2010 Spring Turkey Hunting
Home Camp Reports and Photos
Please note: Hunt reports are posted in reverse order with the most recent hunt at the top of the page and the first hunt at the bottom of the page.
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Hunt 5 April 19 - 22
It would be hard to think of a better ending to our turkey season at the Home Camp. A strong finish to what turned out to be super-good hunting all along the way.
A post-hunt analysis of this super-success could target many factors. The weather was great and the birds were following their historic play book. Gobbling aplenty. But probably the most important dynamic was the skill level and experience of the Tennessee hunters in camp. Few things about turkey hunting are predictable, except this: a turkey hunter's success is almost directly related to his skill at the sport. (Oh, sure, there is Beginner's Luck every now and then. And we'll take it every time it's offered.)
But skill comes from experience, especially when it comes to hunting spring turkeys. This is very, very important. The more you do it, the better you get. Kind of like playing a guitar. Pick one up for the first time, and you ain't making much music. But play that thing every day for five years and you will finally amount to something. It's the exact same thing with turkey hunting.
Warning: Advertising Propaganda Follows:
It should be noted that the best way to gain this valuable experience is to book an Adobe Lodge turkey hunt every year. A wise reader would have already picked-up on this unchallengeable fact. An even wiser reader would already be inquiring about next season's open dates.
Now, back to our regular programming:
Here's the best way to predict an individual's performance as a new hunt is beginning; find out how many life-time turkeys he has to his credit. That one figure will speak volumes. And since our goal is to stage-manage our turkey hunts to produce success, that bit of knowledge gleaned from our pre-hunt questionnaire is the best tool we have. You don't send the rookies where you want to play the old-pros. And why waste the skills of that multi-bird veteran in an area where collecting a turkey is almost a cinch?
Most every hunter on Hunt 5 had at least fifty turkeys on his calling card, and some had way over a hundred. The eight hunters drove here from the Dover / Cumberland City / Erin area of Tennessee. That Land-Between-the-Lakes country has a rich tradition of turkey hunting. With this kind of an experienced team in the field, the success of the hunt was looking to be mighty good. Be Still My Beating Heart. We were a cinch to end the season strongly, if the weather held and if those doggoned gobblers still had a little hanky-panky with the girls on their mind. It did and they did. Maybe-so the hunt could have been better, but even with hind-sight, it's hard to see how.
Here's what happened: we had eight hunters booked. Four had hunted with Ben McCulloch at the Mustang Ranch Camp a few years ago, but since Ben can accommodate only four (maybe five) at a time, and since they were to be a party of eight, the Tennessee troops needed our Home Camp's larger size. But a couple of weeks before the hunt, Chris Barrett and Kevin Dortch, because of job complications, called to ask if they might show up a couple of days early. Whenever possible, we are happy to oblige and so here they came, overlapping Hunt 4 and 5. They had to get by on their own for a couple of days with no staff support (cooking, bird cleaning, etc), but you know, that didn't bother them one bit.
Interestingly enough, Chris took a most unusual turkey - he collected a four-bearded jake. Maybe it is the first one ever taken here. I can't remember another multi-bearded dude that was but a yearling. I never thought about it, but perhaps gobblers with more than one beard start their adult life with more than one. Maybe they don't add a beard every year, so to speak. You'll see the photo of these multi-beards in the collection below, but you'll count only three beards. Tragically, the incompetent outfitter/photographer, (yours truly), in setting up the scene by plucking a few feathers around the area of the beards to give them more visibility, clumsily pulled-off one of the small beards. A search through the pile of feathers in the trash can was fruitless, so we went with what we had. Still - even three beards on a jake would seem to be mighty rare.
Chris and Kevin wound up with three turkeys each. With this Hunt 5 being the final hunt of the season, and with no more hunters to come, we announced that third-birds would be available. One other, Boyd Williams, Sr. took us up on this offer, as well.
