Read the book and kill a turkey, that`s how it`s supposed to be.
Do a classic hunt and that big old gobbler will strut right onto your knee, uh-huh.
Not. At least not necessarily.
I`ll put it this way: Turkey hunting`s classic rules are fine as long as you know when to bend them.
Picture this on last Monday`s very, very early spring turkey opener in Jo Daviess County:
Barren woods, not a sheltering leaf anywhere. You can see through the latticework of empty trees to the opposite ridge top, but so can the turkeys, whose eyesight is eight times superior. Snow plasters the windshield, followed by the sting of sleet.
Anything but turkey weather, right? In fact, turkeys hadn`t gobbled for days. Since they had been strutting their stuff for six weeks, it only figures they would pick the opener to shut up.
”I`ve only hunted turkeys twice in snow,” Lombard firefighter Mike DiRienzo grumbled. ”And this is the second time.”
We expected the worst. Scouting our assigned ridges the evening before, we heard nothing that resembled a gobbler. Oh, there was turkey sign. This was Jo Daviess County, the hilly, woodsy, premier turkey spot in all of Illinois. Thousands of birds were out there somewhere. State biologists routinely check flocks that number in the hundreds.
We found fresh scratches beneath stands of black walnut, where birds dredged old nuts beneath dried leaves. Fresh scat was on the trails. I found a mature turkey feather.
”Put it in your hat tomorrow,” DiRienzo suggested. ”We`ll need all the luck we can get.”
On one trail, we did spook a giant hen from her tree all of two hours before nightfall. Was that another disconcerting sign?
”I sure wish we could hear a gobbler,” DiRienzo murmured as we prowled a network of old trails.
We found ourselves near the fenceline as light was fading. Mike made an owl call, a warning to turkeys that a mortal enemy was nearby. Finally, an answer. A startled gobble floated from the deep hollow to our right.
”That`s it,” Mike said. ”Let`s get out of here before any turkeys can see us and we are forced to stay until dark. At least we know where there`s one now.”
By first light Monday, we were on that trail. We stopped at the biggest scratching area and Mike ”owled” once again. The woods erupted with gobbles. There were two in front, two on the side, one in back, one that we had walked past on our way from the truck. Others hollered in the distance. We dropped beneath the crown of the ridge, hidden from the nearest pair.
Around us, turkeys began calling. The hens made quiet, lazy, almost inaudible tree calls. At least 30 birds were in the trees. Some were immature jakes, trying hard to gobble.
This was Mike`s show, and he began calling. As founder of the Blackhawk Gobbler Chapter of the Wild Turkey Federation, he is a seasoned caller who artfully imitates only the sounds that hens happen to be making.
We tried none of the piercing, tree-rattling yelps you hear on instruction tapes, no fussy ”cuts,” only contented purrs and clucks, interspersed with soft, lazy, abbreviated yelps that served to extend the flock of turkeys to include us. The key was lengthy silences. This may surprise some callers, but hens just do not stand around screaming as if they were at a bingo game.
Our calls worked too well. Right around 6:45 a.m., a gobbler lumbered from the one direction we weren`t prepared to cover. Fan flared, wings drumming, he stalked our pair of hen decoys to 15 yards. Perceiving the error, he smartly folded his feathers, turned tail and left. Since I was the shooter and Mike the caller and Mike was between me and the bird, this one had a charmed flight.
By then, the other gobblers were with hens and the woods had become ominously quiet. Mike and I circled toward another ridge, where we thought the turkeys had migrated. A bad move.
They never had left the first ridge. From our new vantage through the trees we could see a big tom strutting, protecting his flock of hens and jakes. Now and then he would make a racket and breed a hen and then be quiet for a while.
Back we slunk to the first ridge, now closer to the fence. The flock was ahead somewhere, maybe a quarter-mile, but we were as far as we could go without trespassing on the neighbor`s farm. We scrunched against a pair of oaks and lightly purred and clucked, just to let the flock think a hen had strayed.
We could hear hens and jakes between us and the tom, and twice he gobbled, did his thing and shut up. I dozed during one of the lulls, as I often do in the woods. Eyes close in sweet serenity. I ”zen out,” vaguely aware of sounds. Any change brings me back to a height of alertness and refreshment. It`s a great way to ensure perfect stillness in the woods.
Mike`s soft, short yelping roused me and I heard the flock approaching. At any moment, jakes and hens would clamber over the hill.
A mudball hit a leaf near my leg and Mike hissed, ”Get your gun ready!” But before I could move, a gobbler stalked up the hill along the fence, seeking his errant ”hen.” His white head bobbed and a nice beard dangled from his chest. There were no flared feathers, no dramatic thrums and gobbles. This turkey was more curious than aroused.
With no tree between me and the bird, there was nothing to shield my movement. I sat helplessly as he passed no more than 18 yards from my splayed boots. He might have walked unchallenged had he not encountered a morsel of turkey food.
As he bent to nibble, I raised the gun. A split second later, we claimed this season`s 33rd turkey from Jo Daviess County. He weighed a respectable 19 1/2 pounds with a beard of 9 3/4 inches. While not the greatest trophy, he was a fine specimen and a tribute to superbly minimal calling under very tough conditions.
”Actually, I thought I was calling a lot more than usual,” Mike said.
”I play the silences. They make turkeys think everything is all right.”
That`s not the way a few guides I know do it. Some make so many ear-piercing calls you would think they were trying to entice birds to an avian rock concert. ”Well, I`m no expert,” Mike demurred. ”I just try to imitate the birds I hear around me in the woods.”
If he`s no expert, then there`s no trick to finding birds in the first place, not to mention making them think you`re one of the family.
