Black Wings

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in Him." Lamentations 3:22-24

Spring 2021

The slowly brightening eastern sky began to unveil an environment unlike any my eyes had ever seen. My hide this morning was many miles from both where my professional experience was concentrated, and over six hundred miles in an odd direction from anywhere that I had ever traveled to turkey hunt. Absolutely teeming with flora and fauna. There were trees, flowers, grasses, and shrubs some of which I could not identify, and all of which substantially further advanced in the green-up process in comparison to what I had left in Mississippi. Some of the birds and other creatures that inhabited my unfamiliar surroundings made sounds that I could not classify. 

Having not only spent most of my life in the outdoors, but also given my career in natural resources, this evoked a range of emotions for me. There was an inherent level of discomfort associated with being surrounded by widely unfamiliar plant species, and an equally disturbing level of uncertainty with the inability to classify some of the vocalizations being made by the critters, as well.

Directly to my front, palm trees scattered themselves across a landscape of grazed pasture intermingled with sparse longleaf and slash pine- species that I was familiar with which gave me a strangely satisfying level of comfort. Patches of palmetto ranging in height from waist to well over head high also placed themselves in low traffic areas and were, in many cases, guarded by groups of trees. To our rear, a water control levee separated my position from a broad expanse of bald cypress lending itself to the cypress brakes common to low-lying areas across the Mississippi Delta region which also seem to stir my soul strictly due to familiarity. 

Even the locals here had their own lingo for much of what laid before me. “Cabbage palm” was one of the terms that raised the most mental question, but a stand comprised of predominantly cypress being referred to as a “cypress head” was foreign to me, as well, just to highlight a couple. These things all played a role in somewhat piquing my intellect, but they also resurrected some of the nightmares of the demanding learning curve recalled from my time studying forest ecology. 

 “I feel like I just broke daylight in Australia.” I whispered quietly to my hunting partner. “Welcome to South Florida!” He replied with a grin. A very skilled, highly successful hunter, and lifelong resident of this corner of the world, this was not his first time to witness a guest enthralled with the new and widely unfamiliar setting. “This turkey has been roosting right over there,” he said pointing over his shoulder toward a point on the end of the cypress head behind us, “just behind that point.” “His hens are going to be all in these trees along the edge behind us.” The edge he referred to was the near edge of that same cypress head, putting the roosted hens potentially within a hundred yards of our position.

No more than a couple of minutes later, the sound of his first gobble was a welcomingly familiar break to the wide-eyed sensory overload that I had been in for the past fifteen minutes. His hens were quick to chime in and my hunting partner and I carried on a conversation with the group that lasted until shortly after fly down. 

Happy to be turkey hunting again, we attacked the few remaining throws of the morning with a gallantly ambitious effort but finished the morning with no harm done on either side of the ball. Recapping the hunt, my hunting partner and host for the trip mentioned that he had agreed to meet a friend of his around midday to go see if they could corner up a gobbler on another piece of property. “You’re welcome to come yelp if you want.” He said, to which I excitedly agreed without hesitation. 

After convening at a local restaurant, the two of us got our lunch to-go, left the rest of our hunting party to enjoy their meal dine-in, and continued toward the camp where my companion and his friend had agreed to meet. A few minutes’ drive brought us to a gate protecting a two-track road that continued through an open area and vanished into the dense stand of timber beyond.

After loading unloading the trailered utility vehicle that seems customary to that part of the world, we hopped aboard and followed the two-track trail through a series of open areas and ultimately into the timber stand ahead. Just inside the stand edge, the trees encroached on the road from both sides, standing closely to the trail in places. The predominant species dominating the overstory in this area of the property appeared to be made up of primarily slash pine and scattered live oak with Spanish moss that sagged from many of the branches. 

As we continued to travel the road for the final stretch to the meeting location, my mind was constantly quantifying the estimated amount of travel on our trail based on visual characteristics. The wear that I was seeing squared by what experience I had in assessing haul road conditions in a soil type that was of no comparison to the one we were traveling over, and that resided in a completely different and less temperate climate led my subconscious to anticipate that the trail would lead us to a place that was basically of no importance to much of anyone. My subconscious, in this case, did not only miss the mark, but one could argue that it had missed the target and possibly even the backstop that was in place to catch the strays, as well. The trail led through the stand of timber which had dense understory vegetation that restricted vision considerably, but I could begin to make out a large structure of some sort in an opening ahead. 

When we reached the mouth of the opening, I had to rub my eyes and look away, twice. At the end of this small, two-track trail that showed very minor visual wear from regular travel, stood a house so beautiful that it looked like it may have moved itself here to hide like a celebrity trying to escape the prying glare of publicity. The house had a spacious wrap around porch with wood trimmings, and large windows lining the exterior walls absent of shades to allow for unrestricted viewing of the gorgeous setting that surrounded, no matter where you found yourself on the inside. To put the cherry on top of the sundae that had become of my disbelief, there were two deer casually feeding in the back and a gobbler strutting with a single hen in the front yard, all of whom showed very little dismay with our arrival.  