Speaking of Boyd Sr., it was he and his son, Boyd, Jr, together with Chris Barrett and Doug Futrell, who had hunted with Ben on that previous occasion. And as we have come to expect during turkey season, few things ever go as smoothly as they show on those t.v. shows. For example - Doug's first gobbler, shot near a water hole, flipped himself right smack into the pond. You'd have thought Doug had been duck hunting when you first saw them, both wet and covered in mud. This explains the sorry condition of the bird in the photo below. In acting the part of a good, well-bred retriever, Doug waded out to fetch the "DEAD BIRD", but the old boy had one more flop in him and spurred Doug on the meaty part of his hand. Ouch.
Here's another example of things gone awry: Boyd Jr.'s gun misfired not once, not twice, but three times. Talk about a challenge to your religion! But thank goodness someone in the TN group had the foresight to bring an extra weapon. With a gun not his own, Boyd Jr. was able to finally, with no more malfunctions, take his second gobbler. Both weighed over the twenty-pound milestone, and both had identical spurs of 1 1/8" x 1 1/4". If you see a shotgun for sale in a Western Tennessee newspaper, you'll want to be sure it doesn't belong to Boyd Jr.
Boyd Sr., meanwhile, took as his third Rio, the heaviest gobbler of all eighteen birds at twenty-one-point-four lbs. That is one heck of a heavy turkey this far into the season. Trouble was, Boyd Sr. shot the beard plum off the old boy. But even though he was beardless, there was no doubt of his masculinity with those spurs at 1 1/4" x 1 5/16. Only a couple of wispy hairs remain of that beard. Here's the good news: Boyd Sr. can now claim that the original beard was as large as he wants it to be, and who will be able to contradict him?
"Fifteen inches, eh, you say he had, Boyd? And what's that about a paintbrush?"
Go for it, Boyd - seize this golden opportunity. You might never get another one like this one was. And we'll take your word for every bit of it.
Jeff Hancock and Billy Williams hunted in the same general area. The hapless longbeards didn't know what danger they faced with this formidable pair looking to hang some more spurs on the wall. Jeff, (with 100+) and Billy, (with 50+) gobblers to their lifetime credit, limited out with a pair of birds apiece. The turkeys are just now giving thanks that neither expert hunter elected to go for a third bird.
Terry Harris lost no time in getting his tag on a big Rio. That first afternoon, Terry collected a pair of spurs, the largest of anyone's on Hunt 5, at 1 3/8" x 1 5/16". The 19.4 pounder had a 10 5/8" beard, too. Sadly, maybe Terry expended all his luck on this one longbeard. Although he worked others, and although he did shoot a second bird, he was unable to find him after a lengthy search. So we were forced to enter the old "DNF" (did not find) by Terry's name. Terry was the only hunter who failed to put a pair of gobblers in his cooler for the trip back home.
So here is the final tally on the season's final hunt: eight hunters took eighteen Rios. Three took three apiece. Four took two turkeys. And one took one. And we have to remember to count the wounded turkey. When you couple this good harvest with the near perfect weather - not too cold, not too hot, not too wet, not too dry, not too windy - you have to be thankful for the spring sport of turkey hunting. May it ever be thus.
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Hunt 4 April 15 - 18
Inclement weather dominated Hunt # 4. With all three camps in the Adobe Lodge group having identical schedules this go-round (noon, Thursday until noon, Sunday), it was in the stars (if you could have seen them through all the clouds) that the big spring cold front would play heck with the turkey hunting everywhere.
But when it comes to rain, you will find it impossible to dampen the spirits of a pure-dee turkey hunter when those longbeards are sounding off and doing their thing. Yep, every last one of those crazy guys hunted right through the worst of it. The turkeys must have thought the camo troops were nuts to be hunting through such a downpour. Most of the birds, being wiser than their two-legged predators, found themselves a nice, dry place to ride out the storm. And if they uttered a gobble at all, that whisper wasn't audible to anyone in the field.
