Turkey Season: I Still Can’t Take It Anymore
Weeks of predawn punishment in pursuit of a bird with a gummy-sized brain.
Every year about this time, somewhere around the final days of Indiana turkey season, I hit the wall. It’s not because I’m spending too much time outdoors. Quite the opposite. It’s because I’m rolling out of bed at 3 a.m. while the last guy from karaoke night is still trying to remember where he parked his pickup.
Turkey hunters remain living proof of the old saying that “the early bird gets the worm,” along with lower back pain, questionable decision-making and the kind of sleep deprivation usually associated with hostage negotiations.
After a solid week of hunting, a man starts seeing things. Shadows become gobblers. Fence posts become gobblers. A black trash bag caught in a hedgerow becomes a gobbler right up until your hunting buddy points out you’ve been trying to call in landscaping debris for 15 minutes.
I’m not hallucinating yet, but I am operating under the dangerous delusion that voluntarily waking up this early qualifies as recreation.
This season has delivered the usual mix of misery and greatness.
One hunt started with a late-night text from a friend who claimed he had permission on “the best turkey property in western Indiana.” Those words remain the turkey hunter’s equivalent of a sailor hearing singing from the rocks.
Naturally, I said yes.
By the time I had gathered my gear, charged electronics, packed snacks, checked weather apps, updated mapping apps and verified I had enough battery packs to survive a lunar expedition, it was nearly midnight.
Three hours later, my phone alarm detonated beside the bed like a flashbang grenade. My smart watch joined in. So did the backup alarm on my tablet because experience has taught me one alarm is optimism while two alarms is planning.
My wife barely moved this time. After all these years, she has accepted turkey season the same way farmers accept hailstorms and fishermen accept lies.
Despite laying everything out the night before, I still left late.
There’s something about turkey hunting that destroys a man’s relationship with time. No matter how prepared you are, you always end up hurtling down a dark county road convinced sunrise is arriving 45 minutes earlier than scheduled.
I met my buddy at a rural intersection somewhere near the Wabash River. We transferred gear like a pair of nervous smugglers, then bounced down a field lane in his side-by-side at a speed suggesting he had either tremendous confidence or excessive life insurance.
By the time we parked, dawn was beginning as a salmon-tinged smear across the eastern sky.
We hurried across a muddy field and set up along a timber edge. My friend arranged decoys with the concentration of a museum curator while I collapsed against a tree trying to lower my heart rate below “medically concerning.”
Then he started calling.
He did well, too. Right before sunrise, he called in a hen that landed practically in our laps. She stared at us from point-blank range with the expression of someone questioning every decision that led her to this moment. You notice details when a turkey is standing six feet away. The color in their eyes. The texture of the feathers. The acorns on their breath.
Nobody tells you wild turkeys have breath capable of stripping paint.
The rest of the morning was classic turkey hunting. We heard distant gobbles. We repositioned twice. We became convinced a tom was “just over the ridge” approximately 11 different times.
We never got a bird into range. Oddly enough, it didn’t matter much.
That’s the thing non-hunters never quite understand. The older I get, the less turkey season feels like a competition and the more it resembles a collection of moments stitched together by exhaustion, optimism and fresh coffee consumed from dented travel mugs.
The smell of wet leaves at daylight.
Songbirds waking up before sunrise.
Fog hanging low over a creek bottom.
The thunder of a gobble echoing through timber so hard it vibrates in your chest.
Those are the things you remember long after the tags are filled or forgotten.
Our final hunt of the season happened on a property no one had hunted before. The landowner swore turkeys crossed his driveway every morning “like commuters.” Experienced turkey hunters know statements like that should always be viewed with suspicion. Still, we believed him because turkey hunters will believe absolutely anything in April and May.
We slipped into the woods before daylight and waited.
Nothing.
No gobbling. No scratching leaves. No wing beats.
We moved to a powerline cut and called again.
Still nothing.
At that point, the accumulated fatigue of the season finally caught me. My head grew heavy. My eyes drifted shut. I began accepting the possibility that another spring would end without a punched tag but full of good stories, cold mornings and enough memories to make me do it all again next year.
Honestly, there are worse reasons to lose sleep than chasing a bird with a brain roughly the size of a gummy vitamin.
In the middle of a yawn, I happened to glance left.
A gobbler stood 20 yards away staring directly at me.
At moments like that, I still wish I were hallucinating.
We’ll finish the story here.
Oh, the gobbler? As both my regular readers know, I am a staunch conservationist and refuse to harvest animals that show singular bad judgement or terrible luck.
Maybe next year…