Zen and The Art of Turkey Hunting

[jack3476Participante]

I don’t know how I ever got the bug to want to shoot a turkey, or whether it was ever of any importance. I mean, l like eating turkey well enough, you know, at Thanksgiving and Christmas and once in a while in between. But I never had an inkling of a thought that I could ever get such a bird even if I had wanted to. It’s the why that still has me wondering.

I thought it was some exotic form of hunting left to extreme, crusty old hunters and members of elite hunting clubs well stocked with the appropriate game that are let out of their pens right before shooting time. But this was the year that I decided to reenter the hunting experience. Ducks were the first birds on my list, and when I saw that the season would be ending soon I realized I needed something else to pursue in the wild, but what?

The quail hunting in Florida is mythical at best or so it seems. I spent a day hunting a quail enhancement area in a wildlife management property and ended up unknowingly hunting snipe. I couldn’t hit one of those either. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t involve a gunny sack and a flashlight.

There’s always dove hunting. It’s supposed to be the most hunted bird in the US, which I found hard to believe because even though I used to hunt dove with my deadly Benjamin Pump BB gun as a kid, I never realized there could be large enough numbers in Florida to make it worth the effort. The harvest numbers of birds per hunter is 1.3 or something like that. I think I could do better with my BB gun around town. I think the season was closed, anyway.

But, turkey, now there’s a bird I’ve seen around on my scouting and camping trips, but always on the run out of range, mostly viewed from the front seat of my truck as they peck at the grass along the roadside. Was it even possible to get close enough to bag such a thing with a shot gun that has about 40 to 50 yard effective range? The challenge was intriguing. I started researching online, getting the lowdown on the feat required to fulfill this quest.

They say that if a turkey could smell as good as it can see, no one would ever shoot one. That means they can see really well. No nearsightedness tendencies with this bird.

The first thing you need to be is “unseen”. That means camouflaged for the untrained. You have to be invisible to this bird that has binocular, 270 degree vision, and can see your pot bellied silhouette a half a mile away. Ok, it would spot you even if you had spent several months pumping iron and riding the stationary bike in the gym. I needed the kind of camouflage that would make the invisible man envious. Yes, there’s a certain voyeuristic element involved with this, to observe without being seen. What color down are you wearing?

This brings up all kinds of possibilities. There’s camouflage for woodlands, camouflage for marshy areas, grassy areas, semi grassy, semi woodland, fall, spring and winter camouflage patterns, three d patterns, Marpat and Cadpat. There’s a whole science behind it. The military takes this stuff very seriously.

Next, you have to remain absolutely, completely still because motion is the first thing a turkey can pick up, which means it can catch you picking your nose at three hundred yards. Have you ever tried to remain completely still for hours on end? To sit, just knowing that that one slight facial rub just scared away the only gobbler you were going to get a chance to shoot this year. I mean, Christ! What were you thinking!

I anticipated this predicament well in advance and bought one of those folding camouflaged blinds with a woodland pattern that set up by pulling on the top ring in the center of a small bundle and, presto, an instant four man blind complete with top materializes. There was only one small problem with the first tent blind I had purchased. It didn’t want to dematerialize back into the tidy bundle from whence it came.

The directions were useless, the pictures too vague. By pressing back in on each side pole like this, the tent should collapse like that and oh shit, nothing. I studied this situation carefully. I pressed this way and that, again, nothing. I took a deep breath and after fifteen minutes of monkey wrenching, had it collapsed partially with two sides sticking out in either direction, more like a large umbrella blown inside out. This was ridiculous! I was taking this piece of crap back to the store. But it wouldn’t fit through the front door of my house. I had somehow turned it inside out, and after deftly folding up one of the sides heard an uncharacteristic crack, like the sound of a fishing pole breaking in half. Odd, I didn’t remember reading anything about any cracking noises in the directions. But I was on to something.
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