As you might expect, not a single bird was taken that afternoon when the hunt kicked-off. For the first time this season, the old Tally Board was totally blank when the hunters returned to camp the first time.
And then it rained all night. By daylight on Friday, the rain had slackened to a sprinkle, but drops and drips of various sizes kept falling until after lunch. Somehow, by noontime, the hardy troops managed to harvest three totally soaked birds.
Friday afternoon then, the weather got about as good as it was going to get for the duration. The rain was mostly gone, the heavy clouds tried to clear out but didn't quite make it until after dark. That afternoon, before the wind hit on Saturday, lots of gobbling was heard and lots of birds were worked. Classic, classic turkey hunting the way grandpa said it was supposed to happen. Predictably, the hunting picked up as did the activity in the skinning shed as birds were either processed or were dropped into a set of giant pantyhose. What? Yep, pantyhose. Protects those feathers until the precious cargo arrives at the taxidermist.
On Saturday, the sharp north wind with the temperature hovering just under 50 degrees all day made one wonder where the heck springtime had gone. Spring rains are supposed to come from huge, booming thunder storms, not all-day winter-type rains. Global warming??? Yeah, right.
Back for the second year in a row were old buddies Ray Nickle (Jonesboro, AR) and Jeff Baldwin (Poplar Bluff, MO). Hunting always together out of the same blind, they thereby halve their chances to connect with a turkey. But despite this mathematical constriction, they took three turkeys. Both admit that spending time with each other is their reason for their annual trip. Yep, they rebooked for 2011 before departing. Jeff outdid himself this year. His first gobbler was a 22.7 pounder with inch-and-a-half spurs and a nine inch beard. Run that score on your official turkey calculator and you'll be impressed. He was a remarkable trophy Rio, especially this far into the season when twenty-pounders have become increasing hard to find as they run off pounds in pursuit of sex. (If anyone ever creates a business based on this principle, you will want to buy stock in that company.) For his contribution to the deal, Ray collected his bird on the final afternoon with a 53 yard shot, and his Rio had similarly impressive spurs at 1 1/4 x 1 1/8. Hot dang, you two amigos done good.
Wade Boyles hunted turkeys with us maybe twelve years ago, and this time he brought Rick Carson. Both are from WestbyGod Virginia, and if somehow a blood test could be run for the trait, these two would probably be contenders for Turkey Purists of the Year at the Home Camp. Nope, you won't catch them even thinking about killing a turkey unless that rascal comes in strutting, drumming and gobbling his song. Both Wade and Rick are addicted to the spring show and that's what they live for.
Here in West Texas, the best gobbler anyone is likely to hear has no chance in a head-to-head competition with Wade Boyles. He has taken calling championships in his home state, in Ohio and in Pennsylvania. He could probably call up a gobbler in the middle of our Wal-Mart parking lot. Both Wade and Rick use mouth calls exclusively, and their expertise in all aspects of the sport is impressive. Except for Wade's shooting. He missed one. Rick tagged out early while the weather was better.
From Houston, TX, Steve Pierce harvested his first-ever turkeys with us last spring. For his encore this year, he repeated the feat, but managed to take only a single bird in 2011. No doubt that weather didn't give him the best chance to defend his '09 record.
Ed Ford, from Dexter, GA (who has plenty of experience hunting West Texas) and Bob Inman, from York, PA were paired up to hunt together. A Yankee and a Rebel. What could be a more deadly combination for those rascal turkeys? Bob got his first-ever Rio. In fact he got three when his second gobbler turned out to have an unseen, unlucky buddy who suffered his similar fate. Interestingly enough, the hapless third victim turned out to be the lightest of the three at 15.8 lbs. (compared to 17.8 and 19.0) but had the longest beard at 10" (compared to 9.25 and 9.5") and the longest spurs at 1 3/8 x 1 1/8.
