Talking Turkey

 

Look yonder across that winter wheat field, is that a turkey? ‘ Bout two hundred yards? Well, by golly, I think it is. He’s standing there looking over here. See that neck, fire engine red, stretched high? Oh, yeah. He sees us, alright. 

That winter wheat is a beautiful emerald green fabric glistening in the sun, rippled by the wind. Yes, the wind. That danged wind. I swear it has blown non-stop for three solid weeks; first from the north, then from the south. Take your pick. Pick your poison. It doesn’t matter. In this country, in the spring, the wind is going to blow. 

The wind in this country messes with the hunting and fishing. Here lately, the older I get, I’ve noticed my body has taken a sort of leaning-set, left to right, noticeable if you walk behind me and watch me walk. It doesn’t matter. The harder the wind blows, the harder I hunt and fish. I’ll topple over one of these days, leaning into that wind, and that’ll be it. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. 

Look. Look. Here he comes, in full strut. Look at that. Look at that. With that tail fanned out, he looks like a four-masted schooner about to heel over in the wind, so strong it blows, a black schooner adrift on an emerald sea. 

He’s coming to us. He’s going to strut right up here, if that danged wind doesn’t wrap him up like a big, black tumbleweed and blow him away clean down yonder to the ol’ Red river down in Jackson County. Jeeminy Christmas, the wind. Get ready. He’s still coming. He’s still coming. 

“Us” was me and the two turkey decoys I stuck in the ground thirty yards in front of me, and slightly to my left, the natural direction a right-handed shooter wants to swing his shotgun with the least effort. There wasn’t anybody else, just me out on my own hook in Comanche country down yonder in ol’ Greer County where I first started hunting turkeys with Bill Williams back in the spring of ‘ 67. 

I was sitting with my back up against a big black locust in a shelterbelt bordering the same wheat field but across the way the turkey was “sailing” to get to me and the decoys. The gobbler, a nice, big fat one, had popped out of another shelterbelt straight across from me, looking, no doubt, to see if there might be a lonely hen or two out there pecking around in the wheat for bugs. And here “we” were….. well, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? 

When I was younger, I followed a form of turkey hunting, not then named, that came to be called “run and gun”, whereby the prospective hunter literally tries to put as much ground under his boots, even running on occasion, as he can so as to better close the distance between himself and a gobbler during the course of a day that may last, all things considered, the better part of fourteen hours. I killed lots of turkeys that way. 

Then one day I woke up way out on the prairie camped next to an old house place when the alarm went off at five, and my body hurt so badly from the previous day’s running and gunning that I literally groaned out loud, for no apparent reason. Immediately, like a light coming on, I said to myself (alone, as usual), “You know what? This is stupid. I’m supposed to be having FUN. I am going to sleep two more hours, maybe three, and then I’m going to take a little walk around the country, nice and easy, name the birds, name the flowers, and sit down every now and then and “talk” to the turkeys, and see what happens.” 

And that’s what I did. If I look back, it’s only in amusement. You’re supposed to get old with your brain, not your feet. It took me awhile to figure that out. I’m slow. I figured out how to turn this computer on a couple of years ago. I still can’t type. There are still turkeys in the freezer. 

The aforementioned turkey? Well, he strutted right up to “us”, assumed a fighting pose with his neck stretched out and his tail fanned, which hid me from his view as I mounted the gun, and began to peck my plastic friend about the face. 

Yes, I did; right about then, and with malice aforethought. Twelve gauge, full choke Browning Citori over and under with a load of Winchester #6's, for those that like the vital statistics. 

That evening, I made camp by an old corral in the middle of a mesquite flat where the landowner keeps some skinny looking rodeo stock cows that run and jump as well as any deer you ever saw. 

I set my shell camper’s water can on the tailgate, and went to work. In a little bit, I had pulled the innards from the gobbler, hung him, feathers and all, in a mesqiute tree away from the coyotes, and washed my hands. Then I started feeling around on my body like I had maybe lost a quarter somewhere. 

I didn’t hurt anywhere that I could tell. Between now and the end of our season May 6th, I was going to walk and talk to some more turkeys. You could bet on that.  

Copyright © 2009 Conrad M. Vollertsen