A couple years ago, I wrote a little sermon for our time here together in “Guns & Cornbread” about “the way it used to be” when it came to the outdoors.
I have said before that we as hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen (that means the girls, too) as a whole are often hopeless romantics and long for “the good ol’ days” as we see them. We long for the days from way back when, and we want to go back there, too — back to a time when we felt everything was “better” in our point of view.
By better, I mean we had more of our friends and family around (Dad was there, and maybe Granddad, too), there were plenty of good places to hunt, and game populations were high.
(I just topped my coffee cup off; maybe you should do the same.)
(READ MORE: The way it was, or only the way we remember it was?)
I hope it is not too early to talk to you about turkey hunting, but I know it really isn’t, as we are two months gone in a new calendar year, Florida’s spring turkey youth season started Friday, and the Sunshine State’s regular season is just ahead. Other states, including Georgia, begin the spring fling in March, so we are almost there. (Where does the time go?)
So I am coming to you today on the topic of turkey hunting back in the good ol’ days, back when everything was good (according to me). I confess right from the start that I would like to go back to the way it used to be, a time in the hazy past when turkeys were more plentiful (at least in my area), they gobbled often and when they were supposed to, and more or less acted like supposed turkeys are supposed to. (You know, you call, they gobble in response and often come to see you.)
(READ MORE: For the slumping turkey hunter, gobblers’ silence isn’t golden)
And to put a finer point on it, it is not just the turkeys I am talking about from way back when.
There was a time when turkey hunters were special. Turkey hunters were different. Turkey hunters, kinda sorta like the old-time grouse hunters (who are just about extinct these days) were known to be separate, sometimes reclusive types who didn’t necessarily pal around with other hunters.
They weren’t like squirrel or duck hunters, and they certainly weren’t like deer hunters. All of the gregarious traits of hunting in large groups and sharing a camp with numerous other hunters did not always characterize some of those early turkey hunters. If anything, some were known to be standoffish and sometimes pretty grouchy.
Remember now, I am talking about a time before outdoors TV shows, National Wild Turkey Federation conventions, and dozens of instructional tapes and videos on turkey calling and hunting techniques. Unless you had a good friend as a mentor to show you the ropes, you learned how to hunt turkeys on your own, by yourself.
You did this by basically getting in the turkey woods, trying to call and get next to gobblers, and messing a lot of them up — that is, spooking a turkey you were trying to call into shotgun range. You did this over and over, hopefully learning something every time.
If you did this at a time when turkeys were scarce in your neighborhood, these lessons were painful as you didn’t know when you might find another big gobbler to wrestle with. If turkeys were more plentiful in your neck of the woods, you were fortunate: When you spooked a turkey on one encounter, you could quickly move to another and continue the game.
All this time, you were hopefully learning.
Turkey hunters today are a lot different. At the risk of sounding like the old grouchy guy (which I probably am), I would say the younger crowd of hunters is where I see the big differences.
I am pretty sure that more than anything else, the internet and that awful thing known as social media have caused most of this. The Book of Faces and other internet-based media have brought a lot of questionable behavior to light in the hunting world, including turkey hunting. Some of these hunters seem to want to portray themselves in a gangster light, in that they are real killers and that is what turkey hunting is all about.
As you may suspect, I disagree with most of this. The hip, “I am so cool” attitude because I supposedly kill a lot of turkeys may play well on social media, but not with real turkey hunters, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Who are the real turkey hunters?
I think they are the guys and girls who live for the first hint of daylight. They have heard the songbirds and the crows wake up, and then they hear that sound that touches them in a way they cannot describe: the raucous gobble of a wild turkey. They don’t know if this encounter will be good for them or the turkey, but they will see it to the conclusion either way.
If you really pressed them, they would admit it doesn’t really matter if they get to pull a trigger and carry home 20 pounds of dead turkey. They want to be out here in God’s creation, playing chess with a crafty old gobbler.
That is the turkey hunting and the kind of turkey hunters I miss.
“Guns & Cornbread” is written by Larry Case, who lives in Fayette County, W.Va. You can write to him at larryocase3@gmail.com.