Now Ed Ford is someone you really need to get to know. As you might surmise from his size, he is an ex-coach (mainly basketball and football), and he had to wait until retirement to fully indulge his addiction to hunting, especially turkeys. As is the tradition with so many turkey hunters, Ed simply cannot give you his account, using only words, of the final ten minutes of a gobbler's life. He has to act it out, taking, of course, both his own part and the part of the longbeard in the drama. Watching that big man mimic a turkey will bring tears to a glass eye. And as we all know and love, the story of the hunt is vastly more important that the actual execution itself.
Finally, there was Brad Milner, Atlanta, GA, who easily tops our list of hunters who maximize usage of their Texas hunting license by coming both fall and spring. What with all that rain, the roads in Brad's assigned hunting area were impassible, so like the trooper he is, Brad covered the half-section-or-so on foot. Both Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, moving from potential hot-spot to hot spot, he slogged on - hearing gobblers but without enjoying much success. By Saturday, finally the guides were able to take Brad to a favored "Honey Hole" and now given the chance to pull it off, he did in spades. Yep, Brad collected two good'uns that morning and was tagged out before noon. And yes, we will see him next fall on his deer hunt in early December, and yes, we will see him next spring when he brings his son to hunt longbeards.
The weather did its dead-level best to dim the success of this hunt, but when you field the right team, you will put some points on the board. And here they are: Eight hunters collected a total of fourteen birds. One took three; four took two; three took one (which could have been improved if it were not for that missed shot). None went home birdless and for that we are thankful since, for a time there, it appeared that the total was on track to be much, much worse.
The good news, of course, is that rain. Even with eight eager turkey hunters in camp, all attired in their most favorite lucky shirts, etc. etc., and all anxious to get to hunting, but with the rain pelting down without letup, you will never, ever hear a West Texan say such a profane statement as: "I wish it would quit raining". That ain't in our vocabulary. We were glad for the rain - 2"+ - but we were overjoyed that the hunters could do as good as they did (even if they might have been thinking those blasphemous words).
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Hunt 3 April 10-14
Ahhh. Spring Turkey hunting. A mixture of high-highs and low-lows. Hunt Three of the 2010 season had plenty of both.
A pair of brothers, Glen and Wayne Allums, from Deep East Texas, only a short holler away from Louisiana, were back again this year. And this time, Glen brought his grandson, T.J., announcing that his priority was to get the young hunter a turkey (who had but one to his youthful credit). Glen would be guide, coach and mentor. He did a bang-up good job of immersing T.J. into the high/low aspect of the sport. The first afternoon, Glen complained to his guide (your writer of this report), that he had been assigned "to the gar hole". (i.e. They didn't see no turkeys of no kind no where.) But brother Wayne was ecstatic. He brought in a dandy (second heaviest bird of the hunt) that first afternoon. And the rascal had a pair of 1 1/4" spurs with a good 9 5/8" beard. It was to be the last bird he took with normal feet. His second tom, taken on the last afternoon, had a severe case of ingrown toenails. You'll see the photo below.
The very next morning, in making their way to get set up, Glen and T.J. inadvertently walked right under a roost tree and busted the entire flock to the next zip code. Not good. Their guide suggested a new place to hunt and gave them an orientation tour. This time, finally, things went right. Classic turkey hunting in the purest sense. Granddad called a gobbling tom right up to almost within sight of their hen decoy. Then he quit playing the call, explaining later that had that gobbler heard a sound that came from a different location than the decoy, he would quickly have smelled the proverbial rat and skedaddled. The unfolding events made T.J., according to Granddad, shake like a leaf. But when asked if T.J. made a good shot, Glen proudly announced that the boy "rolled him up like a newspaper". Nineteen pounds, 9" beard, 1 3/8" x 1 1/4". Hot diggity-dog.
