A Fitting Conclusion

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Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

Spring 2021

We traveled in the predawn darkness through a broad expanse of pastures, opening and closing gates, maneuvering through various herds of cattle some lying, some standing in the way, many turning to run, and even some chasing behind, until we reached a point where the trail entered what appeared, in the starlit skyline, to be a big tract of timber contiguous as far as you could see in either direction under the conditions. Entering the timber stand, the view of the trail in the headlights ahead looked more like it should lead to a castle complete with a moat, obviously full of alligators, and a beautiful princess living inside. Big mature live oak and slash pine with the occasional group of bald cypress, most of which were draped with Spanish moss that drowsed from their branches and hung overhead. Varying in width, the trail passed through long straightaways, some two hundred yards or longer, connected by curves of various extremes- some gentle, others sharp and winding. It was one of these curves in particular, somewhat centrally located within our little corner of Narnia, that we pursued this morning. 

The setting was one that those outside the fold may consider visiting to have professional photos made of their children. Beautifully picturesque, largely untouched by the hands of man, and the absolute epitome of what inland south Florida has to offer. However, none of the crowd on hand had a family photo session scheduled for that morning nor were we the least bit concerned with castles or beautiful princesses, unless, of course, the gobblers in the area liked to roost in the cypress trees which almost certainly lined the moat, or if one of us had to find the princess a date to the ball before being allowed to hunt close by. 

Enthralled as I was in all that surrounded me, I lost track of how far we traveled on our ride in, and, quite honestly, even where I was on the planet for that matter. This was a common theme for me during my time in south Florida. Sure, I had visited the state of Florida before, but never this far south and never on anything other than a summer beach vacation. So, the whole time my heart was telling me to turkey hunt while my body was trying to put on sunscreen and get ready to drag the cooler and sand toys down to the beach for the day, leaving my mind in somewhat of a peculiar place for the majority of my stay. 

I was shaken back from “the beaches of Neverland” when we pulled off to the side of the trail and into a gap in the trees and brush. My hunting partner killed the engine of the utility vehicle and all but the interior lighting. “We need to get around here and up to that next curve.” He whispered to the group. I gathered the remainder of my necessities and waited for the group to move out so that I could follow. With the lights off and my surroundings now absent of any appreciable illumination, save the starlit sky, which was now largely covered by the canopy overhead, and given that I was basically as lost as last year’s Easter egg, I followed the person in front of me pretty closely for most of the walk. 

We trekked on foot for something like three hundred yards before the leader of the group eased toward the left side of a wide curve in the trail and started looking for a decent hiding spot. “They typically roost right out there.” pointing ahead of us, up the road from our curve, and off to the right side of the road. “If I had to bet they will be off the end of that next curve down there.” He said pointing down to where the road made the next curve around to the left around two hundred yards ahead of where we stood. The plan was to back into the outside of our curve, so that we could guard against an approach to our setup from either direction. 

Given that I had harvested a turkey the day before, it was now my traveling partner Bradey’s turn behind the gun. However, the night before, our host had extended me the opportunity to bring my weapon along to allow us to take advantage in the event that multiple gobblers approached our setup, and I gratefully obliged. 

We made our setup on the outside of the curve as we discussed with a good view down the road in both directions. Given the heavy understory vegetation of various species due to the long growing season inherent to that part of the world, a low-profile collapsible chair is almost a necessity. We had all come prepared with a chair of our own, which eliminated the need to find a tree for support. We carved out our own holes in the brush off the edge of the road and stuck our chairs. Bradey was just a couple of feet to my left, and we elected to cut a sapling that stood between the two of us. With a couple of palmetto fronds cut and stuck in front of us, our setup was complete. 

From our position, the trail to the left ran away from us at roughly my 10 o’clock for around two hundred yards, and just under a hundred yards down the road to the right which ran away from our position at roughly my two o’clock. The two o’clock route was the direction that we had walked in from. My hunting partner and the other two friends working different camera angles were all in different positions just to our right and behind us. We were hidden, and you have not been hidden until you have been “Florida hidden”. Based on my limited experience, one could wear a pink jumpsuit and still go visually undetected in many places down there. You can literally step into the woods and disappear.

The morning was beautiful. With cool air, clear skies, and not even a breath of wind I was surprised with the silence that followed the arrival of daylight. We finally heard one turkey gobble a couple of times several hundred yards behind our setup but nothing from the group that was typically roosted to our front. We started calling with some soft, subtle tree talk and immediately following the first sequence a hen answered to our front, and then another. Before long we had a whole group of hens calling back. They were roosted down the road to the left from our setup not far off the road in the woods off the curve, just where they were expected to be. No more than five minutes had passed since we had first heard them when the first hen of the group flew down in the road around the curve from our position, closely followed by six or eight other turkeys that were roosted in close proximity to the first. 