As I looked back trying to figure out a what point between here and the truck we had passed from real life and entered a children’s book; we parked the utility vehicle in the yard adjacent to the beautiful house next to a lone vehicle that also looked somewhat out of place given the setting. Without much delay the new member of our party was out the door to meet us. 

After a short exchange of pleasantries and an even shorter strategy session between the two of them, our trio loaded back onto the utility vehicle and headed out toward our proposed yelping spot. We pulled through several gates, closing them all behind, and followed the winding trail that cut various habitat types ranging from open cattle pasture to dense timber stands with dark understories carrying a variety of species, and everything in between. We parked the utility vehicle in a hide off the left side of the trail a hundred yards or so shy of a crossroad in the trail that was surrounded by what looked to be a loading ramp from a recent logging operation.

As we approached the loading ramp at the crossroads from the west, my hunting partner conveyed that the turkeys in this area liked to travel the road that ran away from the loading ramp to the north, and additionally, he felt like they would be approaching our position from the north. We chose a spot on the north edge of the loading ramp where the trail continued out of the ramp to the north and began to make our setup. I noticed a wet spot in the trail just ahead of our position and crept quietly to gather any information that the muddy ground would allow. Absolutely padded with turkey tracks, both gobbler and hen tracks, most of which were traveling from north to south toward the loading ramp just behind our setup as previously communicated causing my already high level of confidence to nearly blow the top off the meter.  

I eased back toward the other two who were finishing up getting situated. I cut three palmetto fronds and stuck in front of my hiding spot to block from anything that approached from the north, as expected, and backed into my little hole next to a small live oak tree about eight inches in diameter at the stump with a screen of palmetto serving as a backdrop and a blind of sorts between my position and the open loading ramp. 

Our setup was just off the right side of the trail facing north. A stretch of the trail approximately one hundred twenty yards or so was visible ahead before the trail made a curve to the right and passed from sight. I was sitting nearest to the trail which passed by no more than five feet, or so, to the left of my left leg with the loading ramp to my rear and over my left shoulder. My hunting partner was just in front of and to the right of me a few feet away, and his friend was staggered in about the same position on the other side of him. We don’t need to be between the man on the gun and this road, I thought to myself, if the turkey circles our position or comes up behind us, then we will be hung. However, we were setup, situated, and the turkey was going to approach our setup down the road from the north just as scripted, I convinced myself, no need to stop the show and change the whole setup now. We will be fine.

My partner and I started calling shortly after everyone finished rustling their leaves and situating their sticks. We kept on a steady conversation painting the picture of two hens searching for company while feeding along the edge of the loading ramp near where we hid. After fifteen or twenty minutes of a somewhat steady conversation between the two of us at varying volumes, the early morning started to catch up with me. I dozed a couple of times which was always ended by abruptly jolting myself awake and then quickly calling in an attempt to wake myself more fully. On the third or fourth iteration of this, my doze was awakened by a whisper: Hey. I heard someone say. I was back awake immediately- “What?” I whispered to my partner. “Nothing.” He replied. “Did you just say something?” I asked. “No,” he said, “but I think I hear a turkey strutting.” As if the turkey were waiting for him to finish his sentence- Pfftooooooooom! “Oh yeah! I hear him too!” I quickly relayed. My partner had not made a sound to wake me up, rather it was the spit before the turkey’s drum that I heard that startled me awake. 

Pfftooooooooom! Again, we heard his drum. Very loud, likely forty yards or closer. “He’s behind us!” my partner said. Oh of course he is. I thought. This was going to be a challenge. The turkey would have to walk past where we sat, no further than twelve to fifteen feet away from the three of us and continue up the road to the north for at least ten yards, or so, before a safe shot would be possible. Not to state the obvious but all of this would have to be done without detecting the presence of three full grown men sitting close enough to pass the salt when he walked by. Based on the repetitiveness and increasing volume of his drum, the turkey continued to strut up the edge of the loading ramp behind us progressively closing in on our position. 

My partner slowly eased his head around to look over my shoulder, through the screen of palmetto behind our position, and into the loading ramp beyond. By this time, the sound of his drumming was loud enough I felt as though I may move a stick beneath the turkey’s feet if I turned around. “I see him,” he whispered, “y’all be still, he’s right on top of us!” 