The pair hunted on with more highs and lows to come. A hen comes within 6-8 feet of T.J. They worked a gobbler without success. And then, they found themselves back where the disaster happened at the famous roost site at the Coleman Pens. The faithful old hen decoy was set up. As the afternoon wore on, every real, live hen who passed by was offended by the presence of the fake and refused to have anything approaching a normal relationship with her. So, Glen sent T.J. out to retrieve the old girl. Almost immediately, out of nowhere, four strutting gobblers appear on a ridge about 200 yards away. But despite Glen's best attempts to sound like a seductive hen, the gobblers refused to come much closer. Glen's analysis: the wise male birds couldn't see any female that could be the source of all those tempting sounds. Experts will tell you that a turkey's eyes and ears must be in sync. They need to see what they are hearing and/or hear what is being seen. Confirmation. Without it, the toms hang up. If only they still had the hen decoy still out, surely the gobblers would have come within range. Glen was kicking himself for the decision to remove her.
Around the old camp all during the season, we hear mixed reports from the hunters about the effectiveness of decoys. Glen and T.J. could testify for either the prosecution or the defense - take your pick.
The Allums departed for home with a few hours yet to go on their hunt. But T.J. had his gobbler. Wayne had a couple of them. And Glen had no bird to his credit, but left here with a multitude of educational stories for anyone with "ears to hear". They asked for a copy of next year's schedule to study on the trip home. It's a cinch they'll be back in 2011. God Willing.
After 25+ years operating this hunting camp, I thought I'd seen about everything. Not so. Al Sheaffer and Rick Olewiler from Altoona, PA unloaded and carried into the hunting lodge a couple of sets of golf clubs. Some kind of new weapon for turkeys? Nope, they just wanted to keep this precious cargo safe and "out of the sun".
Anyway, Al and Rick had heck. They were seeing, according to their reports, nothing but jakes, which is unusual in this spring when we have so few of them. Then, with a classic "failure to communicate" with their outfitter, what should have been a productive afternoon at a water point turned out to produce a busted flock and a miss. Couple these unfortunate incidents with a DNF (did not find the bird), and our camp crystal ball assured us we were looking at a train wreck coming. For the last afternoon, tactics were changed virtually 100%. Success finally came. Both Al and Rick tagged mature gobblers. But the final morning, with the hunters hoping to leverage their previous success, once again, neither hunter was able to score. More evidence of that high / low talked about earlier.
Alan Manas and Carroll Agee, from the Phoenix, AZ area, had a spectacular turkey hunt. Both limited-out with a pair of toms each. Carroll's second tom was, at 21.3 lbs., the largest of the hunt. But it gets better, and get this: that dude's spurs were 1 3/4" and 1 5/8" - easily the best so far this season. With Carroll having taken his first turkey on the first afternoon, and with Alan taking his first turkey on the following first morning, the pair of Arizonaians decided to hunt out of the same blind on the second afternoon of the hunt.
The blind belonged to Ken Kirkeby, who was here on the previous hunt date. That blind was supposed to have been returned to him via UPS, but the opportunistic Arizona hunters, upon spotting the blind awaiting shipment, commandeered the thing and announced to the outfitter their intentions to exploit this new-found treasure. Remember the old business school adage: The Customer Is Always Right. So Alan and Carroll were "permitted" to use that Double Bull Blind.
Anyway, back to the story. Guides Jim (Snake) Allen and Jeff Branon had taken the pair to scope-out several, so-far at least, as yet un-hunted areas. Manas and Agee made their choice among the several presented to them and quickly erected the "borrowed" blind. Finally now hunting both together inside the blind (remember - it is a DOUBLE Bull), they were set to go. But with a turkey hunter's devotion to getting out in the woods early each day, it is entirely understandable that sometimes, you might - just might - find a turkey hunter "asleep at his post". Thankfully, at least Carroll remained awake.
