The Gobble Hobble

                At the start of the Fall of 2013 I was in a weekend flag football league with a couple of buddies from high school. In the midst of one of the games I attempted to lunge for an opponent’s flag. As I did so, I heard a loud “POP” and simultaneously felt a pain in my knee more excruciating than any pain I had ever previously experienced. Just like that, my short illustrious flag football career came to a screeching halt due to a torn ACL. More important than football, though, I was worried that I had just said goodbye to my hopes of killing my first buck that coming hunting season. I was about to enter my third season of being a hunter but when I got the news that I had indeed torn a ligament in my knee I could see my aspirations for the looming season slipping away like sand through a sieve.

                I scheduled a consult with an orthopedic surgeon who said he could fit me in 3 weeks from then or 6 days before Christmas. A little confused, I asked what he meant and why he wasn’t scheduling it for later that week. I came to find out that some people never get it repaired and that soon I’d be able to walk alright with a knee brace for lateral support but if I didn’t get the operation I wouldn’t really be able to run well anymore. All I heard as he was talking is, “you might still be able to hunt this season” (he didn’t say that but that’s how my mind translated whatever it was he did say). I opted for the date that was just before Christmas and was able to hunt that season although not as successfully as I had hoped. I had the surgery and braced myself for the long six month recovery.

                The weeks following the surgery found me on the couch all day every day and what does a hunter who is laid up on the couch during hunting season do? That’s right. Watch hunting on TV. I would literally have the Outdoor Channel or Sportsman’s Channel on from the time I woke up until the time I fell asleep that night…every day. Needless to say, my family got pretty fed up with it and would ask, “Didn’t you watch this episode yesterday?” To which I would respond, “Yes but I pick up on something new each time”. This was especially true for turkey hunting.

                Before my surgery I had never hunted turkeys or even really had a desire to. Whitetails were all that were on my mind. I began watching these guys out chasing turkeys at the crack of dawn as the sky would slowly change from black to red. I watched as they went out at night to hoot like an owl and locate roosted birds for the next day. I saw the passion they had when it came to pursuing these keen-eyed gobblers and it made me wonder why I had never tried it. I began paying close attention to the sounds they made when calling. Clucks, purrs, gobbles, cutting, spitting and drumming…all these terms were previously unknown to me. Oddly or coincidentally enough, my aunt who knew I had gotten into hunting found an unopened pot call from Knight and Hale at a yard sale and gave it to me that Christmas. I began to try to mimic the sounds I heard on TV paying close attention to the patterns, pitches, and speed that made up these calls.

                Before long I was up and moving around, albeit not well. My friend’s would good-naturedly call me “the gimp” and “Tiny Tim” (Since it was Christmas time) and any other clever name they could come up with. I laughed right along because it really was comical the way I had to walk and move around. As April approached I was getting around significantly better with a limp that was much less noticeable. The joking jibes had ceased (for the most part) and I began to get stir crazy. I found myself thinking about turkey hunting and practicing in my truck with mouth calls while getting strange looks from fellow drivers. I wasn’t able to hunt the first part of Virginia’s turkey season as I didn’t feel up to it but by the second leg I couldn’t take it anymore. I just had to get out there.

                The fifth Saturday of turkey season found me climbing out of my truck at a public hunting spot I had frequented during deer season a few months earlier. I hiked around a lake near the entrance and stopped staring at the steep slope of the mountain that towered in front of me. I thought maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew in my current condition. I decided to take it slowly and no matter what, I would reach that bench half way up the mountain. It took me much longer than I had hoped to reach that point so by the time I got there the sun was well on its journey across the sky.

                The pain in my knee was sharp and throbbing by the time I reached my destination and so I sat on a log and called. There was no noise except some chirping song birds and leaves rustling from a nearby squirrel searching through the underbrush for whatever he could find to eat. I sat on that log for about an hour before I felt I could get up. I stood and my knee was stiff and sore. I had done no physical preparation for a task such as this.

                Not even a minute after I stood I heard a noise off to my left and turned to see a man covered in camouflage from head to toe and toting a shotgun heading across the flat in my direction. He had a vest with pockets bulging with so many calls I didn’t know how he kept track of them all. Clearly this guy knew what he was doing. He came up and we began chatting. He told me how he had killed a Tom not 50 yards from where I was standing  the morning before and that there were birds aplenty in that area. This was reassuring to hear. He then went on to say that he was done with his hunt and was making his way back down and searching for morels. “Morels?” I asked. “What’re those”? He quickly reached in his bag that, until then, I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a mushroom-like plant unlike any I had ever seen before. When he learned that I was not familiar with them he explained that they are delicious and only grow in the spring right around turkey season. He went on to say that, similar to shed hunting, you have to train your eyes to spot them. He pointed some out to me and then told me to look around to see if I could find any myself. Suddenly I became aware that there was a plethora of them all around me. I thanked him, wished him luck, as he did to me, and he went on his way.

                As he made his way down and out of sight I glanced at my phone and saw that it was already 10 AM. I wondered if all I would get for my troubles were these newly-discovered, free and fresh mushrooms. I decided that after all that trouble I wasn’t going to just give up so I began calling. I would call, then walk 50 yards, and then call again. I was ready to call it a day but right as I reached the far side of the bench and looked down over the opposite side of the mountain I heard a noise that stopped me dead in my tracks; a noise that I was all too familiar with after the hours I had spent glued to the TV while I recovered from surgery.

