Bad Weather Turkeys

 

Sometimes you get your hat blown off when you hunt turkeys. It gets windy occasionally in this country in April. Getting your hat blown off is probably better than what happens to the turkeys, it suddenly occurs to me. I don’t like hunting turkeys in the wind, anyway. Do you?

I was put to thinking about windy weather turkey hunting by a report Adam Webster and his eight year old son, Lane, delivered to me in my kitchen this past week. Lane’s my grandson. His dad had him out on his first youth turkey hunt, way out west in wild Woodward County.

Their orders concluding the hunt were to report to me regardless of the hunt’s outcome, and that’s why we were all sitting around the kitchen table. There’s no such thing as a fruitless turkey hunt. Something, I said something, happens on every turkey hunt, and I wanted to hear all the details.

I already knew they hadn’t killed a turkey, as they hadn’t come dragging one into the kitchen. Fine. Tell me what else happened. Every hour spent hunting turkeys is better than every hour spent watching Miley or Justin on TV. Now tell me what happened, and they did.

There were snakes, coyotes, two nights spent in a wind-tossed, pop-up camper, and a skunk that came right up to them where they sat in the sage calling turkeys. So they called up a skunk, it seems. I told them that was great as I considered it, and all the other things mentioned, adventures and the reason why we do these things and go to these far off places.

But in the main, they had gotten blown “clear out of the ball park.” Hunting turkeys in a wild wind is so much harder than hunting turkeys in a falling rain. Turkeys can hear you call in a rain and will come to you shaking and ruffling the water from their feathers as they come.

Hunting turkeys in a nail-driving wind is so much harder than hunting turkeys in a falling snow, no matter the cold. Turkeys can hear you in falling snow, and will leave clear, deep tracks in the powder on the way to what they envision to be the warmest of friendships. Turkeys being able to hear your calls are the single most important element in a successful turkey hunt. Wind is not your friend.

Most of you remember the wind of late. The boys were out hunting turkeys in that wind two days in a row.

Adam wanted to know: “How do you hunt turkeys in a wind like that?” Interesting question. Adam’s a good turkey hunter, and getting better by the year, but this wind thing had him snaffled.

Mainly you don’t hunt turkeys in the wind: You let them “hunt” you. In the kind of winds we’ve had of late, turkeys cannot hear even the loudest of calls much more than 75 yards away, which means practically not at all, or not until they’re nearly right on top of you, in which case you’d been better off sitting still with your gun in your lap, not calling at all, just hoping against hope one of the dumber ones might stumble by you trying to get out of the wind. BLAM! I have killed some that way.

Ideally, so as to save some of your dignity and not get a reputation as being someone that only shoots the stupid ones, you want to go to a low place, a creek bottom, maybe, with lots of trees in it which, coupled with the low terrain, will give wind-addled birds a place to R&R out of the wind.

You want, if you can, to choose a low spot you know turkeys habitate either by your own experience there, or at someone else’s behest, a farmer maybe. Trust the spot. Be prepared to stay a long time right there. You’re sleepy anyway. You got up at four. Try to find a tree as wide as your back to sit up against; not just for protection from back shooters, but because you’re sleepy and want to take a little nap against something comfortable.

Four or five years ago, I hunted the old, wild Comanche country they now call Greer County in a wind so hard it stripped and shredded brand new, young leaves off of cottonwoods and American elms all around me. Bad news for a turkey hunter, but Farmer Brown told me the turkeys came to this little windbreak, sheltered corner of plowed ground all during the day to feed on locust seeds, so I broke out my sandwich, my water bottle and had lunch right there in the shade of one of the locusts of which I speak.

Two bites into the sandwich, here popped the cherry red head of a fine, strutting young gobbler following two hens from behind a fringe of blue sage to my right and about fifty yards away. I hadn’t even attempted to make a call. I was hungry.

The hens had their heads down pecking at the ground, and the gobbler’s head was alternately out and looking at the hens, and then hidden behind his tail fan as he wheeled and pirouetted in the red sandy ground.

Helped by the shadows, none of them saw me ease my sandwich to the ground and place my right hand around my gun’s pistol grip which was already across my lap. Even in the lee of the shelterbelt trees, the wind was strong enough to occasionally catch the gobbler’s fan in full strut and nearly blow him off his feet causing him to look ridiculous perhaps in the eyes of his girlfriends.

I know I laughed at him, soundlessly. All for the sake of a girl. We men are all fools. But we eat well, sometimes bringing home the best meat imaginable out of the worst weather conceivable. In the end, we are all magic, and irresistible.

© 2011 Conrad M. Vollertsen