A big, suspicious, long-bearded gobbler made two hunters - who supposedly know what they are doing and give seminars telling other people how to hunt turkeys - look like complete greenhorns this spring.
And it all happened in one morning. In fact, he zapped us twice in the same morning.
If you can stand one more gobbler-hunting story, here it is. My hunting buddy Joanie Haidle and I heard a gobbler sounding off one morning just before daylight. Like all good gobbler hunters, we got as close to him as possible before we set up to call. He responded to the calls Joanie offered. When he flew down from the roost, however, he did what most of the birds we got into this spring did: he didn't gobble again.
We waited to see what would happen, and finally he gobbled again. There was no mistaking his throaty gobble. But he didn't answer our calls. He would simply sound off on his own every 20 minutes or so, and we concluded he had hens with him and that was our trouble.
He was out on the far end of a really huge field when he gobbled, and there was no way to get near him, so we circled the field, got to the end he was in and set up in the woods just back from the edge of the field. For a while, he gobbled heartily at every call we made but wouldn't come toward us.
Right on the very edge of the field was a huge fallen tree, so I suggested to Joanie that she could sneak up directly behind that snag and get a peek out into the field and see what was going on. She did that and found he was out there strutting. So we decided to wait it out and call every now and, then and when he was done with those hens, perhaps he would come to us. But before we actually set up to do that, we sat there chatting, eating our first snack and thinking it would be awhile before that bird would come to us.
Well, you guessed it! Just as we were discussing who would sit where and how we would call to this bird, we heard the dreaded sharp clucks that told us we had been spotted. That big old bird ran down through the woods, and we felt like idiots. Two seasoned hunters had just been hornswaggled by a smart, paranoid bird.
Well, that was the end of that, we decided. So we decided to split up and take up posts at opposite ends of the field, offering come-on calls at intervals. Joanie stayed at that end of the field to watch, and I circled the field back around to where we had been in the morning.
It was a wonderful setup. The woods ended there, and a small cut ran up to the field and offered a perfect spot for a turkey to get under the fence and into the field. So I settled in to watch, call and wait. It was perfect. And sure enough, when he gobbled again, he was back in the field.
But he didn't gobble often, and neither of us knew if he was still in the field or had walked away or what he had done. The silent waiting was torture, knowing he was surely around somewhere, but when he hadn't gobbled for the best part of an hour, neither of us had an idea if he was still out in that field or had left. So I watched alertly the edge of the woods and the little cut where he would surely appear.
About a half hour later, I heard the dreaded sound: the putts that told me I had been spotted. That bird had left the field, silently gone down through the woods, circled around the ridge and come up a hollow to come in behind me and get a look. Since I was faced the other way, I had not seen him. Perhaps I moved or was silhouetted, I don't know exactly, but he spotted me.
Twice in the same morning, this smart bird had pulled the same trick. We finally caught on too late. He would stop gobbling, and while we sat wondering what had become of him, he was deliberately taking a circuitous route to our position. Not once did he gobble to betray his position. And he caught us flatfooted both times.
We dubbed him "Sneaky Pete." We'll be looking for him next spring. We've learned his tactic. It's going to be a long year until we see whether we learned our lesson well enough.