Outsmarted By Pea-Brained Turkeys

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There were a lot of smiling faces Saturday on Main Street for the Casey Jones Music Festival. The weather was perfect, and everyone enjoyed getting out on a beautiful spring day. The festival was amazing with tons of food vendors, good music, delicious food and shiny cars.

The car show lined both sides of Main Street by the Herald office and organizer Bennett Hill reported that he did a count of the vehicles in the car show during the peak time and it was 92.

I missed the run earlier in the morning, I started my day in the turkey woods. There are only six Saturdays in turkey season each year, and I usually am in the woods before daylight for each one. I didn’t miss opening morning on March 15, even after a night of severe storms and more on the way.

Sadly the pea-brained turkeys have outsmarted me time and time again this year. I have been close, one morning I had a gobbler coming right to me jut after daylight when four jakes flew down from their roost. They were on that gobbler before he could get to me. Jakes are year-old male turkeys, and they remind me of a bunch of teenage boys running around with high testosterone. When they pack up, they run around like bullies. They ran that big gobbler out of the field and into the woods a good piece, because it took them 10 minutes to reappear. The gobbler never showed back up and I finally gave up that morning.

The next morning, I had three gobblers around me in different directions, all gobbling from their perches high in the trees at daylight. When it got good light and they flew down from their roosts, I started calling and had one answering. A turkey hunter imitates the hen, yelping or making other sounds to attract the gobbler. My problem this morning was a flock of hens in the woods below me were making a lot more noise than I was.

One big gobbler rattled the woods gobbling as he headed toward the hens. When he got to them, he was quiet. Thirty minutes passed and the hens came out in the field close to me with the gobbler in tow. One of the most beautiful sights in the spring is to watch a turkey do his dance, and this bird was in full strut trying to impress his ladies. Even better, the ladies were coming my way.

I got my gun up and was ready, finger on the safety as he was almost in gun range. Then he broke away from his ladies and headed in the other direction. I looked and another gobbler had entered the field. This second gobbler was headed to the ladies too, but the other bird was having no part of it. I watched the most impressive fight I have seen in a long time, you would be amazed at how much racket two gobblers can make in battle. The gobblers went into a bottom and I couldn’t see them anymore, but I could hear them still fighting.

The ladies passed me, fed across the entire field and the gobblers were still squared off. It finally got quiet and I never saw either gobbler again. I went from my finger on the safety to scratching my head. How in the world did all those hens walk right by me and the gobblers end up in the other direction?

I think I still had my lip poked out Tuesday morning after the turkeys got the best of me when Fred Brown stopped by the office. Fred, who is 83 year-old, had killed a nice gobbler Monday afternoon and he couldn’t wait to show me. He told me he was too old to chase them, but he can still call them.

Good job, Mr. Fred, and save me one!