Last hunting season found me pursuing my favorite game bird, the wild turkey.
I’d seen a flock hunting squirrels and knew where they should be. Well, as is often the case, the turkeys thought otherwise and vanished.
Late in the morning I hauled out the box call, despairing of receiving an answer. To my surprise, I received the weirdest conglomeration of sounds in reply that I have ever heard in all my years of hunting.
Whatever it was sounded like 1/3 turkey, 1/3 raven and 1/3 ostrich. Still, it might be a turkey. I’ve heard gobblers, jakes especially, make some pretty ugly sounds so I set up.
A few moments passed and it called again, sounding, if possible, even worse than the first time. Now, if I had been positive that this was a turkey I would never have called again, but that thing couldn’t be a turkey, could it?
Unable to resist the temptation, I hit the call a second time, a big tom appeared briefly, didn’t see a hen and vanished. Great!
Despite hunting hard, the next two weeks I couldn’t score. Suddenly, it was the last day of the season. Time was running out.
The final Saturday I hunted out Willow Creek but, noon found me at home empty handed. On an impulse, I called my cousin, Bill Robertson, and found he’d shot a nice bird. Get over here fast, he ordered.
I knocked on his door 30 minutes later, breathing hard. He shoved a sandwich and a Pepsi into my hands and 15 minutes later we arrived at Burger Hollow. Bill gave me directions, then left to hunt grouse, promising to check on me later; at least there was some snow.
I followed his morning’s tracks to a steep ravine and found the spot he scored, marked by a pile of feathers and soon found fresh tracks. The chase was on, but only an hour of daylight remained.
This turkey, a big gobbler by his foot print, led me on a merry chase. After half a mile, his tracks joined up with another gobbler and together, they crossed the valley moving fast. Then my luck turned for the better when they joined up with 15 or 20 other birds.
Yes!
Up the valley they headed, crossing some small, but nasty, deep ravines and beech brush before heading straight up a near vertical side hill covered with small hemlocks and mixed hardwoods.
I looked up that steep hillside in despair. I was really tired, and now I had to climb a near cliff? It was 4 p.m. when I started up the hill.
After 100 yards, I found fresh scratching and slowed.
Slipping and sliding in the snow, I peeked carefully over every bench and brush pile. The turkeys were close, no doubt about that, I could feel them.
Now the ridge top was only 100 yards above me. The crisis was approaching; something had to happen soon.
Peeking over the ridgeline I found myself peering intently into a room of huge hemlocks. The birds had stopped scratching, I’d been spotted, but no matter how hard I looked in front of me, a fallen tree top blocked my view.
They were probably running by now, and I cursed my luck.
I stood undecided on what to do when a sudden, loud shotgun blast cracked in front of me and the air filled with flying turkeys. There must have been 30 of them.
The great majority were barely visible through the trees, but several of the birds, beating their way up through the tall hemlocks, were angling my way. Catching only glimpses of them through the thick evergreen branches I saw one opening in the trees almost directly over my head.
Suddenly, a turkey appeared high above me and I swung desperately through him and fired. To my delight he collapsed in a cloud of feathers, his momentum carrying over me and down the steep hillside behind me to land some 35 yards away. I slid down to him in glorious disbelief.
It was a gobbler, too. What luck! A glance at the watch showed it was almost 5 p.m..
Suddenly, a head popped over the ridge and Cousin Bill came striding down to greet me. “I knew that it was you who shot,” he said simply and with conviction, admiring my 18-lb gobbler.
“I was on the far side of the ridge when suddenly I felt I had to head this way, it was the strongest feeling, a certainty. So, I cut across the hill top, saw the turkeys right where I thought they’d be and shot over their heads to flush them, knowing somehow you were tracking and not far behind. It was the strongest prompting imaginable.”
I tried to think of something to say but couldn’t. The spirit surrounding us was so strong, almost overwhelming.
We shook hands solemnly, grinning at each other. This was a very special turkey indeed.
It was long past dark when we reached the car. I was so happy. Shooting a gobbler the last 10 minutes of shooting light was an almost unbelievable occurrence, and but for the intervention of a loving Heavenly Father and a cousin sensitive to the spirit’s guidance, could never have happened.
Humbly, I murmured a prayer of thanks to the giver of all good gifts.
