I don't know how I made it all these years, 40 of them, in fact, without turkey hunting. I've hunted my entire life, and been told time and time again by some hunting buddies that I needed to give turkeys a try. They'd all say that they'd rather turkey hunt than anything else. I thought they were crazy. Turkeys?? Really?? What's so special about turkeys? I see them all the time from my deer stand. Seen a million of 'em strutting in fields while driving down the highway. Why would I want to get out in that heat, with all them snakes and bugs, to chase around some dumb birds?? Well, let's just say I spent all last turkey season, and pretty much ever since COMPLETELY OBSESSED with them. Now people think I'm crazy when I start talking about turkeys.
No other kind of hunting has ever fired me up this way, never permeated my thoughts like this. Sure, I might have had trouble falling to sleep the night before opening day of deer season as a kid, but turkeys gave me insomnia nearly every single night for over two months, as a grown man. From the first morning a gobbler answered my call, I was hooked. In fact, my very first morning in the turkey woods, I had a gobbler come charging in on me right after I yelped on a box call. It happened so fast all I could do was hit the dirt. He got so close to me, I could feel him drumming, even though I couldn't see him through the palmettos and gallberry bushes. I guess he somehow sensed me because he suddenly made a loud "POP" and tore out through the woods running away from me. My heart was pounding and I was shaking like I had just encountered a monster buck, but hadn't even seen a thing. I later learned that loud noise was called a putt. From that very moment I was addicted. Every day I thought about gobblers. When I would finally fall asleep each night, I dreamed about gobblers, and awoke again with gobblers on my mind. If I wasn't out chasing birds, I was either reading about them, watching YouTube videos, or talking to other hunters who had experience in the turkey woods. I kept a diaphragm call in my mouth most the time, never really mastering it, which irritated pretty much everyone I came in contact with. I stayed in trouble with my wife, and was late coming into work on more than one occasion.
In the woods, I made many, many mistakes. More mistakes than I can even remember. I called too much, didn't call enough, called too loudly, often making noises that sounded more like a sick goose than a turkey. I set up my decoys in the wrong spot in relation to where I was sitting, and probably used the wrong decoy the wrong part of the season. I left my setup to go after birds I should have waited for, and other times sat too long when I needed to be closing the distance. One morning I got impatient and stood up to move when a gobbler was 40 yards in front of me behind a palmetto. Another morning, I had to shift my weight because my leg fell asleep, and got busted by a bird that had snuck up on me without a sound. Apparently, I learned, not all gobblers are vocal when coming to your call. Several times, it was the hens, not the gobblers, that snuck up on me and caught me with my pants down.
My list of mishaps, near disasters, and poor decisions goes on and on. I almost stepped on a water moccasin. I crawled face-first into a nest of yellow jackets. I pulled ticks off places nobody ever wants to pull off a tick. I chased birds around my hunting club in 90 degree heat until all 300 pounds of me was dehydrated. Several nights I jumped out of bed from a dead sleep with hamstring cramps from too much walking and not enough fluids. More than once I left the hunting club literally in tears, completely exhausted, my entire body hurting, going home to an angry, neglected wife, empty-handed once again.
I just couldn't close the deal to save my life. The times I may have done things right, something would go wrong out of my control. I had coyotes come running to my yelps and chase away a strutting gobbler. One morning a timber company truck drove right into my setup as I had two toms just out of gun range, working their way towards me, gobbling their heads off. At least twice a week, the conversion van full of migrant workers who were raking and baling the pinestraw on our club, would pull up within a few hundred yards of me and unload a couple dozen singing hired hands, like some kind of musical Mexican clown car. A few instances, gobblers I had patterned were shot and killed by veteran turkey hunters between the roost and my setup. I'm pretty sure one was even shot on the roost. Not only was I competing with hunters with much more experience than I had, I was competing with nature. Over and over, gobblers flew down and went with hens instead of coming to my very limited vocabulary. Anything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong, time and time again. I thought I was cursed.
As the end of the season drew closer, I was getting more and more frustrated and beginning to feel like a complete failure. I had spent so many mornings out in the hot and humid Southeast Georgia woods, so much money on gear, gas and mosquito repellent, so much of my spare time obsessed with gobblers, and not once had I even pulled the trigger. I was getting upset, sometimes even angry, and I was starting to consider hanging it up. "I just can't do it" I thought. I'd never tried so hard to accomplish something in my life, only to have success elude me time and time again. But for some reason, I just couldn't give up.
On Saturday, the day before Mother's Day, and just three days before the end of the season, I ran into a fellow I knew who has been turkey hunting for years. He told me he'd killed his limit pretty early in the season, and had since called in six or eight birds for other people. I told him everything I'd been through, how I hadn't been able to seal the deal to save my life, and he offered to come call for me the next day. Mother's Day. I went home and told my wife how I'd ran into him and how he said he'd be happy to call for me. Then I POLITELY asked her if I could go. With all the turkey-related arguments we'd been through over the last couple of months, and even though the next day was Sunday, AND Mother's Day, she said I could go. I guess she figured with a "real" turkey hunter calling for me, I might finally be able to bag that gobbler, and maybe I'd shut up about turkeys and turn back into the man she married. Huh huh huh...
