Another Pair of Feathers

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The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot. Proverbs 10:7

According to the NRCS Soil Survey, Kemper County, Mississippi is subdivided into three distinct physiographic regions: the Blackland Prairie, the Interior Flatwoods, and the North Central Hills, all of which fall within the Gulf Coastal Plain. The names of all three of these regions have indicators that allude to an adequate depiction of the topographic characteristics of the respective unit. However, depending on the relative perspective of the individual, the term hills indicated by the North Central Hills unit may be somewhat misleading. Although topographic maps of the region do reference certain points as “mountains” the terrain is more aptly classified as flat to gently rolling as the highest natural point in The Magnolia State is just over eight hundred feet, so while envisioning the hills and hollows, one must keep in perspective that this is Mississippi, not Colorado. 

I was hunting with a lifelong friend Ross Brown, grandson of former World Champion and King of Kings Turkey Caller the late Jack Dudley. Ross, his uncle Michael Dudley, cousins Austin and Barrett Dudley, and I have hunted together since Ross and I were kids, before we could even legally drive, and I am proud to have hunted with Mr. Jack some growing up, as well. Ross and I have hunted together enough over the years that I often tell people that I can look at him from forty yards away through a pine thicket behind a face mask and know exactly what he is thinking. We often have the same ideas on approaching a situation, and any dispute on a tactic that does arise is quickly pushed aside by one party or the other because we have both have made calls that put each other in the right situation, too many times to count. I have seen more turkeys killed with Ross on a tree nearby than any other single person that I have ever hunted with, and we are still blessed to enjoy some time in the woods together to this day.

The property owned by Mr. Jack and the surrounding property that he leased from a timber company was known as Gypsy Village Hunting Club. This is where we have spent a lot of our time hunting together over the years. Mr. Jack was always there with a colorful story, and always more than ready to take one of us kids to school in the turkey woods anytime any of us were around. We did not know at the time how fortunate we were to be able to spend the amount of time that we did with Mr. Jack. There is not enough room to put into print all of the lessons that we learned from him in those days, and quite frankly, it is better that some of them are never formally printed. 

Mr. Jack passed from this earth in late 2008. During the spring of 2009, the spring immediately following his passing, not a single turkey was killed within the bounds of Gypsy Village Hunting Club, the place that he held most dear and a place that was absolutely steaming with memories of Mr. Jack. Some will say it was happenstance, but many of us believe that it was one final tip of the cap from the "The Champ" himself. Each spring, the direct descendants of Mr. Jack pull a tail feather from each gobbler that they harvest and stick them at his gravesite. The tailfeathers will form the resemblance of a tail fan as the harvest tally grows and having been invited to do so by some of these descendants, I have been honored to take part in this tradition on a few occasions.  

We were hunting in the southern part of Kemper County which falls into the aforementioned North Central Hills region. The piece of property was comprised of rolling hills along the northern two-thirds and a floodplain along the south with a perennial stream of significant size winding from west to east and serving as the properties southern border. The distance from the foot of the hills to the bank of the creek ranged from fifty yards to nearly a quarter mile in places. The property contained several pastures that had been etched into the pine forest which dominates the landscape of the county. A cattle pasture stretched along a large portion of the creek bottom on the property which was bordered by bottomland hardwoods along the creek and pine plantation on all other sides with various hardwoods and the occasional cedar along the fence lines. There were two other smaller pastures that were situated on two different ridgetops on the property, as well, with a few hundred yards and a hardwood drainage dividing the two. 

The dim glow of white light in the east provided enough illumination to allow visual differentiation between the pasture and the surrounding timber as we overlooked the bottom before the fall in topography carried us down. Ross and I made our way down a steady grade along the edge of a skinny portion of the pasture closing in on the larger open expanse which lay in the creek bottom ahead. A four-foot ditch that ran parallel to the main channel of the creek dissecting the pasture was our destination. 

The morning prior we had encountered a pair of gobblers only a few minutes after fly down time, in the pasture in the bottom making their way to the west. The small ditch was sporadically lined with scattered trees and the occasional thicket that we planned to hopefully use as an ambush point assuming the two decided to recreate yesterday’s performance. We made it into the bottom with enough time to find a good hide, and we settled in before there was enough light to give away our location to those who we hoped were nearby. 

As daylight grew the cool morning air erupted with gobbling in three directions from our position. There was a group of what sounded like four or more turkeys gobbling on the creek to the east-southeast of our position, one gobbling across the pasture to the north of that group, and a group of three to four, plus, gobbling to the west and on the other end of the pasture a quarter mile or more from where we sat. At around two hundred fifty yards, the group to the east were the closest on the roost and was the group that we expected our pair of gobblers to come from, as their roost was no more than seventy or eighty yards from the edge of the pasture ahead of us. 

