We had sweated in a popup blind, hiked over miles of cactus-covered territory, clicked across caliche rock cauldrons and watched carefully for snakes along fencerows full of the crawlers’ ideal ground.
We had roosted turkeys we couldn’t locate, located turkeys that flew down to walk the other way, called up gobblers that wouldn’t quite commit, and finally committed to a mesquite thicket overlooking a brushy hillside where we sweated in a popup blind again.
We had spent a week in Texas and in each other’s company, and the Boy had loved every bit of it all. He was 8 years old.
The desire to shoot a turkey excited him upon the peaks, propelled him across hillsides and drew him through valleys of an experience epic and rich as any I’ve known.
In the course of our week we had inbound turkeys spooked by coyotes at 75 yards, and we had a roosted turkey that flew down and walked the direction opposite that taken by his 40-hen harem, which passed by us close enough to touch.
At one point, the Boy stepped on a petal of prickly pear that sent spines into one foot by way of the bottom and top of his shoe. In a different moment, he had managed the gun, a 20 gauge pump with a scope, over a log freehand in an open field encounter that brought a bird slinking by just over 40 yards out for a frustrating, aggravating miss. We had loud gobbling birds come in that proved to be jakes, and we had two different longbeards marching toward us in full strut before gangs of juveniles pounced on and wing-whipped each one away.
The Boy performed ably through it all. He had been the first to see the turkey that flew down, the first to hear the gobblers we cut off in the open field, the first to say, “Let’s find another one” after his miss, and the first to say, “Let’s go” after we pulled the cactus needles out of his shoes. If he could have carried all his own shooting gear and driven the truck home when he was done, my presence to that point would not have been needed.
Finally, we found a hillside that several groups of turkeys were using throughout their daily doings and there hunkered in for the adventure’s last afternoon.
In the silent, stultifying heat, sound hung in the air like red dust rising. It was so quiet, you could listen to the mesquite thorns grow. By about 3, the only excitement had come when the Thermacell sizzled with a “ch-ch-zzz-ch” like a deadly diamondback. That had prompted Hunter McCool, who was my coworker, a tv video field producer, top-notch turkey hunter and the kind of young man anyone would love to have their kids around, to spring up and silently run four quick laps inside the blind. He realized it was the equipment before he took his first step, as he explained later but, once a mainspring jumps its pin, it’s impossible for it not to unwind.
Not long after that excitement passed, though, we heard turkeys, then saw three. The birds were making their way along a wash, gobbling back at our calls and pecking their way through the sage. As members of the Rio Grande subspecies do, they were angling toward us at a jaunty clip, but we knew they would, at most, give only a single pass.
There are no absolutes in turkey hunting, but there are some general characteristics that typically apply. Rios can be more cooperative than other subspecies about checking you out midday. They’ll often walk with little hesitation through a zone where they’ve heard yelping, in situations where an Eastern would weave and pick his way with more care, but Rios in a walking mood don’t typically slow down and pick their way in close, and they just about never, ever turn and come back. Other subspecies may take longer to commit or nibble at the imaginary boundary’s edge before turning but, when they do, they’ll typically linger in the area several moments. Rios walk like they have a schedule to keep. If the Rios’ path misses you, you’re missed for good.
Back on the afternoon of the missed shot, the path the Rios were following when the Boy heard them was not going to cross ours. They were going to go by us 150 yards to one side. Him hearing them when he did let us hammer on them with calls enough to induce them to make a 40 degree turn, but that was all. They turned some, once, and that’s all they, as typical Rios, cared to allow. That turn, coming when it did, along with a quickly-moving dash and setup on our part, brought them by on a tangent whose nearest point to us was 40 yards.
The three birds we had now were about 125 yards away, strung out 50 yards first to last, each on an angle generally toward us, none headed just straight in. The first two pecked their way by at bad angles for the shooter. The third gobbler was walking at half strut and pecking in the gravel, half doing two jobs, when he lined up with the tent’s front window at 35 yards.
“Put the crosshairs on his neck and kill him,” I said in a firm whisper, and the Boy promptly did. From the time we first saw them to the time the Boy had his first mature turkey in hand was roughly the span it takes to read the lines telling the tale.
The bird was much too heavy for the Boy to sling over his shoulder on his own, so I helped him lift it, with him doing most of the lift. I guided the turkey’s legs to bend across the Boy’ shoulder, and there he was: shotgun racked open on a sling, fingers between the turkey’s long spurs, the turkey’s head bouncing above the Boy’s heel. The full, buff and golden brown fan flopped against the Boy’s cap above a smile that justly ran ear to ear.
Memory can seem a magical thing. As we stood over the bird and first put our hands on him, the Boy and I both saw a dull gray bit of HeaviShot in the khaki sand and reached for it. He picked it up and passed it to me. I can still feel the weight of the shot on the pad of my palm, and I can still feel the touch of his little hand on mine as he set it down.
Hope, they say, springs eternal. I hope that is true. Spring hopes eternally, though. That much is certain. Each new year comes with a new spring of its own so, by that, we may live with hope eternally springing.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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