Almost immediately, my frustration turned back into excitement, my hopelessness was gone, and once again, my night was filled with sleepless anticipation. The next morning we got out there pretty early, well before daylight, and slipped down to the edge of a secluded food plot. A few mornings before, I had a tom hammering at me from right in that food plot, but I was on the wrong side of a drainage ditch, and had to leave him there in order to go to work, as I really needed to remain employed. I figured that would be a good place to start, since it was the only place I'd even heard a bird gobble the last week. As the sun came up we listened, but nothing. No gobbles, no fly-downs, no nothing.
We walked back out to a crossroads beside a big clearcut and listened. We could hear one lone gobbler and he was a mile away. We jumped in the truck and headed his way anyway. We got closer to where we thought he was and got out to listen. We yelped, and he answered, but he was a pretty good way beyond the property line. My buddy/guide tried to call him onto our club, but of course, with the luck I had been having, he went the other way. I drove us to another section of the club, another crossroads, and we got out and listened. We heard another bird. We yelped, he answered. Once again, he was a long way away. We chased him around for a while, backed off of him and tried to get him to chase us, then tried to get around him and head him off, but nothing worked. Same old, same old.
It was exactly what I'd been going through all season. We located yet another bird, and he did the same thing. We chased, he went. We went towards him, and we went away from him. He wasn't going for it. He finally got tight-lipped and we gave up on him. We went back to the middle of the club, listened for a while, tried some locator calls, but it was late morning and the woods were silent.
I thanked my buddy for coming and trying to help me get a bird, and drove him back to his truck. By this time it was about 10 a.m., and I started thinking; my wife wouldn't be out of church until noon, so I still had some time to hunt. Besides, its just two days till the last day of the season, and I still haven't fired a shot. I headed back out to the hunting club. I figured I'd hunt until my wife called and told me to come home.
Earlier that morning, when we were running and gunning, we found a bunch of fresh strut marks on a stretch of road we had walked down. They had to have been made the previous day because there were so many, he couldn't have made them that morning, and the day before that, it had rained. I'm figuring, he's gonna come back here at some point, and hopefully it'll be before I have to go home. I set up in some pine saplings a few yards off the road with the strut marks out in front of me. I stuck a lone feeding hen decoy out in the road and hunkered down, lightly cutting and purring every 15 to 20 minutes with a glass friction call.
After about an hour, I thought I saw something shoot across the road, maybe 100 yards away. I purred, made a few cuts, and a then a couple of light yelps. A bird came screaming down the road towards my decoy, but I could immediately see it didn't have the size or bright red and blue head of a gobbler. I thought it was a hen, but as it got closer, I could see a stubby little beard and knew he was a jake. His beard was maybe three inches long. I held the bead of my shotgun at the base of his neck as he came towards the decoy, trying to decide what to do. I thought about the times deer hunting when I squeezed the trigger on a young buck, only to see a massive rack bouncing away through the brush. I didn't want a jake! That wasn't what I'd been chasing the last two months, and besides, what if a big longbeard was behind him? I let him walk.
A few minutes went by and nothing. A few more minutes went by and my phone started vibrating in my pocket. Crap! I've just had a bird within spitting distance and now it's time to go?? Seriously?? It was a text from my wife telling me they've all gone out to eat after church with her Granny and the restaurant is packed for Mother's Day. I took this to mean I still have a little time. I texted back, told her I loved her, and to please tell her Granny I love her, and I'd see her in a little while. She didn't text back, so figured I was good for a while. After about another hour, it started to drizzle. I had just about had enough. I packed up my gear and headed to the truck. Driving out, I stopped at the main crossroads in my club and just for the heck of it, hit my box call. About my third yelp, a bird cut me off, hammering at me from a few hundred yards down one of the roads.
Instead of heading home, I parked the truck and headed up the dirt road. I came around the second curve and saw him strutting in the road about 300 yards away. He apparently saw me too, because he immediately darted off in some planted pines on one side of the road. I decided to get in the pines on the other side, several pine rows off the road, get past him using thick cover, crawl up a drainage ditch to the edge of the road, and call to him from the beyond where I had seen him strutting.
By now the drizzle had turned into an all out shower. I slipped through the woods as stealthily as a 6'4", 300 lb man can, which really isn't too stealthy at all when its pouring down rain and you're trying to quickly cover 400 yards to get past a bird. I made it to the drainage ditch and was crawling up it to get set up to call and my phone started vibrating again. I didn't answer as I was crawling on my hands and knees in ditch water and pouring rain. I finally got to the spot I wanted to set up and my phone buzzed again. Now I was under a canopy of small trees so I pulled out my phone, keeping it inside my shirt to keep the rain out, and read the text. "IT'S AFTER 4 O'CLOCK ON MOTHER'S DAY!!!! IF YOU VALUE THIS MARRIAGE ONE DAMN BIT, I SUGGEST YOU GET YOUR HOME!!!!! Considering my wife rarely uses profanity, I knew it was time to go. I left that gobbler where I found him.
