Gas Pains

Tom grew up in Milwaukee, bartended in Wauwatosa in the '70s and moved here in 1984.

Commentary, observations and musings about the outdoors, life in general and maybe Tosa politics and personalities will be the order of the day. He savors a lively debate as much as terrific cooking.

Talkn' Turkey

Hunt'n, Outdoors

By the time any of you are reading this post I'll be out in the woods hunting my Thanksgiving dinner.

The elusive wild turkey.

Just like this fella I caught on the game camera.

Isn't that one of  the most beautiful birds around? 

Turkey's are a rather cagey bird. 

For instance, deer can spot movement but their sniffer is their best defense.  Turkeys cannot smell worth a darn but their eyesight is many, many times better than ours.  Moreover, they tend to travel in flocks and many, many eyes make for a good defense.

It you are hunting turkeys the bottom line is this.  Drape yourself in camouflage and be entirely still or conceal yourself in a blind.  

I cannot tell you how many times I have crooned the turkey love call only to lure one of these birds within gun or bow range and have some lame human mishap spoil the moment.  A movement of an elbow or sending an arrow through the zipper of a blind - all of these will conspire to spoil your hunt.

This is why some members of our deer camp have taken to hunting turkey.

It's more difficult. 

A number of years ago I set-out to go turkey hunting with my bow and wouldn't you know it - I found myself in what some might call a target-rich environment.

Turkeys absolutely everywhere.

Scads of them.

And when they began to wander off I would call them right back to my decoys.

All of these birds are Jakes -  yearling males. 

Not a hen in the bunch. 

They tend to travel in large disorderly flocks with their trousers hanging way too low.

Thankfully you won't find them at the Mayfair Mall.

As you might expect of younger males of any species they're barely wise to the ways of life and have a tendency to be careless about survival.

Their emerging hormones will sometimes induce one of them to put some clumsy moves on one of the ladies.

That is until a wise-old gobbler puts the beat-down on the young Turk with a flurry of yelping and a thorough bashing with a wing forearm and a slashing of spurs for good measure. 

Jakes just don't think very clearly.  And this old hunter could've had a clean shot at any one of about a dozen of them.   

But somehow that wouldn't have been quite right.  So they walked.

Check-in this week for a report from turkey camp.

Sid and I are hunting together for a change.

He's trying to quench his drought.

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