Year 8
This was a paper I wrote for my Outdoor Writing (ENGL 358) class.
When faced with adversity, many people succumb to their struggles. The fact is no different when it comes to avid sportsman and their pursuit of wild animals. Even some of the longest tenured hunters can become discouraged and begin to question why they call hunting a pastime. There are times when hunters become so annoyed with their struggles in the fields and woods that they cut hunting out of their life for good.
Personally, I’ve experienced success, but far more failure, during my hunting adventures. As a deer hunter, I’ve experienced a mixed bag of outcomes, harvesting deer in half of my eight seasons in the woods. Turkey hunting, on the other hand, hasn’t gone as smoothly.
On Tuesday, May 13 of 2015, I returned to my home of Holmen, Wisconsin after recently finishing my second year at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The spring semester I sealed was a long, grueling four months in which I spent countless hours working to achieve respectable grades. My reward for all the hard work I’d done? On Wednesday, I’d go to my favorite place on earth, a chunk of land in Trempealeau County I luckily hunted since I, then 20 years old, was 12. But was it really a reward?
In my previous seven years of turkey hunting, I was shut out, with a big, fat zero signifying the amount of turkeys I harvested. On past hunts, opportunities to go home with a long beard presented itself, only to have my small mistakes and thoughtless blunders send me home empty-handed. I often asked myself why I continued to go out in the woods, only to be humiliated by a bird so many others seemed to have no problem tagging. As the scoreboard continued to favor the birds I pursued, I began to tell myself the turkeys I hunted were somehow smarter than the ones other hunters were wrapping their tags around each spring. That mindset soon changed.
After a restless night, I packed my hunting gear and set out for the hunting grounds, about a 45-minute car drive. As I arrived at the property on Wednesday morning, I decided to sit near a pond collecting water drainage from a large hill it sat below; the spot acted as a watering hole for wildlife and was a spot I hunted in the past. In previous years, I found the spot to be effective in locating turkeys and learning their daily routines. The Wednesday morning hunt was more of a scouting trip anyways because that coming weekend, I’d have my dad and his friend join me in the woods.
The morning began like turkey hunts in years past, with me hearing several gobbles from every direction. Also like previous hunts, I was unsuccessful in calling any of the responsive toms in. Around 7 a.m. is when a trio of hens joined forces on the hill in front of me. While hunting non-bearded turkeys is illegal in the spring, the hens offered me entertainment for the two hours they paraded the hill.
After the hens slipped into the woods, the clock on my iPhone read 9:15 a.m., a time that turkeys tended to be less responsive and visible and a time that I often decided to pack and head home empty-handed. As I sat there, I began to contemplate the questions that plagued me in each of my previous seven turkey hunting seasons. “Why do I even go turkey hunting?” “I wonder if I’ll ever kill a tom?” “If I go home now, will my parents get upset that I hadn’t been out in the woods “long enough” again?” Instead of letting the questions haunt me to a point of packing my hunting gear, I decided to play a new game. I’d let out a few yelps on my slate call and wait 15 minutes; if I heard no gobbles in those 15 minutes, I’d pack my gear and go home.
The game was fun at first, with my yelps igniting the woods with gobbles that were rarely heard at that time of the morning. Multiple times, I scanned the 300-plus yard field and hill before me, hoping to put a turkey to the gobbles. No luck. Around 10, I let out a call, and 15 minutes later, there was still no response. The rules of my game told me to pack and head home, so that is what I started to do. As I crammed my calls into my camouflaged hunting backpack, I was quite mad at myself for going hunting that morning. Hunts without seeing bearded turkeys can become rather frustrating, especially if they happen multiple times in a year of turkey hunting.
I leaned back to grab my last call and immediately knew my surroundings changed. I glanced to the field and noticed a group of four turkeys about 250 yards away. I quickly pulled my slate call back out of my hunting bag and let out yelps, hoping to draw a response and determine the sex of the turkeys. I became disappointed when I did not get a response from the quartet of birds. Thinking the assembly of turkeys were hens, I pulled out my cell phone to snap some pictures that I soon distributed to family and friends. After I sent the photos, I inspected the pictures more closely and thought the turkeys were pretty large for hens. I didn’t notice any beards, but for pictures taken on a subject hundreds of yards away, I wouldn’t expect to see one anyways. I sent out a few more yelps and the turkeys started to close the distance between us. I began to wonder why these hens were so interested in me.
As the group walked closer, I realized my assessment on their body sizes was correct. These birds were bigger than hens usually were, but I still couldn’t see the beards I was hoping so desperately for. Yet, with every step, I gained another dose of optimism. Over 30 minutes after I located the quartet, I finally spotted a beard on one of the turkeys and soon realized all four birds were bearded. While not fully-developed toms, the mature jakes all held decent-sized beards, making them all prime targets for my first turkey kill. I picked out the biggest of the bunch and prepared for a shot.
As the jakes slowly walked within 20 yards, I began to second guess myself. I didn’t want to tag a jake for my first ever turkey kill. Soon, the turkeys walked around the corner of pine trees I was sitting amongst. I made up my mind that I was content to hunt another day for a mature tom. I laid my 20-gauge Mossberg shotgun on my lap and began to relive the experience in my head. To call in a cluster of bearded turkeys is something I’d never done before. The group also walked as close to me as any tom or jake in my seven years of hunting. Soon, I regretted my decision to pass on the turkeys.
I grabbed my call and directed a few yelps towards the jakes that huddled about 60 yards to my left. Again, they found interest in my calls and were soon closing the distance between us. This time though, the four turkeys stuck so close together that no shot presented itself. Ten yards away and still no clean shot. The birds inched closer as my heart raced faster. Finally, the lead turkey, the one I’d chosen as the biggest of the group, stepped away from the pack and presented a shot ten steps away.
“Finally,” I muttered to myself.
The wait was finally over. That Wednesday morning proved to be the turning point in my hunting career. Persistence, determination and perseverance proved essential in my long-awaited first turkey harvest. While it remains my only harvest to date, this one hunt ignited a passion within me that I’d not felt in my lifetime. My hunts now consist of long hours in the woods, sometimes up to 10 hours a day. Regardless of whether or not I see or hear turkeys, I have no regrets when I pack and go home. You can bet that hunting won’t ever leave my life or ever become too frustrating, regardless of what struggles come about.
