Callin’ Gobblers is Easy, But…

Turkey season is here; time to spend three weeks about halfway worn out three-fourths of the time. Get to bed early, let the garden go, learn to take naps in the warm sunlight leaning up against a tree. It is time to become one with nature; time to find mushrooms, look for arrowheads and suffer through occasional shots of adrenalin to your system each time a gobbler sounds off at whatever distance he might be… always either too far or too close. It is time to worry about ticks, marvel at the beauty of a dogs-tooth violet, and dry your damp socks at mid morning on the branch of a redbud tree. It is time to confine your fishing to the afternoon hours, and forget the bills.

I was just a kid when they opened the first turkey season in the Ozarks. Coach Weaver bought a turkey tag, a couple of turkey calls and a camouflaged shirt and went out before class every morning, coming back with stories of ‘almost’ and ‘darned near’. He darned near had one about every morning, it seemed.

In the pool hall back home, I sought the advice of the old timers, the Front Bench Regulars who had hunted gobblers before. Old Bill and my grandpa had killed dozens of wild turkeys when they were young, before so many had died of diseases brought by domestic farm birds, before spring burning, free ranging hogs and land practices began to destroy nests, and over-hunting thinned the flocks.

“Well, I’ll tell you boy…” Ol’ Bill said one April evening as he cut off a plug of tobacco and propped one foot on the edge of the spittoon. “Wild turkeys is easy to get if you don’t care so much about sleepin’!”

I pushed my homework to the side as pool balls clacked together and the screen door slammed. Ol’ Jim came in and plopped down on the front bench beside Jess Wolf and Virgil Halstead. He was Ol’ Bill’s main competition when it came to hunting and fishing stories, and amongst the Front Bench Regulars, the two of them were the most highly regarded outdoorsmen.

“You see in the spring, they get out there roostin’ together, sometimes 20 or 30 to a flock, and at daylight, they fly down and the romancin’ and matin’ commences,” Bill continued. “That old gobbler, he don’t care if you sound like the sweetest hen in the hills, if’n he’s got a half-dozen others right there on the ground beside him what’s treatin’ him like he’s Rudolph Casanova himself!”

I had no idea who Rudolph Casanova was.

“So what you do is, you listen late in the evenin’ when they all flies up to roost. You can hear ‘em a long ways off… whoof, whoof, whoof, here and whoof, whoof, whoof, there.” Bill used his arms to simulate a turkey flying up to roost as he gave the sound affects.

“Then a couple hours or so before dawn, you sneak back out there and rampage around, whacking the trunks of those roost trees like you was a mountain lion climbin’ up after ‘em, and they all fly off panicked an’ confused in the dark, ever which direction. The idea is, you scatter ‘em out to where they is here an’ there, and then you just wrap up in your old coat right there and nap awhile.”

It didn’t sound like what Coach Weaver would have done, but then, he hadn’t killed one yet either. I kept listening, my mouth open, intent on his story, as usual.

“You’ll get woke up by that ol’ gobbler soundin’ off when it’s just gettin’ light, and that’s when you get ready and be shore you’re hid really good, cause an old tom can see better’n a hoot owl with a good set of readin’ glasses.”

“An old gobbler can see a gnat flex his wings a quarter mile away,” Ol’ Jim throwed in. 
Bill glared at him as if to let him know he didn’t need any help, and he went on, “But you don’t go to callin’ him ‘til you hear a ‘whoof-whoof-whoof’ here and a nother’n there. That means them hens is flyin’ down an’ he knows it. But they’re all spread out now an’ he ain’t sure they can find him nor he can find them, so when you start callin’, he comes lookin’.  An’ you’ll hear him a gobblin’ an’ a struttin’ an' a blowin’. Then you’ll see that old red and white head stickin' up in the brush like a flag, and you’ll be shakin’ like a moonshiner at a revival meetin’. But you wait ‘til he gets about 30 yards away, an let him get his head behind a tree, an’ when he comes out you cut down on him an’ it’s all over but the braggin’. Time to go home for biscuits an gravy.”

“Go tell that Coach feller that he can hire me and Ol’ Bill an we’ll help him get a gobbler,” Ol’ Jim said. “Two dollars an hour and breakfast.”

I told Coach Weaver what I had learned, and it put me in good stead with him, but I think everybody got a good grade in Phys. Ed. anyway. I never did try Ol’ Bill’s method, although Grandpa told me it worked awfully good in the old days. It got to where there were so many turkeys in time that it just wasn’t necessary to go to all that effort. We’ve learned that a little later in the season when the hens start to nest and an old gobbler gets to where he comes off the roost lonely and ignored, just a mediocre turkey caller can lure him within range. But once he gets within range, you need to have a little bit of the woodsmanship that Ol’ Bill and my grandpa had. An old gobbler ain’t real smart, but he’s always got one toe on the panic button. Every year it seems I let one or two get away because I forget that!

I still hear Ol’ Bills last words on turkey hunting, many, many years ago, that evening in the pool hall.  “Boy, callin’ gobblers is easy… killin’ gobblers ain’t.”

I have made myself another really good cedar box call, and I am ready. But I have noticed that this spring, there are an awful bunch of turkeys together, not broken up good like they should be. What that means is, you may have to be out there late in the morning to get some old gobbler off to himself. Most hunters leave too early in the day. Ol’ Bill never would have done that!

Want to see some really good eagle photos? Jim Gaston, at Gaston’s White River Resort, has taken some great pictures of nesting eagles that are just spectacular. Jim is a dedicated photographer, and he gets some great photos. You can see many of them on his website, which is of the same name as his resort. I have put a couple of them on my website too. You can see them at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.  E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.  If you have never seen my magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal, we have some sample copies to give away.  Just send five stamps, and we will mail you one.