The Moveable Feast

 

Turkey hunting is a movable feast if there ever was one. Nobody who has done it very long ever leaves camp before daylight thinking he knows what is going to happen next. 

All you can bet on is that the red gods of war and fortune are going to drop something on you, maybe in your lap. It’s why some of us go, and would continue, turkey or not, once we’ve been once. I could tell you stories. 

Not too long ago, I met a man that was to open up my back surgically, dance around my spinal cord for awhile, and then put me back together again, with best wishes and good intentions. I was a little nervous about the prospect. 

I did not know Doctor “Zee” well, and felt I needed to strike some common ground between us in his office so as to alleviate any fears I might have had about him handling such a significant part of my future. I asked him a question. 

“Doc, what do you do for fun?” 

“I like to hunt turkeys. Have you ever done that?” 

Jeeminy Christmas (or Arlie if you prefer). I started to laugh. It was like asking John Dillinger if he had ever robbed a bank. 

“Doc, I’ve hunted ‘em all over the country, three different species, upside down and backwards, fifty years next spring (2016). The walking is the best part of the hunt.” 

“The what?” 

“The walking. That’s when stuff happens,” and at that point we began to talk about turkey hunting, and stuff far removed from serious surgery, and I was “good” (as they say) with my future in his hands, literally. 

It’s on the long walks, by the way, between daylight and dark in unknown territory with a long gun in your hand, and a baloney sandwich and a bottle of water in your game bag, that stuff starts to happen, and you get to sample the feast. 

There was the time down in the wild Kiamichi Mountains by myself atop Three Sticks Mountain when I called up a big mountain gobbler I could not see because of the density of the cover. He would cluck at me with the deep, full throated cluck of an old, old gobbler, but he would not show himself. He had to be close, very, very close, maybe under twenty-five yards, but I could not see him. 

Then something moved in the left side of my vision. It was a bobcat that had come belly-creeping to my call, sneaked in, crouched, ready to spring not two feet from the side of my throat. My gun was already lying across my lap, pointed in his direction, when I did a very stupid thing: I wanted to see if I could touch him with my gun barrel, and started, ever so slowly, to do just that. 

He vanished like grey smoke. Sitting there, smelling the “smoke”, I laughed, nervously, at what had just happened. Both of us had sampled the feast. The turkey? Who knows? Maybe him, too. I never got to ask him. 

There was that time on distant Warrior Creek in northern Kansas when somewhere in the middle of a five mile hike I killed a big ol’ gobbler strutting in a wheat field next to the creek. I “Indianed” him, bushwhacked ‘im, still one of my favorite ways to kill a turkey. I slung him over my shoulder, and started for the truck, close to two miles away. 

I was hot, thirsty, and tired when I got there; slung the gobbler and gun into the back of the camper shell, and moved to the front of the truck where was the ice chest and a cold pop. I began driving towards the main highway and home on the wild Cimarron River in wild Oklahoma. 

Half a mile down the dusty road, I looked into my rear view mirror to check for farm to market travel coming up from behind me, and saw the gobbler looking at me through the camper’s front window and into my rear view mirror. Hello, and holy mackerel. Houston, we’ve got a problem. 

I stopped the truck and moved to the rear of the camper. I paused there, trying to think of what to do. The gobbler was big enough he moved the truck a little on its springs when he started to jump around back there, apparently not liking his situation. Me, either. 

- — – -! There was only one thing I could do. I opened the camper door and jumped inside, closing the door behind me as quickly as I could when the giant bird tried to fly out over me. He was mad, but so was I. 

He tried to flog me with his wings. I kept moving forward trying to corner him against a tool box. He didn’t like that. He tried to spur me, leaping at my face. He got me on my forearm, but I got both my hands around his neck and the two of us tumbled out the camper door and onto the ground. 

I stood and began ringing his neck. He didn’t like that, either, but I felt something pop in a turkey neck as hot as a stovepipe. I threw him into the bar ditch and watched him thrash for what seemed like a good five minutes. Then I loaded him up and started for home. Again. 

On the way, I kept looking in my rear view mirror every now and then, for no apparent reason. It was the best turkey I ever ate. 

The back surgery went fine. I’m getting around a little better every day. It was the infection that damn near killed me, and put me in the heart unit. 

Last week, Doctor “Zee” said, “You can go turkey hunting.” 

It was not a small thing. Only a little over a week left in the season. 

I know where there is a feast going on and how to find it.

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen