What single irresistible thing about turkey hunting makes you keep going? What thing drags you out of bed day after day, long before dawn even thinks about making a crack? Ask any turkey hunter that question, and I'll give you long odds the answer you'll get is "the gobble."
Ditto from this corner, I guess. There are many other reasons why I hunt turkeys, but I doubt I'd hunt them much, if at all, if the boy turkeys didn't make that sound. It touches me somewhere deep inside, and it's not just me who feels this way.
It's not pretty by any definition of the word; I once heard a non-hunter describe a turkey's gobble as sounding like a locomotive smashing into a truckload of metal garbage cans. Maybe that's a touch overblown, but it's actually not a bad description.
However you describe it, every time I hear the gobble of a wild turkey my attention is immediately captured, in pretty much the same way it's captured by an electric shock. This has been going on in my life for almost half a century now, ever since a spring morning in 1978, near Natchez, Mississippi. That morning, I heard seven gobblers rip the morning apart, one after another, their overlapping gobbles rolling in a wave that covered a half-mile of the ridge across the hollow.
I've told that story before, but it scored me deep and the wound has never closed. I didn't even want to be there that morning. The bass were shallow and spawning, and I wanted to be on the lake puncturing bass lips with fish hooks, not roaming around in the tick-infested woods getting punctured my own self. But there I was anyway, bleary-eyed from a two-hour pre-dawn drive, wasting a perfectly fine Saturday morning, having been talked into it by a friend who said I'd love turkey hunting if only I'd give it a try.
My friend was right, and I don't know whether to thank him or curse him for it. When that owl hooted behind me, I was not a turkey hunter. During the five seconds it took those seven gobblers to shock-gobble at the owl, I became one.
I've lived all my life in Arkansas and Louisiana, and since my first 40-odd years were lived paycheck to paycheck, all my early turkey hunting was done locally, for Easterns. There was both good and bad news in that. Good: Easterns are (or were then) the hardest subspecies to hunt, and they taught me to be a better hunter than Rios or Merriam's would have. Bad: Easterns are (or were then) the hardest subspecies to hunt. They dragged me through the School of Hard Knocks, and I tagged far fewer gobblers in those first formative years than if I'd cut my teeth on Western birds.
But I did learn a lot of things about turkey hunting, mostly by making stupid mistakes in front of turkeys, and through it all the gobble kept me going. At the same time, my career as a freelance outdoor writer was beginning to take off. Inevitably, as I sank deeper and deeper into the subculture of turkey hunting, I began to write more and more about turkey hunting and less and less about other less interesting outdoor subjects. In turn, those ever-increasing turkey story bylines started getting me invitations to attend media hunts sponsored by companies like Realtree, Mossy Oak, Remington, Mossberg, Beretta, Bass Pro Shops, Lohman, M.A.D., Woodswise and others.
And that was when I discovered not all gobblers are created equal. I made my first non-Eastern hunt in, if memory serves, 1993. In south Texas, as a guest of Realtree. In the first hour of that hunt, maybe a little longer but not much, I looked down the barrel at seven individual longbeards: first a single, then two traveling together, then a trio and finally another single, before pulling the trigger on a hook-spurred old warrior that sported three beards.
I'd never experienced anything remotely like it in 15 years of chasing Easterns. These south Texas Rios were plentiful, eager, and dumb! The magnificent, triple-bearded gobbler I finally killed that morning came to me through a mesquite hell I couldn't have fought through in a week. Then he stood there for at least ten minutes, 15 yards away, straight and rigid as a metal fence pole. I held the gun on him for a long time before I killed him, admiring him from head to toe, not wanting this magical morning to end. Meanwhile, I could hear no less than four other gobblers lighting up the landscape.
The parade of gobblers past my gun that morning was nothing short of astounding. But the thing I carried away from that hunt, the thing I remember most vividly, is how different these Rio Grande gobblers sounded from their Eastern cousins. No less thrilling and attention-getting, to be sure, but very different all the same. Where my home-turf Arkansas turkeys had a rattle and rumble in the bottom of their gobbles, these Lone Star birds sounded more like they were yodeling. They made a higher-pitched, more musical series of notes that sounded more bird-like and less like a lion roaring.
