Windburn, Gobbling, and Much Needed Exercise
Note: Like a fool, I procrastinated the documentation of my wonderful South Dakota Trip day two. Although I will never forget the heart pumping, adrenaline-filled last day of the trip, the in between long hiking days are fading from my mind but they are not to be forgotten. They too have a lesson, so I will try my best to remember and recreate, using my vague notes and my slowed sense. I will also try to keep the emotion behind each entry the same as it was during the hunt. Everyone knows attitudes change over time, and I’m afraid that once again I am a new version of myself.
4:30 am – 12:30 pm
I woke up early from a horrible night of dreams involving an unsuccessful quest to get to sleep. What horrible luck that is, to dream about restlessness and insomnia only to wake up feeling the same. My only hope to get moving this morning was to chug coffee from local gas station (four sugar packets, two creamers). We drove around on the windy roads this morning, stopping to send out calls, begging for the wind to carry with it a gobble and also to die down enough for our own yelps to be heard. Soon we gave up realizing that we could barely hear each other through the screaming gusts. Instead we put our heads together and asked the famous question: If I were a turkey where would I be? The answer: Somewhere out of the wind where I am able to display for my lady hens. So we jumped back into the car and carried on, following the dirt road to the valley where we stopped to clean my bird last year (and where my dad got his while my sister and I made a prolonged feathery mess during a not so professional cleaning). We hiked for a little bit that felt like a lot considering the amount of hiking I am used to (panting up and down the school stairs).
I must admit that I wasn’t confident about this morning’s conditions. It was windy to the point that I felt my face falling off, and it had snowed the day before after the initial change to spring had already teased us. I thought my sister was being hopeful and delusional when she said she heard a gobble that my dad and I had missed. Soon however we were ducking down-- squatting in search of the Tom we heard rapidly approaching over the crest. We would creep forward in pursuit and then take our turn in hiding. It was a stalemate between aggression and shyness. He would come forward as we became trees. We snuck a few feet his direction when he turned his back or his gobble became more distant. Finally, as we crouched listening, trying to locate the nearby and camouflaged bird, I saw the beauty. It was 100 yards in front of me, displaying, and slowly moving away from us. After my initial surge of adrenaline, and after my heart returned once again from my throat to my chest, we stood up and continued after the bird. We climbed the hill in pursuit, my own face flushed from excitement and windburn until eventually, at the top of the mountain, it ran away… spooked…most likely from my eagerly peaking head.
And now, In order to distract you from my amateur mistake, I will describe the weather. You will appreciate the scene painted before you, and maybe, if I’m lucky, you will tell yourself that the tom merely had grown excited about the sun’s appearance. He was running off to a field to soak it in. Realize, although it was windy and there was snow on the ground, it was melting fast. The sun, like I said before was out and depositing happiness on everything it touched. The sky was blue, and I was sweating from all the hiking/rock climbing. Actually, although initially the snow seemed like a stupid surprise from Mother Nature, it ended up benefiting us. We used it to follow the spooked bird’s tracks, and figure out where it came from. We followed the three-pronged prints as they joined and separated from other sets. We reenacted in our minds the strutting tom as we saw the drag marks from the displaying wings. Eventually, after bobbing around with the seemingly random paths, we found their roost site. We now knew where we were setting up for the evening hunt.
Once we got down from the hill/mountain, I was almost running to the car to celebrate the fact that I A.) was able to change out of my too warm and without traction boots into my hiking ones and B.) I was soon going to be able to use the bathroom which my now adrenaline-free-self realized I needed badly. But of course as we were driving on the road away from our morning hunting area, we saw a group of turkeys feeding at an opening between two hills. Of course we turned around and pursued them, stealthily jogging the side of a parallel hill. And of course after scaling the side of a hill, we got too close, and ended up lying flat on our backs and not moving for an hour. Eventually after tests of patience, leg-cramps, and full bladders we backed off since none could be identified as Toms. Of course I enjoyed every second of it. Eventually we arrived back at the hotel.
1:30- 7:38 pm
To kill the time of the usually inactive afternoons, we travelled down the back roads sight-seeing and reminiscing. We visited the land where I shot my first Merriam last year. We then headed back to our estimated roost site from our morning tom. We scaled the hill again (better boots this time) and sat waiting. We heard gobbles, but we saw no birds. Later as we descended the hill after shooting time expired in the eerily light night, all I could think about were the smells around me. I must remind myself to look up the type of cedar I was leaning against. I need to collect and store in my memory all of the scents of the plants as we descended the hill that night. I don’t know if it was the large moon, the blue tint of the darkening sky, the dew collecting on the grasses, or really just the crushed aromas of the plants below our feet, but this rushed momentum down the hill passed too quickly. It was Wonderful.