In the midst of all of this, the turkey that had started gobbling behind us had flown down and sounded as though he had made it to the road that we traveled in on somewhere back upstream from where we parked the utility vehicle. He was still a long way away but was answering our calls, and he sounded to be slowly closing in on our position from down the road to our right. With no gobbles from the group down the road to our left, we began concentrating our calling largely on the turkey approaching from the right. He was gobbling at any call we made loud enough for him to hear, and he was making steady progress in our direction down the road. 

We had been quiet for a couple of minutes when my hunting partner whispered, “Gobblers in the road to the left! Two of them!” He and I were doing most of the calling and he was sitting just a few feet off of my right shoulder. Some of the understory vegetation around our setup had my view blocked starting about sixty-five yards down the road to the left, but he could see all the way to the curve from his point of view. “What are they doing?” I was quick to ask. “They just strutted around the corner,” he said, “now they are just standing there looking.” 

Our first call to the pair of gobblers after they rounded the curve in our direction was rewarded with the first gobble we had heard from them to this point. We cut off their gobble with some aggressive calling, and they answered right back again. “They’re coming!” He whispered. 

I am certain the other gobbler to the right was likely still gobbling and coming, but he had taken a back seat to the pressing business we had bearing down to our front. We sat quietly as the gobblers approached our setup down the road. The pair stopped to gobble at around the seventy-yard mark. They were just out of my sight behind the brush to the left of my view. No more than ten or twelve seconds later, I saw the pair emerge from behind the brush that had them blocked from my view. They continued their approach down the center of the road in a quarter strut.

“Can you see 'em, Bradey?” I whispered. “Not yet.” He answered. Being to my left, the same brush that had me blocked before still had his view obstructed. “They’re sixty yards, coming right to us.” I whispered. “Get ready.” Bradey got a better grip on his gun and put his cheek to the comb of the stock. 

“Fifty yards.” I was giving Bradey a running update on progress as the pair of gobblers continued to bear down on our position. “Forty five……..Forty.” “I see ‘em now!” He whispered. The turkeys continued to march toward our position, with Bradey and I both at the ready. 

Just now remembering that we had yet to work out an important detail, “Are we one, two, three’ing them or what?” I whispered. “Up to you!” He said. The turkeys were approaching the fifteen yard line at this point. There is too much that can go wrong with them this close. I thought to myself. “You just kill one and sit still after you shoot.” I whispered. “I will shoot the other one if he stays.” “Roger that.” He replied. 

Something that I rarely ever do before the shot is look at beards or spurs, mainly because I am almost always concentrating on making a good, clean shot, and, quite honestly, I really do not care about the length of the beard or spurs. Beard and spur length is not what is important to me. Those are features that are to be studied at the postmortem and are merely icing on the cake. If I can identify what I am shooting as an adult gobbler, then that signals the green light for me. However, having freed up a little time on my schedule before my part in the script, my mind turned to other things. About the time the pair of gobblers crossed the ten-yard line, I looked down at their spurs. Immediately, I noticed that one of them was carrying an absolute GIANT set. “Make sure you shoot the one on the right!” I whispered to Bradey. “Got it!” He said. 

With the turkeys inside of ten yards, Bradey got the green light. “Kill em!” ….. CLICK! I cut my eyes in Bradey’s direction as he calmly examined his weapon trying to troubleshoot the malfunction. “Jack another one in there!” I whispered. My hunting partner continued calling softly to cover some of the sound and keep the turkeys as calm as possible. Bradey cycled the shell back into the chamber and re-shouldered the gun. CLICK! -again. “You’re gonna have to shoot ‘em!” He whispered. 

Still sitting at the ready, I ran through the possibilities that allowed me to hand my gun to Bradey without scaring the turkeys into the next county, and I could not see how that would be possible, it just required too much movement. With all the noise coming from our hide, the pair had grown more nervous and were walking toward the edge of the woods at this point. I began to yelp softly along with my hunting partner to try and help further calm their nerves. I trained my sight on the one that we had previously identified, which was now the leader of the pair as they walked from right to left in front of our position. There was a hen, that had trailed the pair of gobblers down the road, who was now standing at about thirty yards and was directly behind the gobbler when my sights found his neck. I let him take a few more steps to get clear of the hen and pulled the trigger. 

Startled by the shot, the other gobbler pitched into the air and right back down, landing at around the thirty-yard line, neck stretched to full length. I quickly passed Bradey the shotgun, which he calmly shouldered, carefully aimed, and fired, flattening the second gobbler. 

As one can likely imagine, an exciting celebration ensued. The turkey that I was fortunate to harvest brandished the longest spur of any turkey I had killed to date, an absolute monarch of a gobbler, and Bradey’s turkey carried quite a set, as well. Though this hunt would have been nothing short of memorable based solely on the setting itself, or by harvesting as fine a pair of gobblers as were ever hatched, but throw in a gun malfunction and combine all three? That is the recipe for a morning that is sure to leave a lasting memory; truly a fitting conclusion to an unforgettable first trip to south Florida. If the Lord is willing, it will definitely not be my last.