Later that same spring, on a Black Hills media hunt hosted by Lohman Game Calls with Brad Harris as my hunting partner, my ears got their first load of Merriam's music. And if Brad hadn't been there to tell me what we were hearing when the first cluster-gobble erupted from a nearby roost, I might not have even realized the sound was being made by turkeys. Where the Rio Grande's version of gobbling at least sounds like a gobble, I couldn't find any similarity at all between the gobbles of the Merriam's and my backyard Easterns.
My friend and fellow outdoor writer Monte Burch, whose artwork is on the cover of this book, was also on that South Dakota hunt. He likened the Merriam's gobble to rattling a handful of marbles in a quart fruit jar. More than 30 years later, I've never heard a more accurate description.
I didn't hear mt first Osceola until 1998, and to my ear this subspecies' gobbles come closest to the ferocity of the Eastern's battle cry. Still, though, an Osceola's gobble lacks the raw power, not to mention the decibel level, of an Eastern wild turkey. I have, on numerous occasions, watched Osceola gobblers run their necks out less than 100 yards away, and barely been able to hear them. At that range an Eastern gobbler will spin your hat around, but I don't think an Osceola is physically capable of shouting as loud as an Eastern.
That leaves but one wild turkey subspecies to mention in this discussion – the Gould's. I'm the first to admit my experience with Gould's turkeys is limited; I've only hunted them once. But on that hunt I probably heard 30 or more individual gobblers, and it's my impression that they're about on par with the Merriam's subspecies, except maybe just a touch louder. Despite that, the Gould's gobblers I heard in Chihuahua still had that marbles-in-a-jar quality. And while the shrillness of the Gould's gobble carries well in the high, thin air where this subspecies is usually found, it still leaves me feeling like a little like Shania Twain: "That don't impress me much."
But when the bets are all made and the cards are all played, it's still a gobble, and it comes from a wild turkey, which makes it valuable beyond measure. Ditto for the Merriam's. Ditto for the Rio. Ditto for the Osceola. And ditto, in spades, for the lion-roaring, window-rattling, soul-stirring Eastern. Keeping the card-playing simile going just a little longer, I hope to hear many more gobbles from all five subspecies before I cash in my chips.
So, I guess the answer to the question that got this chapter started really is "It's the gobbling." It's what pulls us out there; it's what keeps us going back for more.
Unless maybe it's the...
...drumming
This secondary, equally soul-stirring mating sound produced by the male wild turkey isn't loud by any stretch, but it immediately gets a turkey hunter's full, undivided attention. More vibration than sound, it's an extremely low-range utterance that hovers right around the 20-Hertz mark, typically the lowest sound that can be heard by the human ear. It is produced – somehow – by the turkey's slow, controlled exhalation of breath and usually happens when a gobbler is strutting. Not always, though. A gobbler can strut without drumming, and drum without strutting.
I'm operating strictly from speculation here, but I think drumming might have evolved as a strategy to reduce predation. Think about it: a gobbler gobbles for two reasons – as a territorial or dominance call, and as an advertisement to attract hens during mating season. But gobbling is loud, even if it comes from a Merriam's, and it attracts not only hens but also predators such as coyotes and bobcats. So gobbling is a double-edged sword. Not only does it aid in reproductive success, but it also puts a gobbler in more danger.
Therefore, a quieter method of attracting girls seems a better option when the girls are already nearby. And trust me, there are few animal vocalizations quieter than the drumming of a turkey. It's almost always preceded by a faint spitting sound, and I can hear the spit more often than the drumming that follows it.
Other turkeys can hear it just fine, though. In open country, I've seen hens come straight as a string from 200 yards away to a drumming gobbler, when I know for sure they couldn't see him until they were within 30 yards. I've heard and watched jakes do a weird, apparently uncontrollable YAWK-yawk when a gobbler strutted and drummed, sometimes when separated from the drummer by 100 yards or more.
Some hunters can hear it just fine, too. I know several who claim they can hear a turkey drumming at 300 yards. Maybe more, under favorable conditions. I believe them, but I can't understand how that's even remotely possible. For most of us, 50 to 60 yards is about the limit. In my case, with ears damaged by decades of shooting before ear protection became the norm, it's all but unhearable. If I can hear a turkey drumming, he's already too close. I'm lucky to hear it at 25 yards, and even then only when it's absolutely quiet around me.
I clearly remember the first time I ever heard a turkey drum. It was 1982, and I was hunting a long, remote ridge in the Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas. If the Forest Service hadn't "improved" the trail I was hunting on that day and turned it into a graveled and graded road you could drive a go-kart on, I could take you tomorrow to the exact spot. Even now, road and all, I could get you within 30 yards.
