WE CAN NEVER DO THAT AGAIN
My son Cole's first turkey was a monumental and personally historical day.
Some of the most endearing and significant events in our lives are those that are first-time experiences. What makes these events so special and remain forever etched in our lifetime memory bank is that we can only experience them one time. Remember your first kiss? I remember mine like it was yesterday. I can still remember the scent of her perfume and how I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. It was special—at the time, I didn't know what it all meant—but I did know I wanted some more of it. I remember my first trophy deer. It was a big 10-point buck. I was 12 years old, and I remember how my throat tightened when I heard him approach through the brush and the scent of gunpowder in the air as I gingerly walked over to marvel at my trophy. I vividly recall how proud my father was of me and the good feeling I had that he was so pleased with my accomplishment. I remember my first real fistfight and learned that a winner can come out looking just as bad in the mirror as a loser. All these events are special for many reasons, not the least of which is because they can never happen again. First times are undeniably special.
Cole & I made a pact before turkey season this year that this spring would be devoted to getting his first turkey. I told him that we would give it our best shot, but that it would not be easy. I explained that taking a turkey was going to be challenging—even with his extraordinary luck to have a top-notch turkey guide like his dad. I procured a 20-gauge Remington 870 youth model pump for him. Cole is a small-framed 11-year-old, and the gun was a bit too long and heavy for him. I bought a tripod that connected to the barrel, but it turned out to be cumbersome and more trouble than it was worth. Cole & I practiced with the gun on and off for several months. He was a bit recoil shy, so for our practice sessions, I used low-brass dove shells. He learned to shoot pretty well during those sessions. I noticed that the figure eights he was making with the end of his gun barrel became less and less pronounced the more we shot.
This particular turkey season taught Cole and me some valuable life lessons. For me, the season brought into focus the fact that "It was NOT all about me!" Turkey hunting is my favorite pastime, and I look forward to it every year. This year, I did not carry my 12-gauge over my shoulder until April 12, a month after the youth MS opened. This year, it was about somebody else—my good son Cole.
The season taught us both that the most significant and cherished accomplishments in life are the ones that do not come easy. For Cole, that meant getting up at 4:00 AM, enduring long walks trying to keep up with Dad, whose pace picks up appreciably when turkeys gobble in the distance, and learning that hunting is not all about nonstop action. There can be long stretches of time when nothing very exciting happens. For me, I had to muster up a good dose of patience, waiting for a little man to make it up the hill or untangle himself from briars and barbed-wire fences. I had to put up with a good bit of unnecessary movement and noise that is the bane of any turkey hunter. I had to understand that with Cole, we just couldn't crawl army style 150 yards through mud and sharp stickers to get in just the right position.
The season also taught Cole an important life lesson that will carry him well as he enters the harsh realities of everyday life—Perseverance, Tenacity, and a Never Give Up attitude. We needed a healthy dose of all those traits during the first part of our season's quest. The opening day of youth season, there were 6 inches of snow on the ground—an odd occurrence for Mississippi. The second Saturday, which was the adult opener, it stormed—not just rained hard, stormed. We tried to change our luck and drove 4 hours south for a two-day hunt, only to drive 4 hours back empty-handed.
On one occasion, we thought we had died and gone to gobbler heaven. Dawn found us in the middle of 6 or 7 hard-gobbling birds. We got set up and had a gobbler working good in front of us. I had Cole sitting up with his shotgun on one knee, pointed in the direction of the gobbling bird. At this point, everything was going well. I even leaned over and confidently whispered, "This is going to be our bird." I then heard something in the leaves over my left shoulder. I slowly craned my neck around about as far back as I could to discover there were three longbeards making their way straight toward us. The problem was, Cole was set up and pointed in the exact opposite direction. I had to try, but it is just not that graceful to get an inexperienced 11-year-old deftly turned around, especially in the leaf-bare spring woods. We got busted, but we had to try. Even with all this adversity, we never gave up. For inspiration, I brought home a picture I kept on my office wall. It is of a blue heron with a frog halfway in his mouth. The frog had reached around with one of his hands and squeezed the heron's throat shut, preventing the heron from swallowing him down. The caption at the bottom: "Never Give Up." So—we kept trying.
