Arrow in a Longbeard

The photos from a post ago do spoil the ending of this tale. Filling a tag is just tangible proof of the outcome of the story. Social media and the GoPro are eroding the art of telling a good hunting story by showing the actual truth.

Recently, my family were stuck in traffic while driving to a soccer game. Some of the entertainment of the stop and go driving was reading the bumper stickers veneering a rusted and pretty beat up RV. One piece of wisdom catching my eye was in regards to fishing but can easily extend to turkey hunting. The sticker read: ”Fishermen are born honest but they soon get over it.”

I invite you to sit back, relax, set the lighting to ease any strain on your eyes, and sit with a hand wrapped around your favorite hunting tale beverage. This piece will not be so outlandish it just might be true. This tale is so plain it just might be made up. Read on and decide the validity for yourself.

The bird was 17 lbs. sporting a 9-inch beard. The spurs measured out at 7/8” on each side and my best guess puts him at three years old. The bird died on a Wednesday morning at 5:27 AM when it took an arrow into the chest just besides the beard. The story of his demise began twenty-four hours earlier.

As the days remain lighter in the evening, not many people except for turkey hunters, fishermen, and graveyard shift workers realize the sun breaks the horizon a bit earlier each day. At the start of the season being in the woods at 4:30 AM can require a flashlight. By the end of the season there is enough light at 4:30 to read by. My Tuesday morning hunt was scuttled by my inability or unwillingness to get out of bed before 3:30 AM and into the wood while it was still dark. 

On most hunting days I’ll sit for a while and if nothing materializes the morning is finished out by taking a walk to another field or section of woods. After hunting for 24 days (including two with Nate during youth weekend) without a shot and hearing no turkey noises in the woods this morning, heading home to have a cup of tea and leisurely breakfast felt like the right way to end the day.

Walking home on the dirt road the fatigue from awakening by 4 each morning was catching up with me and fertilizing the negativity I had been harboring about chasing turkeys. Opportunities had presented themselves and without the ability or skill to capitalize upon them, the frustration took center stage. Walking up the road my self image transformed from a 49 year old man to the unsatisfied brattyness of a four year old child who didn’t get his way. Walking down the road I began to sulk and question my decision to hunt at all.

Some sympathetic or mean spirited gobbler must have sensed my dismay and gobbled with the intent of rubbing salt into my wounds. The gobble did not entrench my hopelessness but transformed it into the desire to win. The time was 5:32 and the gobble came from the north and my best guess put the bird near the traversing ski trail. The gobble also kicked off a response of loud and continued barking by our dog who must have been out for his morning stroll. In a straight line I was 350 yards from the house. The bird gobbled again but this time the sound was a bit muffled as it moved away from the road and the dog. Normally a dog chasing of a bird would make me a bit angry but this barking had given away the tom’s escape path.

Wednesday morning I slept in until 4:15. The setup was less then a five-minute walk from the door and tends to be a bit wet. With luck, the bugs wouldn’t be too harsh. But hedged my bet on avoiding too many welts by heading in late.

After grabbing the bow, a small folding chair, and two dekes, the walk settled my excitement. The set-up was completely impromptu which is usually a bad idea. Inevitably there are branches in the way and poor cover.  This morning, as if by magic, a shooting lane appeared.

I set the two decoys and carried the chair twenty yards back into the woods. It was only after sitting down to adjust and level the chair did I see the small group of trees to the right of the decoys. This group of trees was my draw cover. The time was 4:50 AM. Now to just sit and wait.

My view of the dekes. The rootstock on the right is the draw cover which blocked the view of me from the trail.

Finding patients while sitting in the woods is difficult but a skill in need of mastery. So far this season, birds were hanging up and no amount of calling, changing calls, or rhythm would bring them in. Based upon a hunt three days earlier my friend Steve suggested not calling after the initial encounter.

