Hard turkey lessons

By Otha Barham

April 03, 2008 11:31 pm

— We turkey hunters must have a suppressed need to be frustrated because we suffer a lot of it and still keep going back for more. We get up at three in the morning, wade through snakes and briars in the dark, sit perfectly still for hours while mosquitoes puncture our bodies and we do it day after day in March and April.
Mostly we perpetuate failure. Our perceived skills, coupled with more luck than we like to admit, yields a bagged gobbler once in a while, but most of our days afield end in frustration; healthy diversions from life’s troubles, yes, but frustration nevertheless.
Not only must we hold the wild gobblers responsible for foiling us, but often we take our undoing into our own hands. Among numerous personal examples of such self defeat is the time in Kemper County when I had a hot tom sounding off just after daylight by giving him just one quiet tree yelp as he screamed his first calls of the morning.
I had a great set up, what with the opening of an old road bed lying between the gobbler and me. It provided a perfect place for the bird to strut and show off his colors. My back resting comfortably against a tree on the bank of the road bed, I relaxed and waited for fly down when I figured a couple of shy clucks would bring the old monarch stalking in to my trap.

An old trick

But when the gobbler flew down from his roost and I called to him, he began walking away from me, as smart ones often do. Having had this happen to me more times than I like to remember, I quickly picked up my gear and headed into the thicket on a circuitous route to get ahead of the departing tom.
A few parting gobbles assured me that he was headed away. I tore through thick brush, fearing the noise would spook the bird. When I reached a spot I hoped to intercept him, the rascal gobbled right back where I had been set up! The underbrush was so thick I could not get back to the clever gobbler without spooking him, so I just stood there and listened to him gobble in the opening, right there 25 yards from where my shotgun muzzle should have been pointed had I stayed put and not been duped by another tricky tom turkey.
Another example happened in southeastern Wyoming in the edge of the Black Hills. As a young companion and I watched at sundown, a flock of Merriams turkeys ascended a rocky ridge covered in ponderosa pines. Darkness was approaching and I knew the turkeys would roost on the mountainside. When we heard them fly up to roost, I urged the youngster to go straight to their roost tree and scare them to flight by shouting and firing his shotgun. The turkeys would scatter and be forced to roost separately making them anxious to get together the following morning and thus calling constantly to find each other.
Turkeys so flushed instinctively head for their original roost tree when the danger (or darkness) has disappeared. Before first light the next morning, my buddy and I arrived at the roost tree. It was so thick in the area that I suggested we take a stand in the meadow below at the mouth of a canyon where I had seen at least one of the flushed gobblers fly after the flush.

Perfect setup?

We hid in a small depression and watched the woods line where I expected the gobbler to emerge, anxious to get back to his willing female friends. I, with my flawless calling, would become a surrogate and the enamored suitor would come dancing to my impersonations. My young friend would bowl the lovesick tom over and tell everyone who would listen about my keen strategy and impeccable calling.
As soon as the assembly calling began, that gobbler charged out of the canyon and headed straight for us, my pleading calls urging him on so fast that he didn’t stop to strut, instead stumbling and tripping as he dodged sagebrush clumps that lay in his way.
Suddenly something happened. When the bird was just 50 yards out, one of his real hens called from beneath the roost tree. And though I was just steps away and the real bird was over a hundred yards up a steep rise, that tom put on brakes, wheeled to the right and tore off for the roost tree. He joined the others there and they left for parts unknown.
That gobbler remembered something that I had not. “Gather at the spot where you were last together.” It’s a turkey’s rule of behavior that I knew but had ignored in laying my plans. All I could do was sit there pondering the scene had we been there hidden near the roost tree. Turkeys would have been crawling all over us and we would have been deciding which one to shoot. Instead, we learned one turkey hunting lesson a little better, and poured another serving of frustration into our overflowing cup.