Here comes a gobbler. Carroll's studies him from the blind without waking Rip Van Winkle. Then, things get even better. Coming around the bend and already almost in range are a pair of honkers, as the tape would later reveal. Carroll wakes Alan. They quickly devise a plan. Simultaneous shooting - that will be the trick. Both are ready. The countdown begins. Carroll dutifully pulls his trigger and downs his victim at the appointed moment. But Alan doesn't shoot. HIS GUN WAS STILL ON SAFETY, for crying out loud. But being a super-experienced quail hunter, Alan recovers his fumble quickly enough and drops his bird. But Carroll said that four-second interval seemed like a month. His entire hunting career passed right before his eyes. Check out the statistics of these two beauties below. Once again: high-to-low-to-high in mere seconds.
So there you have it. And as best as I can figure it, the high/low aspect of turkey hunting is why the sport is popular. For the purist with scores and scores of turkeys to his credit, the lows still come from time to time, but the highs are of such magnitude, there is no thought of quitting.
Final recap: seven hunters, nine turkeys on the board. But how do we reconcile the statistics when there was a miss and a DNF? Should two more be figured in? If you count those, you could say that everyone got their limit of two birds, except for T.J. who got only one, and his granddad guide who had no bird listed by his name on the tally board. But who left for home happy and with next year's schedule in his pocket.
The weather was mostly entirely overcast the entire time with temperatures in the 70's. We'll take all of these kinds of days we can get.
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Hunt 2 April 7 - 10
During the 48 hours leading up to the kickoff of Hunt # 2, three hunters had to cancel (or hopefully postpone) their hunt with us. Legitimate reasons for sure - family health problems back home; major business issues. Such is life, and we wish all those who weren't here Godspeed and the best of luck. Dadgummit - you guys missed one heck of a good turkey hunt. With only five hunters taking the field, our game plan went splendidly, thank you. 100% on two birds - it's hard to do better than that.
But as with any turkey hunt, the stories told about spring turkey adventures don't quite follow the prescribed series of events they talk about in those turkey magazines. And sometimes, hunters will "come untrained", so to speak. Every turkey hunt around the old Adobe Lodge is an adventure.
With one hunter arriving too late for the pre-hunt kickoff meeting, we oriented the four hunters we had on hand to their assigned areas. "Here's where we think the birds are roosting; here's where we think they hang-out in the middle of the day; here's where the different milo feeders are located." That's our basic orientation. Hunters then are free to hunt on their own, moving about as they see fit.
With several more hours of daylight still left on that first afternoon, three things happen: the late-arriving hunter, John Guzman from El Paso, shows up; Ken Kirkeby comes back to camp, already having tagged a good gobbler in less than an hour's worth of hunting time; and Tom Edie ends his hunt is similar fashion by hauling in a pair of jakes.
Here is Tom's story. After getting the lay of the land from guide Jerry Watts, (1500 acres along a river, with three active feeders all to himself - perfect West Texas habitat), Tom picks out a likely spot for his portable blind. Completing the blind's quick erection, Tom is all-too-soon covered up with action. A jake comes wandering by within range, and Tom, remembering the old adage about "a bird in the hand is worth two - etc. etc) puts him on the ground with one shot. So far, so good.
Then when Tom goes to retrieve the jake, uh-oh - up walks another jake. So Tom, with a quick-draw-type move, shoots him on the spot for his second bird. Just like Ken Kirkeby, he's been hunting less than an hour. But Tom has tagged out with two jakes. When asked why he shot the second gobbler, Tom, who hails from Metairie, LA (a suburb of New Orleans), could not deny a basic truth and frankly admitted that "The Coon-Ass came out in me."
For those of you who don't know, Cajuns have a well-deserved reputation for multiple sins when it comes to harvesting game. The old joke goes like this: How can our Army win any war? Just recruit a battalion of Cajuns and give them plenty of bullets. Then tell them that the limit is two enemy soldiers.
