Post by reowen51 on May 30, 2008 21:26:52 GMT -5
Day 8: Raymond and I continue to chase wild turkeys.
How Do We Hunters Measure Friendship?
I was out of town for six days and Raymond and I rested the turkeys on his lease. We have educated them to the point of at least a double doctorate in turkeyology! They are at the top of their games I might add. I was anxious to get back after them following my trip and spent a great deal of time planning our hunts upon my return. Ray’s Michigan season will end on May 31st.
I would pass within a couple of miles of Rays house on my way home so I stopped by to let him know I was back and to make sure he hadn’t filled his tag with his Dad while I was gone. He hadn’t. So we laid out plans on Sunday for our Monday morning hunt while standing around in his driveway. The family came out. Raymond’s Mom, Dad and older brother joined us as we chatted in the yard.
At some point in the conversation Ray’s Mom, Pam, commented that she didn’t understand “Our Passion” for hunting turkeys. I told her it was much more than hunting turkeys. It is also about building a relationship.
I believe that all of us are constantly sorting through the people we meet looking for others that can provide us with something we want or need. I know that sounds selfish but it really is not. Everyone we meet is assessed for their value to us. In the time we spend together we will determine how the person in front of us can help us. If they can’t we move on and look for someone who can. We seek out others for more reasons than I could possibly list here but we all need others.
As Ray and I sat in the early morning woods Monday my mind drifted to why I was as passionate as I am about helping Raymond succeed as a turkey hunter. Why did I need this kid? I realized that as a retired educator I was using Raymond as my student and I was teaching him about my experiences in the turkey woods. I was also extending my season and my own time in the woods to learn the craft. Ray was getting the benefit of my woodsmanship and turkey hunting tactics. We both stand to get something out of this relationship that is valuable. Had he killed his turkey on our second hunt when he missed twice, there would have been no reason for us to continue to work together. We may very well have gone about our business and never been seen together until next season when our same needs arose.
While I was gone I had been working on a special gift for Ray that I planned to give him following our last hunt, whenever that would be. I wanted him to know that our relationship had grown beyond the point of acquaintances sharing some hunts. I didn’t want him to feel like I was just using him to satisfy my needs.
Last week as we crossed a field on his lease we came upon a turkey wing. It had been quite obviously separated from the bird by some predator some time back. I asked Raymond to put the smelly thing in my pack. He did. I began that afternoon making a wing-bone yelper for him. All it needed was to be glued together and adorned with some additional character giving accoutrements. It was resting in the tool box in the back of my vehicle.
The turkeys we set up on left the roost and moved left, completely ignoring my calls. I flipped two diaphragm calls in my mouth back and forth, stashing one between my cheek and gum while using the other from the roof of my mouth. My slate call on my lap felt the pressure of two different strikers as they continued to move off. They were gobbling regularly as they went just out of our view. Then I saw the object of their calls a hen. She moved to them and silence followed.
Another bird gobbled off to our right. Ray and I decided to move on him as he sounded like he was heading for a field we had seen birds strutting in last week. We got there ahead of him but he walked the backside of the woodlot and crossed the road south west of us. Then he turned off. It was 7:10 am when we heard our last gobble of the morning.
We then started checking known strutting areas hoping to get a spot and stalk opportunity. We spotted a pair of Toms about an hour later and went after them. We moved South on a fence line and cut kitty-corner through a small woods to our West. We emerged from the woods at a ditch bank that we used to cover our approach north to the field the Toms were in. As we popped up on the field’s edge they were both still in the field about 80 yards out. We watched them strut in small circles for about fifteen minutes before I tried calling. I was hoping they would come our way on their own. I called. A third head popped up in the grass and looked our way. It was another hen. She walked back into the woods and both Toms followed her. An hour later we gave up and headed for the truck.
When I dropped Raymond off in his family’s driveway he asked me to come up to the house for a minute. He said he had something for me. The family came out with him and he presented me with a gas station gift certificate that he had purchased with his own money. He said something about my burning up at least that much taking him hunting and that it was the least he could do to thank me for helping him out. Both parents told me to accept the offer and I could see the pride they all felt as Raymond refused to take it back several times. I had that, not quite finished yelper, in the truck and moved myself and the conversation toward the fact that I had something I was making for Ray as well. I was really filled with pride as I rolled the largest part over in my hand and revealed a sketch of the Tom Ray had missed along with his name on the yelper. I wanted them all to know that the gift although unfinished was for Ray and had I waited until I had finished it may have looked like a response to his thoughtful gift.
See both of us have arrived at the point in our relationship where it’s not all about, what’s in it for me. It has now become what can I do for you? We have four days left to get Ray a bird. Tomorrow we are going to one of my places that to my knowledge, has not been hunted this year. I was out there tonight and located a Tom on the roost. He wasn’t real close but my hope is he will be able to hear me and that he does not have one of those degrees of turkeyology.
Day 9
I took Raymond to my small spot on private land only to see and have close encounters with white-tailed deer all morning. The only gobble we heard was off in the general direction of the bird I located the night before and he easily could have been two properties away.
We gave up by 7:30 and went back to his permissions and road hunted for strutting birds. We found one and watched him from 300 yards. He was servicing three hens and did not respond to calls. I told him we should wait it out until the hens all moved off and that he might come in to the calls then if he wasn’t too tired from all that breeding!