The next day was Monday and I had to work in another town and had to leave an hour earlier than normal, so I couldn't hunt. I did, however, stop by the hunting club on the way home from work hoping to roost a bird for the next morning. I didn't see or hear a thing. I went on home and tried to come up with a game plan for Tuesday morning. That would be my last stand. It was the last day of the season, last day of our hunting lease, and not to mention, I was short on help that day and couldn't be late for work. I had to be in town by 9 to open the store. I would have three hours to hunt, and that would be my final chance.
That morning I decided not to set up anywhere. I just parked at an open crossroads and listened. A few minutes after light, I heard one gobbler, that same gobbler that was across the property line 2 mornings before. He sounded even farther into the other club than he had the other morning. I drove to another crossroads and listened. And called. And listened. Nothing. I drove to the other side of the club to the crossroads where I had heard and seen the gobbler two days before on Mother's Day. I stood outside my truck and just kind of lightly yelped instead of really getting on it like I had normally been doing when trying to locate a bird. Once again, he hammered at me and cut me off! I could tell he wasn't as far down the road as he had been the other day. I put on my mask, gloves and vest and started slowly slipping down the road, being careful not to let him bust me again.
I peeked around the first curve and I could see him in full strut down on the second curve about a couple hundred yards away. I stayed squatted down in the brush until I watched him strut around the curve, then I crawled out and stuck a hen decoy in the middle of the road, and crawled back into the brush. I crawled about 30 yards towards him and set up where he'd have to come past me to come to the decoy. I took out an aluminum pot call a friend had given me that I thought made the best sounding purrs of all my calls. I purred once, and he hammered at me! I looked up the road and he had hit another gear, headed my way. He was running full speed down the road towards my decoy. This was it. I was so ready!! He stopped about 75 yards out, blew back up into a strut, and hammered again to my decoy. And again. Once he realized she wasn't coming to him, he proceeded with caution, just sort of lurking my direction. There I was, stretched out, prone position, safety off, looking down the barrel at him as he slowly meandered towards me. It seemed like time was standing still. He was still about 60 yards out when I heard a loud "THUMP" behind me. He stuck his head up and turned sideways facing the other side of the road. I slowly turned my head and I could see out of the corner of my eye, my decoy lying on its side in the middle of the road. Stakes don't stick very well in hard dirt. NOT AGAIN!?!?!?! How can this be happening? Within just a few seconds he walked up a four-wheeler trail off the dirt road, and was gone!!! NO!!!!
I thought maybe if I could crawl about 20 yards without him seeing me, and if I could entice him to come back out the same trail, I may have a chance at killing him. I started crawling, commando style, up a pine row towards the spot where he went in the woods. That's when I found myself face to face with a nest of very busy Yellow Jackets. I did my best barrel-roll maneuver from one pine row to the next, like a camouflage, redneck John Belushi. I crawled on up as far as I could go without climbing into Brer Rabbit's briar patch, and set back up, aiming my gun towards the trail that had swallowed my bird. I got my aluminum pot back out and gently purred on it again. He thunder-clapped at me three times back to back. He actually sounded mad. I guess I wasn't the only one frustrated that my hen blew over. I waited what seemed like an eternity and he still hadn't come back out. I purred again. He gobbled again. But he stayed up the trail. I waited a few more minutes and purred again. He cut me off again! I just laid there like a rock. I knew he was right in front of me, within 30 yards but I couldn't see him. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only five minutes, I decided I would cut a couple of times at him. When I did, he bolted out of that trail with his head high in the air, fraught with horn, looking for his date. BLAM!!! He hit the ground flapping. I had finally done it!!!
I got up and walked over to my bird and started crying. I have never worked so hard for something or faced a more worthy adversary. I've never hooped and hollered like all the guys on those hunting shows, even when I killed my biggest buck, but that morning I did. I went from tears, to an Indian War Cry, to doing the Funky Turkey Dance in a matter of minutes. If anyone was within a mile, I'm sure they heard me.
I loaded him in the truck and drove to work grinning like a mule eatin' briars. I called a buddy of mine who had been mentoring me throughout the season and told him to meet me up at my store. I just had to show him my bird. He looked in the back of the truck and said, "Harper, I think that's a 12 inch beard. I've been turkey hunting 10 years and haven't killed a bird with a 12 inch beard. You did it, boy. I'm so proud of you!" He reached in his truck and pulled out a tape measure, and yes, it was a 12 inch beard and almost 1 inch spurs. He's now on my wall, where I look at him every night.
I've already started obsessing about what's around the corner. I can't wait for the 2013 Georgia spring gobbler season. It's just over three weeks away! I've taken the entire first week off, and another week in April. I hope I don't repeat the same mistakes I made last year. I'm sure I will, and probably several more. But I am so ready....Bring on the learning experience! I'll be reading your tips and strategies, and hopefully have a successful season. Thank you for reading. Harper Johnson
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