Better Late, Than…
05/15/2023
My buddy Jim White is an avid and accomplished turkey hunter. You get that good at something by doing it a lot - Jim hunts turkeys a lot! He had already reached the season limit for toms and contacted me to see if I still had a tag in my wallet - which I did. Jim graciously volunteered his services as a turkey-tom-caller. (Looking back, I’ll bet he would have paid me for the privilege.) The day was set and had finally arrived.
Jim has an amazing outdoor resume that humbles me by any comparison. Jim grew up calling clever hardwoods toms back east before any existed here in Idaho. In Idaho, he was a fish and game regional supervisor and, more importantly this day, was once the manager of the area we would be hunting in.
The one thing I have over him is a fair sense of hearing. Jim is deaf in one ear and can't hear out of the other. That statement falls just short of exaggeration. As we collected our gear from the truck, there came a single gobble off in the distance. Jim did not react.
“Hey, I just heard a gobble,” I reported. “What?” replied Jim. I repeated my previous declaration slower; using the exaggerated clarity typically used in these situations. Showing a bit of surprise, Jim requested, "Really, which direction?" I responded with an arm gesture pointing in the general direction while offering, "Somewhere over there, but it's a long way off”. "Good, that's the direction we're headed!" Jim finished in a rather satisfied tone.
To be quite honest, the turkey noise came as a complete surprise to me. I would have guessed there weren’t any toms left in the area, let alone one brave - or foolish - enough to open its beak beyond a whisper. The region known as Craig Mountain, or Waha, as it is sometimes referred, is filled with public lands being "loved to death" by a steadily increasing number of people.
It offers year-round recreation that includes horn, turkey, and mushroom hunting in the spring – ATV, camping, and hiking activity in the summer - hunting game all fall and snow machines all winter; the area doesn't get a break. The spot where we would be starting out was no exception. Its parking area and gated roads seemed to beg for intrusion.
It wasn’t all that long ago that May 15th would have been the final day of the season. Though a month into turkey season, the winter's unusually deep snows had just released its grip within the past week or so. The warmer weather into the latter parts of the general turkey season has all but the most intrepid turkey seekers moving on to other forms of recreation. That was our thinking, anyway. The tom gobbling in the distance was a sign that we may be on to something.
The tom wasn't fired-up by any means but its very occasional call for attention pulled us steadily onward. There was one thing a bit odd about those calls, however. The sporadic calls seemed to vary a great deal in their amplitude - same direction but sometimes louder and, sometimes, not as loud. The region is scenically canyonous country, breaking deep into the Snake and Salmon River drainages. It would be quite reasonable for a turkey to wander about on the ridges where the sound could be distorted by canyon walls and forested glens.
The Snake and Salmon River drainages run steep and deep.
Stopping from time to time to wait for the next gobble, we continued hiking in the direction after each call. At one point the time span had been long enough to cause concern but a few strikes on Jim's box-call was answered and quickly followed for a second time. We were on the right track!
Yes, as the compass points, we were headed in the right direction. However, the range continued to seem ambiguous; sometimes closer, and others, a bit further away.
There was a slight rise that we felt needed to be reached to ensure that the tom would finish the trek to our concealed location. Reaching the apex of the ridge, a tom may balk at coming downhill through the woods to reach its chatty hen objective. We hesitated a moment, I could see Jim was considering the situation. Mind made up, we quietly sneaked forward another twenty yards and, as we reached the top, Jim froze in place!
The ridgeline begins to open-up, the brush thins-out and the trees (mostly ponderosa pine and douglas fir) are further apart; country made perfect for a critter that desires to display its ornate plumage for female attention and has the eyes of an eagle. Though nearly as big as an eagle, the large bird running through the trees ahead of us happened to be the objective of our search - a long-beared male turkey! We had been busted!
Jim blamed himself a bit harshly but I had agreed with every step and decision we made. The last call we had heard sounded a bit further away and running into a turkey at the very top of the rise seemed unlikely. Yet, there we were, left standing and recounting our strategy. “I can’t figure it out. The darn thing must have sprinted up the hill to get here that fast?” Jim lamented while taking his hat off to scratch his head.
As suddenly as a bee sting, we were startled by the thundering call of a nearby tom!
Alarmed, we scrambled about with no apparent objective. Just a couple of old guys bumbling around like kids in a game of hide-and-seek and the seeker just called, “Ready or not…!” Recovering his senses first, Jim pointed toward a large ponderosa and told me to get on the far side, facing the turkey’s approach. Meanwhile, he remained hidden further back to call. There was literally no time to lose!
I had barely gotten settled into position and had raised the gun to my knee when Jim scratched out a light hen noise on the box-call. In seconds I could see a bright red, white, and blue head bobbing up from the ground like a sprouting plant!
Once fully in sight over the rise, the bird halted for a brief strut and, then, continued up the hill in my direction at a quick turkey-trot ! About twenty-five yards out, it stopped again to strut, spit, and drum. At the end of the brief show, it raised its head as high as it could just for a glimpse of the hen that had beckoned him toward its sweet sound.
Later, Jim confided that he would have shot it at that point. I was quite tempted but the tom was in slam-dunk range and had no idea I was there. I wanted to enjoy the tom’s ritualistic spring dance as long as possible and hoped it would add one last gobble for an up-close finale!
Instead of coming straight ahead, it turned slightly to my right and moved behind some low brush then, a few small trees. Slowly – carefully – I tracked the curious tom within the ring of the twelve-gauge Mossberg’s True-Glo sight. I was nearing my limit of gun movement without having to readjust my position.
Knowing that the bird was about to reemerge from behind the cover, I thumbed the top-tang safety forward. The tom peered around a small fir then, stepped completely into view. The trigger slipped backwards as my finger curled, until the mechanism released! The explosion of the three-inch round tore the air and jolted the gun against my shoulder! Its one and three-quarter ounce payload of number five shot struck home! The turkey dropped without a quiver just past the stand of young evergreens.
At some point in life, the quality of each experience surpasses the quantity that remain.
Like signaling the game-winning touchdown, both caller and shooter raised arms in celebration. As it turned out, there were two toms; one calling from the top of the ridge, (which we scared off), and the other from the far side. They had been in line with our approach with maybe a hundred yards of separation. It wouldn’t be the longest hunt or the most arduous but the challenge presented itself, most certainly.
It was a special blessing to share the day with Jim. His surviving a harrowing struggle with cancer, then returning to this area to retire, had allowed us to continue - and strengthen - our friendship together. Later in life, we enjoy the “quaility” of the time we have as the “quantity” is mostly behind us. Challenging or by the book, every outdoor adventure tends to take on a specialness that’s hard to put into words.
Thankfully, words are not often a requirement amongst good friends.
