How a Gobbling Turkey Gave Me Hope

I want to start out by apologizing to some of my friends that I hunt with. While I’ve never lied about hearing turkeys or where they were, I didn’t say everything I knew about this turkey. 
 
I heard him. And partners, I heard him a lot. 
 
I’ve always been fascinated with turkey hunters.  Back when I was a kid, my uncle, Lucien Savage, would travel to Mississippi with his best friend Ronnie Booth looking for turkeys. Unc would come back with tales of something I could only read about in magazines. North Louisiana didn’t have a turkey season, so my dad never hunted them. Which meant that I never hunted them. 

 
But I knew about them from Uncle Luke. We’d ride around back-roads in his old Jeep Scrambler and talk. That’s where he gave me my first diagram call. I had asked about how to call turkeys and watched as he reached for a Skoal can on his dash. I thought he was getting a dip, but he wasn’t. When the lid pealed back, there inside sat the first turkey calls I’d ever seen. The can was slap full of diaphragm calls. 
 
He picked one out and showed me how to put it in my mouth and instructed me on how it worked. To his surprise, I made a noise right off, albeit it sounded more like a squeaky door hinge than a hen turkey, but it was a sound. 
 
He gave me an empty can and turkey call of my own that day and it stayed on my nightstand until I moved out of my dad’s house. Every spring I’d cluck on it and make all kinds of godforsaken sounds on that thing from the confines of my bedroom. But to me, I was calling turkeys. 
 
When Louisiana opened turkey season for the first time in modern history, I was I college and turkeys weren’t even close to being on my radar. Heck, deer barely were. But my dad had a different mindset. Unc taught him everything he knew about calling and dad being dad, did it exactly like he said. 
 
Several years and plenty of spurs and beards later, I’d say dad was a good student. 

 
I, however, was not. I’ve tried my hand at it various times through the years but when you have very few birds and you’re hunting against the best outdoorsmen in Union Parish, it’s almost impossible to be successful. 
 
Ceis, Aleck, and Willie Nygaard, Ricky Cobb, and my dad were like the murders row of turkey hunting to me. I’ve said for years that one way I am certain that black panthers don’t exist, is because Mr. Ceis has never killed one….to my knowledge anyway. So when you put 6 straight up killers chasing three gobblers on 1800 acres, the odds of little ole me getting one were very very slim. 
 
That’s been my past experiences with turkey hunting, until 2024. The Nygaard clan no longer hunt with us and Mr. Ricky doesn’t either, so that just left me to contend with dad. And when he had health trouble in February, I decided that I might actually have a shot at getting a bird this spring. 
 
What I haven’t told you yet is this; the spring of 2024 is also the first time in my adult life that I’ve been unemployed. The mill I’ve worked at for almost 20 years closed and left me with time on my hands. It also left me with doubt and depression. 
 
March 11 was my first day at home and I did everything I could to stay busy. The whole week was full of house work and dabbling in my side hustle of voice work. Thankfully, I had several project that kept me focused. But they played out after the first two weeks. 
 
March 25 found me starting to struggle finding a routine. I’d sleep late. Stay up late. Barely get out of the house. I knew what was happening. And I knew I had to change it. Thursday the 28th found me lower than I’ve been in a long time. I’ve had some tough times and I knew what was going on, but I couldn’t shake it.  I cried uncontrollably that day because I felt lost and I needed help. I wasn’t lost spiritually however and prayer got me through that day. 
 
Everything changed that night though. K&M in Farmerville had their big buck contest awards dinner and me being the official scorer, I had to be there and give away plaques and checks. I sat there in K&M and watched people piling through the door and that’s when I thought about Anders McGehee. “Gosh I hope he comes tonight” I thought. Anders is Dusty’s son and he won the Lincoln Parish Youth Division. “Yep.  Bout to be there,” was the text I received after asking Dusty if they were coming. 
 
When the banquet was over I chatted with Dusty one-on-one. “Boy the turkeys are gobbling on our place right now!” he said as he approached me. That one sentence set this whole thing into motion. 
 
March 29th I rode to the lease and listened for turkeys the first time in years. That’s also when I heard a turkey. March 30th I did the same thing. Every single day from April 1 until April 18, I kept my routine. 5 AM wake up, fix my coffee, grab a banana and a tumbler of water, and out the door to listen for a turkey. It quickly went from listening for A turkey, to listening for THE turkey. 
 
Every. Single. Day for the first week he gobbled. And let me tell you, he GOBBLED. I followed him through creek bottoms listening to him. I followed him across cutovers. I actually walked up on him twice in full strut without spooking him. I was having the best time simply learning this bird. He even walked down the road one time and right past me as I stood in the wood line with my coffee 40 yards away! 

