our way?  Had I called too much?  Had I set up too far away?  What moves should I have made to gain the upper hand in the chess game that just played out this April morning?

 

Furthermore, why did I feel that something of ours had been taken?  That turkey was roosted on us.  He should have been ours, I reasoned.  Oh well, in the words of another turkey hunting bard, Will Primos, “roosted ain’t roasted!”

 

Turkey hunting is an endeavor fraught with highs and lows.  Success mingled with frustration and exhaustion can make for a long season.  As a result, success in this mental and physical marathon is often measured by how well the turkey hunter handles those ups and downs.

 

Poet and novelist Jim Harrison wrote that “there is apparently a fragile bridge between expecting nothing and wanting everything.”  I can think of no better description of the pursuit that is turkey hunting.  It’s all about managing expectations.

 

I’ve read a lot of Harrison, not everything, but I’m working on it.  He was an avid bird hunter and fisherman, and although I’m not sure that he ever hunted turkeys, I would love to have had the opportunity to share a tree with him while calling to a gobbling longbeard.

 

While walking in Saturday morning (my preferred method of travel when turkey hunting), I thought of Harrison, who also preferred to walk when hunting.

 

In his essay “Spring Coda,” Harrison encouraged hunters to “see how much you can do on foot.  The sharp reductions of fish and game population through hunting and fishing are invariably related to mechanization.”  I tend to agree.

 

I also like the feel of being on foot.  I like trying to slip in as quietly as possible, and I like the exercise.  One day during our opening weekend hunt in South Florida this spring, I logged over 11 miles.  I felt like I was out for a hike on the Appalachian Trail.  It felt wonderful.

 

Taking a turkey during the last hour of the last day in Florida felt like the reward for all the miles we had logged during our four-day hunt.  If I had zipped around on a cart or bike, I don’t think it would have felt the same.  In the words of Harrison, “Easy access means diminished quality, even in love.”

 

I also firmly believe that walking makes as little disturbance as possible, which is critical to success.  When game animals, deer and turkey alike, sense pressure from hunters, they tend to, in the case of deer, go nocturnal, and, in the case of turkeys, move to a less pressured area.

 

Electric buggies and e-bikes are quiet, and they are certainly handy if you must travel long distances to get into the areas in which you hunt.  However, they still make sounds foreign to the turkey woods.  Footsteps are a natural sound, but there is nothing natural about the whine of an electric motor.

 

Oh well, to each his or her own.  We all hunt differently.  I’m certainly no turkey hunting purist.  I use decoys which, for many turkey hunters, would be considered verboten.  Drive your buggy until your heart is content.  Que sera, sera, I say, and I’ll keep perambulating around the turkey woods as long as I can.

 

I do, however, have one last point I would like to make.  When the hunter on the neighboring property left Saturday morning, he or she slammed their truck door before departing.

 

Perhaps, he was frustrated.  Perhaps, he shot and missed.  It happens (and I hope selfishly that it did).  When I heard the truck door slam, I tried hard not to be judgmental, but the little voice inside me would not be silenced.  “Is there no longer honor among turkey hunters, no respect?”

 

It used to be that if you pulled up to a gate or turnoff on public land and another vehicle was already there, you drove away to hunt another spot.  If you encountered another hunter while heading to a gobbling bird, you backed out.

 

If you parked on the property line adjacent to another turkey hunter’s land, you did so as quietly as possible when you came and when you left, both as a matter of respect and to keep from disturbing any nearby birds.

 

There was once honor among hunters, especially turkey hunters.  On our walk out Saturday, I found myself wondering if those days are gone forever.

 

I thought, once again, of the words of Harrison.  “The death of hunting will come not from the largely imagined forces of anti-hunting but from the death of habitat, the continuing disregard for the land in the manner of a psychopath burning down a house and then wondering why he can’t still live there.”

 

Perhaps, I would add, it will also come from the disrespect of our fellow hunters and our failure to honor the time-honored traditions of what it means to call yourself a turkey hunter.  “Leave no trace” certainly includes noise, especially when it comes to turkey hunting.

 

Until next time, here’s to time-honored traditions, to respect for the land and our fellow hunters, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.