Growing old with the Sport
I do have a story that I tell to others in our sport. A story about reaching that point in your hunting career when your eyesight starts failing as well as your hearing and well just about everything else. I don’t consider myself at that point yet but my son Kirk, that heard the 3 turkeys gobbling 3/4 of a section across a bottom in Homochitto a couple of years ago, will differ with me. He said, “Daddy, can’t you hear them? They are answering every call you make! And to be honest, I did not hear them until we moved about 100 yards closer. – This is the result of duck hunting all those years with no ear protection.
I was taught to turkey hunt by an old school turkey hunter. He taught me how to hunt Easterns on their terms with equal footing. He just passed away a couple of years ago. Let me preface this story by stating that Jack started hunting turkeys up and down the vast stretch of timber between the levees after WWII when the turkeys were few and far between. The date inside his Turpin reads 1946, the year he got it. He worked for several different timber companies and was an original member in Ashbrook Hunting Club. He hunted turkeys for 7 years before he called up his first turkey around 1953 on Merigold hunting club.
Jack told this story on himself while we were on a hunt at Ashbrook just before it sold. “I’m from the old school of turkey hunting “ he said. The way I learned to hunt was if they would not come to your calls one day, the next morning you would slip on him. I said “slip”? “Right! You get a big tree that is within shotgun range of his roost tree, slip up there, and you kill him. Back then, that was the standard way of hunting them. Any way you could shoot them was fair game. Jack, however would give them a chance to come to the call. A lot of hunters would not even do this back then. He said the River was up a number of years back and I had to boat in. I was running late and by the time I hit the Big Field, through the timber, it was turning light. I grabbed my gear and started towards the Round field where I had left them the day before. They would not come to the call the day before, so I had decided to slip on them. When I hit the woods line I picked up the pace and tripped over a log. I got up, brushed off my gun and continued on. I could hear them gobbling when I approached the Round Field. There was a strong gobbling bird just below the field in a thick section of sycamore trees. I knew exactly where he was located. I put another big sycamore between me and him and I slipped up there. I wasted no time, raised my 30" full choke 870. Put the bead on his head and pulled the trigger. Well that ole gobbler just kinda perked up and started really looking around. I saw I had leaves on my barrel, probably from the fall I thought, and tried to brush them off. I raised again, pointed in his direction and pulled the trigger 2 more times. That ole bird just rocked back and forth, and then flew off like nothing happened. Later as I walked down the road toward float row wondering what had gone wrong. I looked down, as it was full light, and I noticed my gun. The 4 inches close to the end of the barrel was peeled back. Evidently I stuck the barrel in the river mud when I fell. So I figured then, the first shot was the peel back shot, and shots 2 and 3 were full cylinder bore at 45 yards. “No wonder I did not kill that turkey.”
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