Anyway, Tom laughed at himself for his cultural heritage and is already talking about a return visit (his third in a row) next season. If that comes to pass, for the first couple of days, surely we can find a place for him to hunt where there are zero turkeys, just to make him earn his way, so to speak.
Ken Kirkeby, meanwhile, put his second Rio on the ground the next morning, so he, too, was done in the initial third of the hunt. Ken was to have been accompanied by David Hughes from Atlanta. Those guys met here on a deer hunt way back fourteen years ago and have been hunting-buddies ever since. David had some kind major glitch come to plague his business and he had to cancel. The first time Ken hunted with us, he lived in New Jersey. But now, he has moved to Decatur, Texas and has gotten himself in the Appaloosa horse business. So he's a Texan now. Good for him But we'll have to work on his accent a bit.
John Guzman drove in from El Paso (about seven hours) and Jerry Watts quickly got him oriented. During the next couple of days, John took his two birds in the classic manner, but similar to the reports of some of the other hunters, sometimes the gobblers would come silently and sometimes they would come from a long distance gobbling all the way. What makes them do things differently?
A father/son pair made up the balance of the hunters on # 2. Donald and Jacob Selph live in Eastman, GA. Jacob, fourteen- years-old, is well on his way to becoming a sho'nuff turkey hunter. He can now claim Birds # 4 and 5 on this Texas trip. Jacob and Donald hunted together the entire time and collected, as a bonus, some fantastic video to show the rest of us back at camp what the pair had been up to. One thing for sure, Jacob needed lots fewer shotgun shells than did his dad who spent four shells on just one bird. And the entire fiasco was on that video footage. What a hoot. Thankfully, the Georgia hunters were able to reclaim a bit of honor on the second morning when both of them took a pair of Rios in less than a couple of hours. This time, with much better shooting.
In fact, the hunt ended a full 24 hours early because all the hunters had collected their two birds by then. 100% success in only two days. Maybe the good fortunes were due to the weather. It was downright chilly in the mornings (34 and 38 degrees), but warmed to near eighty in the afternoon. And the wind was moderate - thank goodness. When five hunters take ten birds in less than 48 hours, something is going right - or maybe lots of things are going that way. We'll see what the next hunt brings. Already the weather forecast is calling for storms for the next several days, and the moon change comes on Wednesday. Anybody know if the moon affects turkey hunting?
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Hunt 1 April 3 - 6
You wouldn't think that spring turkey hunters, gentle creatures at heart, would be super-competitive. But there just happens to be such a covey. They hail from the DeWitt / Stuttgart / Almyra area of Arkansas. All but one, that is, who lives across the river in Indianola, MS. (Maybe they are being fruitful and multiplying?)
Their contest is called the "Texas Turkey Challenge". For the past several years, we have played host to these addicts - er, ah - sportsmen. Formerly a party of eight, their numbers last season dwindled to only four, but rebounded 50% this year when six showed up. (Proof of being fruitful???). Anyway, they are mighty serious about their spring turkey and darned good at the sport.
Warren Jennings, Jr. is their point-man. A drawing contest pairs-up hunters so that the six made up three teams. Their harvested birds are measured down to within one-thirty-second of an inch for beard and spur length. And, of course, each bird is weighed on our super-sensitive scales furnished by the Boehlers of Amsterdam, NY. No scientist in any laboratory anywhere who spends his days measuring complicated technical data works any harder than does Warren Jr. in compiling the numbers.
This year, for his partner, Warren Jr. drew Mark Bennett. Warren's dad, Warren Sr., drew James Gibbs. So that left newcomer Rick Duffield to hunt with Harry Chism, from across that big river back home.
