We sat beneath a stand of ancient oaks in a mesquite scattering, leaves shifting gently in the south Texas breeze. Their canopies of dark and lime greens shaded away the sun. An expanse of pasture, dotted with cedar, spread below our hilltop. Open ground lush for grazing stretched far and wide, and through it lazed a winding creek. The creek sprawled into a lake, and near the lake strutted the three turkeys we’d been chasing all week.
Big, beautiful Rio Grande gobblers with fans of buff and bronze, the birds stepped about like ladies in antebellum skirts, treading lightly, turning deliberately, never moving far. Between them and us lay 300 yards of nothing large enough to hide a tall cricket.
We had been as close as 90 yards on the first morning when the birds strutted in an open field. Through binoculars we had watched as each wagged a beard that touched the ground while they pecked along. Each wore spurs that curved long and sharp like Saracen swords, though any disputes they had among themselves had been settled in jake-dom. Their knives were not out for one another.
The gobblers traveled a great loop, walking all day long as Rios will, and always they stood in mutual support, three knights executing maneuvers in a game whose rules only they knew.
We were allowed the first move every day, then they made all the rest. They never saw us, they never spooked, they never allowed us to use the terrain to hide an approach. They answered our calls often in voice, but never in person.
That last afternoon as the shadows grew long, we watched them move away from us, our last gambit failed, and could only tip our hats. They didn’t get that old being careless.
There are old turkeys and bold turkeys, but it’s a rare day that contains a meeting with one that is both. This was not that day.
A short lifetime later, the Boy returned to parley with them again, leaving the Old Man behind as he would from spring to spring in seasons to come. Occasionally a bird’s avarice brought him fatally close, though usually it did not. If it happened every time, it would soon grow boring, and boredom has never played any part in spring turkey hunting.
When their paths did cross suitably, the Boy would relay his excitement, tell stories, send pictures. In his hand, the Old Man would hold the photos, which showed a grown man standing or kneeling, hands on a fan of buff and gold but, to the Old Man who’d been with him from the start, the Boy would always be the little feller who’d sat asleep in his lap before their first turkey sunrise.
That morning, the Boy’s wee, light body laid up against his inside a camo pop-up tent already hot with the sun. In the Old Man’s eye, stories of every one of the Boy’s later hunts led back to this one, a morning when a gabbling flock of jakes had stormed in to mob a solo hen decoy, arguing amongst themselves to see who would approach her first.
At the Old Man’s direction, the Boy had held the gun steady in its rest and waited for one of the young males to identify himself clearly, then the Boy identified him further and had his first spring turkey in hand.
The next spring, the Boy and the Old Man had left the tent behind and galloped along after longbeards on foot, as the Good Lord meant men to do, watching for snakes, picking through prickly pear and crossing barbed wire fences, eventually achieving checkmate on the nearly-cliche’, ever present, “last afternoon.” Photos of the Boy holding that mature bird, his first, counted among the Old Man’s favorites.
Now the Boy hunted alone or with peers as companions, turning mistakes into opportunities and learning from both on his own. He was outfitting his own encyclopedia of experience and had grown as a hunter and a man. Through his reports, he brought the Old Man along.
New adventures were always thrilling, immensely satisfying, confirmations of correct choices the Old Man once made. Mature birds met on latter days gave him pleasure by proxy, though always tinged with longing. Not sorrow, or even remorse, but just of sonder. The Boy was living a life filled with his own troubles and ambitions, his own regrets and satisfactions. He’d have his own lost decisions and triumphs the Old Man would never know. So the Old Man returned each time to a smaller day, long ago, when the two had decided and suffered and triumphed together, only a scant stretch for the Boy, but forever for the Old Man now.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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