In soccer, basketball, football, baseball; name the sport of choice. Having the ball is the fun part. This holds especially true when we start out. Movement off the ball and the enjoyment of assisting the team only comes later as the athlete matures in the game. With turkey hunting, making the call and hearing the gobble is fun. Turkeys are difficult to find and it is nice knowing they are still nearby, the call and gobble response keeps me interested in sitting still out in the cold or bug infested woods.

At 5:02 a gobbling with moderate volume came from my left. Best guess, and purely a guess, was making the bird 250-300 yards away. Taking a deep breath I placed the striker against the call. Cluck…Cluck….Cluck, followed by a soft yelp, yelp, yelp. The reply came from two overlapping gobbles just as soon as I began the fourth yelp. The call went into my pocket.

The trail which brought the toms to the dekes. My position is on the right up into the woods about 20 yards.

Soon there was more gobbling and the ability to resist calling back was easy. Then the long pause. The woods were silent. A woodpecker pounded at a tree, the sound gobble-like and my nerves began to jitter. Readjusting my seating position shifted the call in my pocket making the slightest noise. Not enough to alert the quiet toms but emitting enough sound to remind me it was in my pocket awaiting its turn to talk turkey.

Thirty seconds or ten minutes later another gobble finds my ears.  The call in my pocket has become animated and is begging me to play it. “Just one cluck” it asks. I resist.

My watch reads 5:17 AM. My fifteen minute sit feels like hours. The call sits in my pocket tempting me like an open bottle of gin sitting on the table of the recovering addict. Nobody is home and what harm is there in one sip? Just a taste to satisfy my curiosity. Do I still enjoy the taste, the light burn as the liquid crosses my tongue? The echoing of the clucks and rasp at the back end of the call?

Movement to my right. My heart begins to pound. Yes, it is a turkey but a single hen. The bird makes its way along the ski trial towards the decoys. The hen is in no rush stopping to peck at something in the grass and scratch at her head while balancing on one foot.  She approaches the decoy and pecks the plastic hen in the neck and turns in my direction. I sit absolutely still. She moves close enough to me I can see her blink and pick out the odd pin feathers on her head. She clucks and purrs and keeps moving away to my left. I watch this hen melt away in the underbrush and wonder how often I’ve walked right past a silent turkey just sitting still in the woods.

Another gobble chorus fills the woods. The birds are close. The release is set into the string loop and the bow sits vertically on my leg. My eyes scan to my right looking for movement. Soon two toms materialize on the ski trail a little over 100 yards away. My heart is pounding with enough force to move the tip of the arrow in perfect synchronization with each beat.

Turkey view of my position.

The birds move together and without stopping come in on the dekes. At fifty yards I can easily make out a beard on both of these turkeys. Either one is a shooter. Twenty yards from the decoys they stop and gobble. At five yards from the hen decoy the twosome passes behind my draw blind trees. The smooth draw of the Elite Energy 35 does its job and in one motion the bow is pulled to the stops and my release hand comes to anchor. Sight alignment is good as my index finger wraps the trigger. I had made the decision to take the first bird with a body shot. Not as sporting as a head and neck shot and a change of my self imposed ethos. The pin settled in at beard level and towards the wing on this front facing quartering shot. The arrow released and the tom flipped over as the arrow entered its body. It lay on the ground and flapped its wings and ran its legs with feet gripping nothing but air.

The second tom stood still and I nocked another arrow to try and tag out. Just as I drew the bow to take the second bird the just shot tom began walking down the trail. I let down on bird number two in order to watch the first bird hobbling away with my arrow sticking out of its side.

The tom entered the woods and settled beneath a fallen hemlock. I gave it a few minutes and slowly approached hoping to not spook it and have it run further into the woods. The bird was laying in the mud of a dryish creek bed. It was alive and looking around. I apologized for not being a better archer and killing it outright feeling a ting of regret about passing on the headshot.  Approaching the bird it tried to leave but not before I pressed its head into the mud and placed another foot onto the body to compress its lungs. It took a few moments but the bird died under my bootsole five minutes after taking my arrow in the chest.

100 or so hours of hunting during the 2015 spring season and I had bagged a longbeard.