                A chill ran down my spine and I felt a surge and excitement. The sound was faint and I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I had actually heard it. I scratched the surface of the slate I held one more time and before I had finished the sequence I heard it again. This time I was sure. A gobble - just like on TV but so much better. I quickly (Well, as quickly as I could manage) made my way over the edge and began my decent down the far side of the mountain. As I went I would call and every single time he would gobble back up to me. “So this is what they mean when they say that a bird is fired up”, I gleefully thought to myself. I went down about 150 yards and set up my hen decoy that I had just purchased the night before. I snuggled my back into what was left of a rotten oak stump and called. He responded but this time more faintly. I waited and then called one more time. The response was fainter, still.

                Dismayed, I realized that he was actually going away from me. The brush and leaves were thick so I had no real idea how far he was but I knew if I wasn’t aggressive I would never see him so I grabbed my decoy and moved down further. After another 80 or so yards I stopped and called again. Again I was greeted with an immediate response. I waited a minute and called again. The response seemed closer. I made my way down another 30 yards and set up again. After three more calls and three more quick responses I realized that he was moving away again. Why wouldn’t he come up to me? I went to stand up and got a painful reminder that I had had surgery and felt my knee buckle. My knee wasn’t ready for all of this sudden stress. I found that I needed to hold on to trees as I moved back down to my decoy to move yet further down the slope. I realized I needed to leave something behind and of course I wouldn’t leave my 12 gauge. I quickly dropped my pack where my decoy was and proceeded with just my call and shotgun. I eventually reached the bottom and found that it was strewn with rocks and water that separated it from the next mountain. I questioned whether or not to attempt to cross over so I called again. The response wasn’t immediate but was close and sounded more energetic than any gobble I had gotten until that point. That made up my mind and I began my painful and unsure crossing of the wide, rocky creek.

                When I finally reached the far side I sound myself staring up at what seemed to be an impossible climb. Fallen trees and rocks littered the slope in front of me and it looked steeper than I could climb. I thought to myself, “How is there a tom in among all that stuff?” I let my striker quickly and rapidly strike my slate in a clucking fashion that trailed off into a “cheep,c heEP, CHEEP, CHEEP” progressively increasing the intensity and then “GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE”.

                The sound came from right over the knoll to my right and I saw a fallen tree between me and the top of that knoll. I scrambled over rocks and under fallen trees, with thorns and brambles scratching at my hands and face the entire way. I didn’t feel the scratches or pokes because my adrenaline was pumping so hard and my focus was so intent on reaching that log before I was spotted. I crouched behind the log and stuck my barrel out the right side of a tree that stood on the opposite side of my “blind”. Then “GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE”. It was so loud it almost hurt and then there he was. I saw a red head practically flying towards me as he all but sprinted over the hill. He jumped onto a log approximately fifteen feet from me and his feathers billowed out and he proudly displayed his plume of tail feathers that gleamed in the late morning sun. To this day I can still visualize that moment with perfect clarity. I also remember with perfect clarity that suddenly I began shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to take the shot but I realized that I had set myself up facing out from behind the wrong side of the tree. I had no shot and if I didn’t do something he would surely see me.

                He let out one more gobbling sequence more magnificent and more ear shattering than any before and then quickly retracted his feathers. His body language showed clear concern and he turned to jump off the log and go back the way he had come. This was it. “Now or never”, I thought. Before I could think twice about it I whipped my gun back from the right side of the tree and swung it towards the left side. Now, If you have ever seen any action movies, as I suspect you have, then you know that move where there is a gun fight and someone inevitably jumps sideways and is firing two handguns mid air; well that is precisely what I did (minus the handguns). My body was positioned too far to the right of this standing tree so as I swung my shotgun to the left and simultaneously lunged off of my good leg in the same direction. I somehow managed to shoulder my shotgun and squeeze off a shot before falling back down behind the fallen tree that had become my blind.

                Unsure what had happened I pushed myself up and peeked over the log I had landed behind. Instantly I was filled with a sense of relief and joy. On the far side of the log where the bearded gobbler had stood I saw a flapping wing go still. As I limped around the fallen log and looked down at the bird I became aware that I was cheering and yelling, “I DID IT!! I DID IT!!” I truly felt a sense of achievement especially given the current state of my knee. After admiring the bird for a minute I grabbed his two legs and slung him over my shoulder to begin the long, arduous hike back to my pack and then over and back down to my truck.

                I made it down that mountain to the tom much faster than I made it back up there with him in tow and when I got to my pack I couldn’t help but jokingly ask myself if someone had tilted the mountain after I had descended. Exhausted and sore, I eventually crested the top to the bench and stopped to catch my breath and pluck some of those newly discovered spring delicacies. Once I felt rested enough and had a bag full of morels I made my way down the mountain. When I reached the bottom and came into view of the lake I felt like the conquering hero returning home. Evidently the lake had been freshly stocked with trout and there were quite a few people fishing. When they caught sight of the wings sticking out from behind me on either side, almost everyone reeled in their lines and came over to check out the bird and congratulate me. I was told that it was an exceptional bird and that the beard looked to be about eleven or twelve inches which is about what I had guessed it to be. I swelled with pride when they told me of the eight dejected hunters they had seen come down hours before me with most not even hearing a gobble. I truly felt blessed that I had gotten one that morning, with no help from anyone, and on my first trip no less. 

                One fisherman who looked to be about 50 commented on my limp and asked if I had taken a spill while up on the mountain. I told him no and explained my circumstances. He told me that he wished he were still in his twenties like me because he wouldn’t have been able to do that anymore at his age. The others, some older, some slightly younger all readily agreed. They all congratulated me for a final time and we wished each other luck for the future as I turned to leave and finish the last little part of my torturous yet triumphant trek back to my truck. Just before I passed out of ear-shot I heard one say to the others, “Look at the way that bird is bouncing like that [because of the limp]. That’s what I call the gobble hobble.”

 

             

 (He didn't look great as he made the two hour ride home sitting on ice but I was very proud of him all the same.)