Published: April 23, 2009 11:09 pm      

Carolina in my mind

It was just four days after the full moon and as soon as the hidden morning sun lighted the sky slightly brighter than the moonlight, I smelled trouble. Back home, I was used to seeing a lot more sky while waiting for that first turkey to gobble. Here, in the mountains of North Carolina, I could see much more land than sky and most of it was above eye level; far above.

Rob had warned me that the mountains were steep where the big gobblers lived. But I figured they couldn’t be steeper than the ones I negotiate in the Rockies. Well, they are just as steep and as tall as many out west, the statistics failing to note that both are measured from sea level. Visually, the Smokies are covered with leaves and the Rockies are covered with rocks. My legs and lungs could tell no difference

Clouds and rain and more clouds would burden us three of my four days hunting with my nephew, Rob Barham. He and his delightful wife, Joanne, were the ideal hosts and without a minute in the turkey woods (slopes?) the trip last week would have been a winner.



One Down



I managed to fool a big tom into range of my Federal Heavyweight loads by stationing myself on a food plot managed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. These numerous scattered leased properties are called “game lands,” and offer free hunting, some with openings appropriate for cultivated food plots. All get hunting pressure, but very little because they seem to be everywhere and hunters also can hunt free on the intertwined Nantahala National Forest lands. I was the only one on the plot the day I took my tom, perhaps because it poured rain all day.

What beautiful country, this part of America that is almost in Tennessee and almost in Georgia.

My turkey ventures near the Appalachian Trail in western Maryland had initiated me to the heart stopping flush of the revered ruffed grouse, but I can’t recall hearing their characteristic drumming there.

A grouse finds himself a log which he mounts and performs a ritual called drumming. Similar to a wild turkey’s drumming, the sounds are quite different. A lame description is a series of muffled pops like those made by a lawn mower engine that starts very slowly and eventually starts running, requiring more than a dozen firings of the piston progressing from long intervals between pops to very short ones. I heard many of these drummings as I climbed through the North Carolina ridges.

A long ago bear and boar hunt near there was outside the grouse drumming season and time has faded my memory of the steepness of the mountains. In 30 years the mountains haven’t changed much, but my body has.



Diverse Greenery



It was refreshing to see again the flora. Great patches of mountain laurel formed a tangle that made getting around before daylight an adventure. On top of one ridge I snapped a photo that had mountain laurel, beech, pine and holly in the same frame. Had I worked at it, I could have squeezed switch cane into the same photo. In the Deep South, the holly, beech and cane would have been in very low country, not on a ridgetop.

We heard our first gobble of the week on my final hunt day, Thursday. We climbed the mountain behind Joanne and Rob’s home. Rob topped out in 20 minutes or so and I followed in an hour and 20. He left ribbons on limbs so I wouldn’t get off the trail. The gobbler was higher than I wanted to climb, but Rob got onto him and saw him leave with a hen in tow. “His beard was dragging the ground,” said Rob. I didn’t ask him if the bird was traveling uphill or downhill at the time.

Rob had to return to work, but this Saturday he will climb that mountain and that old bird that sings from the topmost trees will find himself in trouble. “I can close my eyes and see the ridgetop that blocks the sun until mid-morning where Rob will do battle.

Yes, as James Taylor sang, “In my mind I’m going to Carolina—,” I’ll be there with Rob Saturday morning before the owls close shop for the night. Rob has fallen prey to the hypnotic seducement that commands the misguided behaviors of all turkey hunters. The adventures are many, but the price is high. I wish him Godspeed.