I could not stand it anymore. Knowing that we were well hidden, I had to turn my head around for a look. I began to turn as slowly as I physically could to look over my left shoulder, eyes pegged as far to the left as I could force them. I could hear his wings dragging the ground as he stepped into a gap in my screen of palmettos just as he broke into a full strut. Feeling the need to report back, I whispered to the other two, “I see him too!” Even though it would have been quite difficult to overlook him at fifteen feet. 

We sat quietly watching the gobbler strut back and forth waiting for a hen that we were soon to find out had been in tow all along. When she appeared, she was no more than twenty steps out in the loading ramp making tracks toward the mouth of the road on a path that would take her directly up the road past our position. Well, I guess we are about to see how well we really are hidden. I thought to myself as she continued to approach.  

The hen walked past the gobbler very near the “mouth” of the trail at no more than ten steps from me, stopped for a second or two for a look, and continued on. She took six or eight more steps which put her perpendicular to where I sat. Covered from the head up by a palmetto frond that extended away from my position and out toward the edge of the trail opening, she stopped. 

Just as if she were looking under the couch looking for the remote, she craned her neck down, rolled her head forward, and looked underneath that palmetto frond and seemingly right into my soul. I immediately looked away from her. Even though she quite obviously knew that something was there that was not there on her last trip past this spot, I did not want her to feel me looking at her. The three of us sat as still as a humanly possible as she studied our hide for about as long as it would take you to find the mixing ratio on the back of a two-cycle oil can, then she clucked softly a couple of times- more than likely telling the gobbler “We ain’t going this way”, did an about-face, and started back up the opposite edge of the loading ramp away from our position. She was not really spooked, just seemed more unsure about what we were since we were not there on their trip through here this morning, but as expected, the gobbler began to follow. 

Discouraged, we let the pair get out to about the forty-yard line, and we started calling to them again. The gobbler immediately gobbled back in response. We both escalated our calling slightly, and he began to respond even more. Before long, we were calling with a lot of aggression, and the gobbler had turned around and was strutting back toward our position. “He’s coming back!” My hunting partner said.  

Still up against the predicament of needing the gobbler to walk completely past our setup to enable a clean, safe shot, now we had the added unlikely variable of pulling him away from his hen. Improbable as it may have been, the gobbler continued a slow approach as the hen reached about the midway point on the edge of the loading ramp and entered the woods to the right. My hunting partner and I kept his attention with some soft calling and excited answers cutting off his now more frequent gobbles. 

The gobbler came back to what was very near the same spot, strutted around in circles for a couple of minutes, acted as though he was losing interest and turned to walk away. He was walking in a quarter strut due south through the center of the loading ramp, stopping every few yards to look back over his shoulder. We had stopped calling and were letting him put some air between us to give us some options for our next move. 

“If we do enough calling to cover the noise of his movement, do you think he (the shooter) can get crawled around in front of you and lay in the ditch right here where he can kill him if he comes back again?” I asked my partner. “That might work.” He replied. I think there was an inherent lack of confidence in both of us around the turkey coming back for a third time, but, at this point, what did we have to lose?

My partner relayed the plan to his friend and nodded to verify that they were prepared to put it into action. The turkey was probably forty-five yards and just south of the center of the loading ramp when we made our first call. He immediately answered and turned around to face us. Rain that had been threatening all day started to fall. We answered his gobble aggressively and began to “deal pretty fast” after that. I was yelping and cutting almost constantly, as was my hunting partner, and the turkey was gobbling steadily, all the while our trigger man was crawling into position as quietly as possible. In a matter of ten to fifteen seconds he was laying prone in the ready position in what would be the ditch of the trail, if there were a ditch, gun pointing in the direction of the turkey who was now slowly coming back but blocked from the shooter’s view by the screen of palmetto behind our position. 

Having regained the turkey’s full attention, he slowly strutted back in our direction while hugging the edge of the loading ramp to his right, our left. He broke inside of the twenty-five-yard line and stopped to look. He has to be just out of his view. I thought to myself. Seconds later, he began to putt. He had obviously caught a little movement that did not pass for a hen turkey, but as he started stepping to his left, our right, neck stretched to full length and looking hard, his movement carried him further into the open and allowed for a clear shot. Only a step or two later, he was permanently relieved of his duties. 

Upon first inspection I was perplexed by the black dominated barring on his primary wing feathers, a trait that I knew was a distinct characteristic of the Osceola subspecies native to this part of Florida. Being the first individual from this subspecies that I had ever personally examined up close, I was captivated by the simplistic beauty of this trait. When it comes to fashion, black can be a challenge for some to pull off, but from my perspective he wore it with dashing elegance.  Reminiscent of the bars on the sleeve of a uniform, on this day, the uniform he would wear into his final battle. A respectable foe who put forth a valiant effort, he could not have fallen to a more grateful adversary. I am certain he received a hero’s welcome on the other side.