Ray wanted to back out to the road and try to circle him. Twenty cars had gone down the road while we watched. So we pressed him with the idea we could walk down the road in full view of him and that he wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest. We were wrong. He spotted us from a quarter mile away and left the field before we managed thirty yards.
This however marked the third day in a row we had seen this Tom strutting here at 8:30. I would have preferred to set up there first thing in the morning and wait him out but knowing Ray as I do… a three hour sit was not in his repertoire. We planned to be there at 7:30 the next day.
Day 10
Having filed away a rendezvous with the Tom we had patterned for this morning at 7:30 we decided to start at another property in the same section at sunrise. I overslept by about 15 minutes and pulled into the driveway at Ray’s to find him standing there with all his gear. The kid has been bitten! His first words to me were, “You’re late!” I apologized.
At the other property we had birds in the field as soon as we had enough light to see. Two hens entertained us for a couple of hours before leaving the field at 7:15. I was about to tell Ray it was time to get over to the place we had been seeing the strutting Tom over the last several days when he whispered, “Mr. Owen another bird just entered the field down there.” It took another half hour before we decided to press the issue and move on it in hopes of identifying it. We circled and never saw it again. At 7:50 we pulled out and drove to our rendezvous point only to see the Tom and two hens already in the field. We were late!
We parked and slipped into a group of pines adjoining the field he was in. We were sitting under the pine boughs 300 yards away. Watching this bird strut only 20 yards from where we had planned on sitting. I told Ray we were not going to try yesterday’s tactic again today and that we should sit and video the bird using the zoom, so that is what we did. I told Ray that the hens should eventually move away to their nests and that if he hadn’t bread any of them that he might still come to us after he was left alone.
The birds moved to our left, him strutting all the way, until they reached the corner of the woodlot then the first hen sprinted off in the direction of the road and crossed a few minutes later. The other hen turned the corner and went away from us and disappeared into the woods near the opposite end. Our Tom Strutted out halfway to the road then went back to the woods line near where the second hen had disappeared. He disappeared minutes later, rounding the corner at the opposite end of the woodlot.
I told Ray that unlike most Toms I had observed this bird was not strutting back and forth as a “normal” bird might have done. I think he is strutting clockwise around the woods over there. If we can move quickly to were we were headed this morning now we might get there in time to hear him start to gobble and call him in. We collected our stuff and ran the field in record time. We set up. Five minutes later he gobbled for the first time that morning and he was right where I thought he would be. I called ever so softly. He hammered at it. “Game on Raymond,” I whispered. He gobbled maybe ten more times before he emerged from the wood-line a 160 yards out. He took a look in our direction and saw our hen and Jake decoy with a real fan one of my friends had made and made straight for us.
It took him maybe ten minutes to get in range. Ray and I were lying on the back side of a stone pile with only our heads, Ray’s gun and my running video camera sticking up above the pile. He was sporting a seven to eight inch beard. At twenty seven yards I whispered to Ray, Take him when he picks up his head.” I putted at him. He raised his head. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of joy. This thing was finally over. Ray was going to harvest a Tom. No shot. The bird turned broadside and moved towards the hen decoy. “Ray shoot that darn bird!” Putt…putt…his head came up again…Bang! Bang! Bang!
Following the first shot the bird spun around and ran from the scene, feathers floating on the wind. The second shot peppered him as well and the third shot rang out as he flew from the field. I couldn’t believe it! Ray couldn’t believe it! We walked out picked up some feathers and Ray smiled and looked me dead in the eye and asked me, “Do you think that was Houdini again? That was some trick!”
We took the video home and showed his folks. That birds head was right in the middle of the pellets. We could see dirt squirts all around him. Houdini lives!
Day 11
Ray’s Mom, Pam was so excited about seeing the video. That she joined us on our hunt this morning. I am convinced that she now has a real sense of the, “passion” that she asked us about a couple of weeks ago. The video followed by this mornings events, may have pushed her over the edge.
Sunrise found us standing at the edge of a small woodlot. We had made our way a half mile out to the back edge of the property, as we closed the gap on gobbling Toms still roosted at the back of the woods. I got to the edge first. As I stood waiting for my two companions to catch up with me the marked birds gobbled again. They were about 80 yards back in the woods and I began looking for the best place to gain access to the woods and possible shooting lanes when all of a sudden a third Tom we had no idea was there gobbled. He was in a tree less than 20 yards in right in front of us. Pam and Ray caught up. We slipped into a small creek bed that split the woods and tried to use it for cover. Now in the woods we couldn’t see because we were too low. We belly crawled up the bank. I saw the two birds in the back moving through the woods at about 50 yards. They putted and clucked out of sight. The Tom above us apparently slipped out of the tree on us during our final move. We never saw him.
Another Tom gobbled at the property line out back and I saw him too, but very briefly as I peeked over a ditch bank. I should have waited for Ray and his Mom and sent the gunner up that bank first. The fact that it would have been an over the property line shot probably was at the center of my reasoning. Another lost opportunity. The morning played out with no other gobbles being heard. The much needed rain started and our hunt ended at about 10:30.
Tomorrow is the last day of the Michigan 2008 spring Turkey season. I have convinced Ray to use my gun. The scary thing is: I’m just as excited about tomorrow as I was on the first day Ray and I hunted together. If we don’t get a bird tomorrow I don’t think we will have failed. We will have just run out of time.