 

But opening day, things changed. It was like he knew it was time. He changed his patterns and his gobbling was sparse. He’d gobble some days and some days he wouldn’t. But I kept my routine and never told a soul about this bird. Until April 16. 
 
It was 6:30 AM and it was silent on the hilltop where I was standing. “He’s dead,” I thought. I heard a truck coming in the distance. “Odd, I haven’t seen anyone over here during the week yet,” I thought as it slowed down. My heart sank when I saw the killer himself step out. Aleck Nygaard. 
 
This man is one of the best woodsmen I’ve even known. He’s also one of the best men I’ve ever known. We chatted about this and that and then he broke the code. Turkey hunters have a code if you don’t know. And he, for whatever reason, broke it. And he knew it. “I hate to even say this, because that’s how us turkey hunters are, but there’s a bird over there that’s gobbling right now. And he’s on yalls side” he said. With that information, I told him about the bird I’d been following for weeks. And how I watched it over near some land that he can hunt on. It’s strange how moments of shared honesty between outdoorsmen can bring forth information not normally given. 
 
We chatted some more and then we both decided to go after the bird he heard earlier; he on his side and me on mine. 
 
The bird ended up crossing a pasture and heading right towards where I guessed Aleck to be, so I went on about my rat killing, fully expecting a shot at any moment. 

It never came. But a text did. 
 
“I had him in the field over here at 30 yards. He hung up in the fields edge and wouldn’t cross the fence.  He got spooked and headed back over your way” 
 
Not long after that he gobbled and he wasn’t far. My inexperience caused me to spook him and I watched this big dark blob run off like Usain Bolt across a cutover. We didn’t do anything but educate him on that day. 
 
April 17 he never said a word and I was actually happy about it. I was tired and worn out. I’d been averaging 5 miles of walking every day since April 1 and I was “give out” as dad would say. But I wasn’t defeated. 
 
April 18 hit and the weatherman said there would be storms that day. I almost stayed home but I didn’t. I did my routine and headed to the lease and stood in my usual starting place. It was quiet, except for the crows. The deer I’d see moving every morning, never crossed the road. “This is an odd day,” I thought. I drove passed the pasture when I’d seen him before but it was empty. I eased around and rain started to fall. I was just about to turn left and head home but I thought, “Alec said he liked that pasture. He might be there with this rain”. So that’s where I went. 
 
As soon as my left foot exited the truck cab and hit the dirt “gabababababa” came from ahead of me. “Gabababababa!” again it came. “There he is!” I said to myself. 
 
I gathered my stuff and slowly went to where our lease meets the field. The terrain is as follows; the road I used to walk to the area is an old logging road. The trees are freshly thinned but only to the property line that is between the pasture and the thinned. So there’s woods for a small strip between the thinned and the pasture. We lease everything but the pasture.
 
Just inside that wood line is where I set up, right next to the thinned timber. I could clearly hear him in the pasture, but the spring foliage kept me from seeing him. And him from seeing me. After I set up, I slipped a diaphragm call in my mouth and softly clucked followed by a soft yelp. “Gabababababa!”  
 
He answered. That’s the first time I’d ever gotten him to answer. “Gabababababa!” told me this dude was fired up. I had to coach myself. “Don’t change tone. Don’t over call. Be soft. Be a hen”. I’d cluck and scratch the leaves with my left hand every so often. “Gabababababa!” would be the response. 
 
Finally I saw him coming. But he wasn’t coming to me, instead he was flanking to my left. “He’s going to the thinned so he can see better,” I thought and made a slight adjustment. I could see him getting closer in the thinned, clucking and looking. I saw two pines and made the decision to shoot when he was between them but he read my mind and sped through the opening, almost causing me to force my shot. But I waited. “He gets past that mulberry and I’m shooting him,” I coached myself. 
 
He stopped. And went back. 
 
But then he changed his mind and must have wanted to check five steps past the mulberry bush. 
 
He made it four. 

 
As I walked up to him, I felt so many emotions. Happy that I got him, sad that he’s gone. But the one emotion that I felt then and that I’ll feel forever is respect. 
 
See, this bird didn’t just give me something to write about, or talk about, or even share with my family for meals. This bird gave me something to look forward to every single day. He gave me a routine to enjoy. He gave me excitement in his vocalization. For 18 days this turkey gave me life. A man who was struggling to find hope, found it in something he’d never experienced before. Being a turkey hunter.