Sunday morning was a beautiful spring day—perfect for turkey hunting. By this point in the season, Cole was becoming a battle-seasoned pro. I didn't have to ask him if he had his mask and gloves, and he even took it upon himself to check the weather to see how warm to dress. We had about a mile-long walk to get to where I wanted to begin our hunt. I had to stop several times along the way to wait for him to catch up, which gave me an opportunity to observe and be proud of this little man that came into my life a little over 11 years ago. His birthday is March 15. We joked that his birthday really messed up my turkey season 11 years ago. I would have been just as proud of him if he had been born on, let's say, the opening day of dove season, but it was not to be. Cole claims he was born on March 15 for a reason—that he was born to be a turkey hunter. I liked that logic and told him that was most probably true.
As dawn began to break, I was surprised not to hear any gobblers in our immediate area, only some distant gobblers to our south. So, we had little choice but to keep our trek alive and continue heading that way. It was now full-fledged daylight. We were using a dry creek bed for cover and also to walk quietly in the moist sand. The woods began to narrow and peter out into a thin row of trees that lined the creek bed we were slipping down. There was a barren field on one side and a cow pasture on the other. I scanned the field up ahead to see two gobblers about 80 yards out, slowly working their way to the tree-lined field's edge. Cole and I quickly lost our ambivalence and put our stealth mode into overdrive. We hunched over, using the creek bank for cover, and moved up about 50 yards. We then crawled on our hands and knees to the first sizeable tree and got set up. The field had a slight dogleg, and we could not see the turkeys from our chosen ambush site. I called a bit on and off for 15 minutes or so, but no birds showed up, and nobody gobbled to announce, "We are on our way."
We were 10 yards from the field's edge, and in front of us, to our right, was a gargantuan oak tree. I thought perhaps we had busted the birds during our move to get set up, so I whispered for Cole to stay put while I crawled to a huge oak on the very edge of the field to peek out and look. I belly-crawled to the vast tree trunk, gingerly stood up, and ever so slowly peeked around the tree into the field. HOLY MOLY—they were right there, not 15 yards down, headed laterally our way. I eased my head back around, turned to Cole, and without trying to overly excite him, I used the best silent animation I could muster to relay that the birds were "right there and on the way." Cole obviously understood my signal as I saw him put his gun up and place his cheek on the stock. I then realized he still had the safety on, so I had to come up with a hand motion for that. He didn't get it at first, giving me a puzzled look. Then I saw the "AHAA" look in his eyes, and he clicked the safety off.
He did this just in time, as the turkeys made their way past my position. I was trying my best to become a part of that big oak tree. You could say that the tree and I were hugging tighter than two newlyweds doing the mattress tango. I could see a turkey out of one eye as I had the other eye closed, with my hand pressed up against my ear in anticipation of Cole's shot. I then heard the dreaded "PUTT PUTT" and saw one gobbler turn around and walk back the way he had come. I was mentally shouting to myself, "Shoot, Cole, SHOOT!!" Then—BOOM!!! I looked up and saw that one of the gobblers was doing the "flip-flop" dance. OH, HAPPY DAY!!!
Cole came running out, and we embraced, not so much as father and son but now as turkey hunter to turkey hunter. With my move to the large oak tree, Cole had to close the deal all on his own, with no whispers of instruction from Dad. I was so proud of him. He had killed a nice jake. He said, "Dad, I didn't shoot at first since I was waiting on the long beard, but when he left, I knew I had to take the other one."
"That's my boy," I exclaimed as I rubbed the top of his head.
I had mixed emotions of elation and melancholy all at the same time. The elation was obvious—Cole got his first bird. The melancholy feeling was harder to identify. Perhaps it was the realization that we'd never be able to do this again—Cole's first gobbler.