It was early afternoon, maybe 1:30, and I'd walked the spine of the ridge about six miles, moving east to west. There'd been a little roost gobbling, but nothing had come of it, and now I was working my way back along the same route I'd traveled during the morning. It was late April and the day had gotten uncomfortably warm. I was still going through the motions, but in truth I'd already given up. When I came to a nice shady spot with an inviting flat rock at the base of a big shortleaf pine, I couldn't resist the temptation to sit a spell. I got comfortable, took a swig of tepid water, and sent what I thought was a pretty good lost hen call down the ridge.
I was asleep in two minutes.
I don't know how long I slept, nor do I know what woke me. But there was no doubt about what I was hearing when I swam back into consciousness. It was the spit and drum of a turkey gobbler, and he was close.
Somehow I managed to keep from jerking upright and craning my neck to look for the turkey. Moving nothing but my eyes, I scanned the woods in front of me as carefully as if I was looking for a diamond. Nothing. So I s-l-o-w-l-y turned my head left to full lock, and did the same careful scan. Nothing. S-l-o-w head turn to right full lock. Scan. Nothing.
The drumming was still going on, practically nonstop. The turkey was so close I could feel the vibrations in my own chest. I had more than 100 yards of visibility in front of me, so I knew he had to be behind me. My tree was wider than my shoulders, and it would require too much movement to be able to look around it. I was pinned down like a bug on a corkboard.
I don't know how long that turkey stood back there torturing me, but it seemed like hours. Probably about 30 minutes. I never heard him rustle the leaves, and he never gobbled, but he never stopped drumming for more than a few seconds. I just about wore my poor eyeballs out switching from left to right and hoping, praying, he'd come around to my side of the tree, but it didn't happen. And after a while, he wasn't drumming any more.
I sat there still as death for what seemed like more hours – probably another 30 minutes – and then quietly slipped a double-reed Perfection into my mouth and did some soft purring and whining. Nothing. By this time I was getting pretty damned tired of "nothing," not to mention the fact that my butt felt like it was full of termites. I tore off a series of cutts and yelps, and the gobbler answered from 300 yards behind me.
I rolled around the tree, yelped again and he cut me off. Then I did something that's uncommon for me now and was almost unprecedented in 1982: I did a smart thing. First I cutt hard at the gobbler, and when he gobbled hard into the end of it, I moved 40 yards closer and sat down. I never made another peep.
This time I was awake when I first heard him drumming, and this time I was on the correct side of the tree. There's another peculiar thing about drumming, though. It's ventriloquistic. It seems to permeate the air all around you, and it's very difficult to pinpoint where it's coming from. That's why my gun barrel was 30 degrees off target when that wrinkled white head popped over the edge of the slope 35 yards away.
I mentioned two paragraphs ago I did a smart thing by moving toward the gobbler. Too bad I didn't do another smart thing when I saw that white head. But like Ron White, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour member, I had the opportunity to remain still and quiet, but I didn't have the ability. I started easing my gun to the right, and of course he picked me out right away. That white head disappeared faster than a Whack-a-Mole, and when he left this time I did hear him rustle the leaves. He rustled them plenty.
I've heard drumming many times since that long-ago day. Not on every hunt, certainly, but several times each season. I heard it much more often when I was younger, of course; there were more turkeys and fewer hunters, and I covered a lot more ground in the average hunt 40 years ago than I do these days. And it goes without saying my hearing was better then. Regardless, I still hear that familiar fffttt-doooooomm from time to time. Heard it four times in the season just past. And every time I hear a gobbler out there fuzzin' and buzzin', the hair prickles against my shirt collar and my heart rate doubles.
So yeah, I suppose after careful consideration I'd amend my earlier answer to say "It's the gobbling and the drumming." That's what keeps me going back out there day after day, season after season.
Unless maybe it's the...
I'm now offering a BOGO deal on my new book, "A Life Well Misspent," the book this excerpt came from. Between now and March, anyone who buys a copy ($25 plus $6 shipping) gets a copy of my Turkey Hunting Digest or my first Bad Birds book free, and is also eligible for a steep discount on my other books. PM me for details if you're interested. Three payment options: personal checks to Treble Hook Unlimited, P.O. Box 758, Calico Rock, AR 72519; PayPal friends and family to
modernmountainman@gmail.com; Venmo to @Jim-Spencer-38. Thanks, y'all.
