Our last turkey hunt of the spring

After last weekend's surreal turkey hunt in Napa Valley, Boyfriend and I decided to head out to Amador County Saturday for one last hunt before the spring turkey season ends.

Boyfriend still hadn't gotten a turkey, and even though I had finally gotten my first, you can never have too much turkey in the freezer. Besides, my boss - an avid fly fisherman - had told me that turkey feathers are fabulous for fly-tying, and I wanted to help him out.

But while last weekend's hunt was perfection from start to finish, yesterday's excursion served as a vivid reminder: hunting is hard. All those people who think having a shotgun somehow means you can kill everything in sight are nuts.

We met our friend Evan at o'dark-thirty to head out to an area ranch where turkeys were known to hang out. Evan had been out of town for a few months, though, so none of us had actually scouted this land. So there we were, crammed into the cab of his beat-up black Ford Ranger, cruising up and down a dirt road half an hour before sunrise looking for a spot his brother had described to him. As the truck crawled, we scoured the trees for the silhouettes of roosting turkeys and found nothing.

It was getting close to wake-up time for turkeys, so we really needed to get out and set up. We looked for a place that looked "good" for turkeys - eyeballing the terrain as if we were scouting for a picnic spot - stopped, and broke out the shotguns and decoys.

Then we heard it.

Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble.

Good spot, then!

Boyfriend and I crept into positions at the base of two oak trees while Evan set up decoys, then hit his box call to see if he could interest the gobblers in checking out some of our plastic hens.

Evan called. The turkeys gobbled. Evan called. The turkeys gobbled. Evan called. The turkeys stopped gobbling. Twenty minutes passed and we heard nothing. Clearly, plastic hens and the sound of a little box with a squeaky lid were not too attractive to these boys.

So we decided to switch things up: I'd head down the hill closer to where we'd heard turkeys before in hopes they'd come back; Evan and boyfriend would head out and scout for more. I sat pressed against a tree, ready for anything. At one point, I swear I could smell turkeys. But I never saw a thing, and finally Boyfriend came back and said they'd had no luck. We were moving.

We piled into Evan's truck and moved back up the dirt road, and it wasn't 30 seconds before we saw the turkeys about 100 yards ahead. We stopped. Boyfriend crept under a tree. I crouched beside the truck. Evan hit the call. The turkeys wandered off.

Oh, so that's what it's going to be like, eh?

Yep.

Boyfriend and I stalked through the oak forest for a while, occasionally seeing turkeys at some unshootable distance and pushing them farther away from us before we finally had to concede this wasn't working. So we unloaded our guns, got into the truck and moved to another ranch. All we saw there was a huge pack of cottontails, which aren't in season.

OK, fine, turkeys. If you want to be like that, screw you - we'll just go get breakfast.

We stopped at a cafe in Ione, fueled up on eggs, toast and coffee and headed back to the truck. As we moved our guns and decoys from the cab to the bed of the truck, a passerby peeked in.

"Get any turkeys?" he asked.

"No," we said morosely.

Our last effort of the day would be at the very ranch where Evan and I had seen a huge flock of turkeys last fall. Having just spent a bunch of time on foot pushing turkeys away from me, I didn't feel like doing that again, so I proposed positioning myself under an oak near a creek and letting the boys head uphill to see what they could find.

It was perfect. Just like last weekend, I found an oak tree with multiple trunks, something I could sit against and blend into. I had a good view of a hillside up to my right, the creek down below me, and a cow path heading along the creek.

I sat with my shotgun ready. There was enough cover that if anything approached, I would be able to mount my gun and aim it without being detected. A breeze washed through the oaks, carrying the spicy smell of already-dry native grasses, filling me with a dreamy, peaceful feeling. All the stresses of work and life evaporated because, unlike the rest of my waking hours, my job this hour was to sit still and observe. When you move all the time, it's easy to forget how hungry for stillness you really are.

But the only turkey sounds I ever heard were Evan hitting that box call somewhere up the hill. After a while, he and Boyfriend approached on the path below. I heard them before I saw them, and I sat still, waiting for them to notice me. I'm invisible!

Evan finally saw me. "Good spot!" he said.

Good spot indeed.

We walked around for a while after that and never did see anything, so we decided to head to a saloon in Sutter Creek for some beer. As we sat at the bar, a small herd of weekend wine tasters moved in, standing behind us as they waited to be seated.

"Are you turkey hunters?" one woman asked, eyeballing our camo.

"Yep."

"Did you get anything?"

"Nope."

"You should come to our house - they're right outside our front door!"

Awwww, hell, that was just mean.

"Give us your address!" I said hopefully. But she lived in Chico, about three hours away. Oh well.

You always want to end a hunt with game in hand. But the truth is, you never end a hunt empty-handed. In this case, we left with a little more knowledge about turkeys and scouting and positioning. And I came out of it with a sense of relaxation I hadn't felt for months. Can't complain about that.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008