The other two hunters in camp, and not a part of the contest, were Jim and Mike McEnery from Raleigh, NC. They hunted deer with us back in 2004 and it was great to see them once again after all this time. It seems that since our last meeting years ago, young Michael has somehow contracted a terminal case of "turkey-itis". Spring time will find him away from his desk and out in the woods. Lawyers can do that easy enough by pleading for postponements and delays. And danged if he hasn't introduced "Dear Old Dad" to the sport. Jim, now retired from IBM, admitted at the kickoff meeting that although he's never killed a turkey, the time he spends with his son in the woods in pursuit of gobblers is the best time he has ever had hunting.
Want proof that Mike McEnery is afflicted with this legendary spring disease? In the middle of the day, he would send Jim on the thirty-minute trip back to camp for lunch. Why miss an hour's worth of hunting? Dutifully, poor Jim would make up a couple of sandwiches (standing all the while) and grab some chips and drinks for the logistical supply detail back to his hopelessly addicted son.
Although the McEnery pair went bird-less for the first couple of days, finally on the last night, Michael's dedication paid off. He took a pair of gobblers only minutes apart. Although he and his dad were hunting maybe a football field away from each other, Mike had both shots and the ball (or tom) just didn't bounce Jim's way. So Jim remains scoreless, but Michael now has his seventh and eighth lifetime gobblers.
Back to the contest - you have to wonder if some of the more crafty hunters might be passing up chances at lesser birds while waiting for a possible winner? One thing for sure, the hunters stayed hard-at-it. Despite the heat one day. Despite the incessant wind every day. Despite the turkeys failing to cooperate most of the time. And already the gobblers are throwing curve balls by roosting in unusual new locations.
Mark Bennett, the mayor of Almyra, Arkansas, has a long history of hunting turkeys, but admitted that this year's hunt produced a first. Mark was set up for his afternoon's hunt, making a call every so often, when up walks a couple of hens. Nothing unusual about that. Surely they were responding to his melodic calling. But what's this? The hen's attention is drawn instead to a small, three or four pad prickly pear cactus. They seemed to be mesmerized by the plant. Moving in for a tentative look, then turning their head for a different angle, then backing away only to repeat the ritual several times.
Finally, they wandered off. Not yet ready to admit defeat, Mark called again to the pair of females remembering from experience that there is nothing better that real, live decoys out in front of you. The girls returned. And sure enough, once again as if on some kind of rehearsed routine, the pair of hens kept doing that Mexican Hat Dance around the cactus. Finally, they left - this time for good.
Mark had been sitting patiently the entire time. He needed to stretch his legs. He stood up and ambled over to the cactus to see if he could discover just what had held the attention of those hens for so long. Being on the most remote part of that ranch, and now with his chest pocket containing his cell phone just a wee-bit higher than it had been for the past two hours, finally Mark's phone let him know that he had four text messages awaiting him. Unfortunately, just as Mark peered into the cactus and made eye contact with a nice rattlesnake, his phone vibrated.
Talk about getting your attention. Almost the very same thing happened to me one time. Hint-Hint: when in snake country, de-activate the vibrate feature on your phone.
Speaking of snakes, a few others were seen. Which we take to be good news. Why? Some of us old-timers think that snakes crawl before a rain. In other words, they are good at forecasting the weather and in this part of the world, we always welcome a rain.
To re-cap then, the eight hunters in camp took ten turkeys. Three took their limit of two each; four took one each; one took none. The contest winners were Warren Sr. and James Gibbs. Warren Sr. will also get his name added to the plaque for the largest bird of the hunt, as calculated by his son's incredible statistics. Hmmmm - maybe we should call in an independent auditor? Warren Sr. pointed out that the measurements of the three largest contest birds were the closest they've ever been: 62.65, 62.0125, and 61.0625. In fact, the fourth bird was a distant 60.6375. See there, I told you these guys are serious about their turkey hunting and their scores. Eat you heart out, you baseball statisticians.
Seven of the ten toms put twenty or more pounds on our scale. But such weights won't be seen a couple of weeks from now as the gobblers continue to strut and drum their way to sexual success. We wish them good luck.
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