I love it when a hunch proves correct.
In Thursday's column, I described a place I found Tuesday in the middle of some of the prettiest woods I've seen in south central Arkansas. It's a flat, tablelike spot that slopes into shallow ravines on all sides. Although I didn't see or hear any turkeys there during a half-day hunt Tuesday, it's too pretty of a spot to abandon.
After taking a break Wednesday, I debated whether to end my turkey season and go fishing. I bagged a mature Arkansas gobbler April 23, so the season was successful. I delegated that decision to my inner alarm clock. If I woke up unaided early enough to reach my spot before dawn, I would hunt. If I slumbered, I would consider the season finished.
My eyes popped open at 4:10 a.m, and I felt oddly assured that I would at least get a chance at a gobbler. My optimism was seemingly baseless because turkeys have not given me reason to be optimistic. However, with the arrival of cool, clear weather, I believed Thursday might be the morning for a gobbler to talk.
My first challenge was finding the tabletop again. I found it by accident. I got turned around leaving it and exited the woods off course by about 200 yards. I followed a tangled mess of a trail that was littered with ankle-twisting logging slash. I would not re-enter the woods by that route again, and after a day's absence, I was unsure if I could find the tabletop again in the dark.
Thankfully, I walked right to it and even put my Avian-X decoys in the exact same spots where I put them Tuesday. I placed them in the middle of the two likeliest approach routes onto the tabletop. Turkeys would not see the decoys from below. If a turkey ascended the tabletop, it would encounter the decoys within easy shooting distance.
Sitting amid a protective ring of shrubs, I had long sight lines in every direction except behind me. Brushy cover to my back would prevent a turkey seeing me if one slipped in from behind.
Dawn broke to a timorous chorus of chuck-wills-widows. As the woods brightened, the air came alive with birdsong. Cardinals flitted about, and I am certain I saw a trio of summer tanagers quarreling high in the treetops. I heard warblers and thrushes, owls and hawks. I did not hear the one bird I most longed to hear -- the eastern wild turkey.
To encourage one to talk, I laid out two Eddie Horton box calls and a Rhodes dual chamber cedar box call. I also had an H.S. Strut Power V diaphragm and Premium Game Calls Cutting Edge Diaphragm. The Power V is excellent for cackling and clucking. The Cutting Edge is my best diaphragm for purring and feed calling. For maximum tone and ease of play, I trimmed their skirts to fit my mouth roof.
Instead of my usual loud, protracted method of calling, I yelped soft and short with all three box calls, followed by short clucks. I also yelped and cutt with the diaphragm, again softly.
As usual, I had to bicker with my lying eyes, which wanted to turn every thistle into a turkey head and every bent sapling into a turkey body. I closed my eyes and opened my ears to the full spectrum of the forest's sonic palette. I tuned acutely to the protestations of crows. Crows are always griping about something, usually at something. Often, they gripe at turkeys. Turkeys sometimes respond with cutts and cackles. Occasionally, a tom will get a bellyful and gobble in response. Sometimes you must listen closely to hear it, but turkeys held their peace.
One thing was certain. I was not going to blow an entire day sitting in woods that contain no turkeys. I killed my first gobbler April 23 at 8 a.m. At 8:30 on Thursday, I resolved to leave the woods at 9 a.m.
By 8:45 a.m., I hadn't entirely checked out of the No-Turkey Inn, but I was staging my luggage by the door. I yelped on my PGC diaphragm one last time. My heart leapt when a hen yelped in response. She was very close, but down the slope and out of sight. She yelped three times. I yelped three times, softly. She yelped three times again. I purred quietly.
Like magic, she appeared in front of me, next to the nearest decoy a mere eight paces away. She paced in circles, apparently confused because the calls came from a different place than the decoys. She looked right at me, but I was fully camouflaged, with a mask over my face and nonreflective shades over my eyes that allowed me to blink undetected.
Finally, the hen relaxed and settled in for a leisurely breakfast beside the decoy. I watched, shotgun resting on my upraised knee.
About three minutes later, I saw additional movement to my right. A red, white and blue head bobbed behind the brush, and then a body materialized. It was a gobbler, and its dark, copper-highlighted feathers glowed in the morning light. He dwarfed the hen, and he looked positively resplendent. He displayed half-heartedly for the decoy and then deflated his plumage.
His eyes locked onto me as I lifted the gun ever so slightly to align my electronic dot site with my eye, but at only eight paces, he had no time to react further. At 8:58 a.m., my Arkansas turkey season roared to a magnificent close.
It was only my second time to tag out in Arkansas. The first time was 2019, a season that was diametrically opposite to 2021. In 2019, both of my birds gobbled vigorously. Both were classic hunts whose events I can relive for a lifetime.
In contrast, I did not hear a turkey gobble for the entire 2021 season. My gobbler April 23 came in silently with a group, and I shot him at a fair distance. The second bird silently followed a talkative hen. I've read many articles about gobblers tailing hens, but it's the first gobbler I've ever killed in such fashion.
Hunting silent gobblers is hard and unexciting. In fact, a silent season is more like a slog. It takes more luck than skill to bag silent gobblers, and also an unshakable faith in a spot that is simply too pretty to abandon.
By no measure will I remember the 2021 Arkansas spring season as my favorite, but I will remember it as the one where I truly earned my spurs.