Turkeys soon began to fly down but none of them flew into the pasture as we had predicted, telling us that our pair of gobblers from the morning prior quite obviously did not have the same plan in mind as the day before. Our attention quickly turned to the other group behind us across the pasture to our west. It sounded as though everyone was on the ground and still gobbling good, so we elected to move our operations in their direction. 

From the western edge of the pasture, the terrain left the flat creek bottom and transitioned into the hills and hollows common to the region. There were two turkeys gobbling on the first ridge probably a hundred fifty yards from pasture’s edge, another in a hayfield on the next ridge over probably two hundred fifty yards, and another down the creek to the southwest around three hundred yards from where we stood.  About the time we reached edge of the plantation and were mulling over where we thought we could make a killing setup, the cows that were on the second ridge near the hayfield decided to move into our bottom. As they traveled, they broke sticks, snorted, mooed, stomped, sloshed in wet spots, they maintained all of the careless fuss and ruckus that one would expect from a group of cows moving through a patch of timber, and the path they elected took them right through the approximate location of the turkeys on the two ridges. We knew that this did not spook the turkeys because they were around these cows all the time, however it did make them go quiet for a period of time while they moved out of the way and established another good spot to get back to their lives for the day.

Soon, the turkey that had been near the hayfield on the far ridge started gobbling and sounded as though he had dropped straight back away from us off the hayfield into the shallow draw on the other side. We followed a road that looped around to the top of the ridge between us and the turkey and, from there, elected to go straight to him across the last draw that separated us from the hayfield where he was gobbling prior to the cattle migration. 

Lying long-ways from north to south, the hayfield we were approaching saddled the top of the ridge where it sat with field edges on both sides lower in elevation than the center of the field for the full length. The spine of the ridge, that ran essentially the center of the opening, was higher on both ends which made either end of the field a great vantage point to see a lot of the pasture. We stopped to catch our breath just as we reached the edge of the pasture on the opposite side of the field and over the ridge from where the turkey sounded to be the last time we heard him.

After catching my breath, I gave him a cluck and yelp at normal volume, and he immediately answered back, right where we expected, over the ridge and in the shallow draw on the other side of the field. We quickly made the decision to loop around to the south end to our left to make our setup and try to call him to there as the hayfield bottlenecked more on that end, and we felt better about him coming that way. I made some contented clucks, purrs, and soft yelps as we hurried quietly to the end of the pasture. We reached our destination about a hundred fifty yards from where we had just stopped to listen and found a good spot to hide on the shady side of a couple of mature pine trees just off the field edge. I elevated the volume of my calling quickly after sitting down to steer the gobbler our way in the event that he had already begun his approach to our prior location, and he immediately answered my call. The turkey was still in the woods in the shallow bottom now diagonal across the corner of the pasture from our position, on the opposite side of the four-strand, barbed wire pasture fence that ran the western edge of the field, and probably close to two hundred yards from our setup. 

Some back and forth conversation with the gobbler over the next five minutes or so conceded that the turkey was getting closer but sounded as if he could be moving past our setup to the left, which raised some concern for me thinking that he may try to circle our position and come in behind us. “If he gobbles again, and he’s still not here, do you want me to try to spin around this tree to guard the back door?” I whispered. Ross quickly answered- “I think I hear him walking in the leaves.” I quickly looked back across the corner of the pasture and within seconds saw the gobbler through the woods stepping from left to right toward the pasture fence. “I see him!” I reported back and quickly explained his location to Ross. The only thing left between him and the two of us were a few more trees and bushes, four strands of tight stretched barbed wire, and about a hundred yards of air. 

Anyone who has ever encountered a turkey around a fence knows that you just never know how they are going to navigate over, around, or through the fence- or if they will at all. They often forget that they can fly under these circumstances- that is just totally out- not even an option. There are times when a gobbler will treat a barbed wire fence like a 12-foot-tall brick wall and proceed to walk up and down the fence sometimes for hours, never to cross. There are times when he will stand in one spot, never make an effort to cross at all, and try to get you (the hen) to come and cross the fence by gobbling until a point where he gets bored and then walks away. I have even seen times, often with net wire fencing, that a turkey approaches a fence and becomes so worked up that they appear to be psychologically trapped by the fence with no way to navigate the obstacle. Then there are times when a gobbler will navigate over, under, or through the fence like a vapor, like it was never there at all, and thankfully, this turkey was one of the latter. 

When the turkey reached the pasture fence, he stopped to look into the field just briefly, situated his wings on his back properly, and crossed under the bottom strand just as though he had been practicing for hours prior to our arrival. He took a few steps to clear the edge and get firmly into the opening, stretched his neck to full length, stuck his chest out, and appeared to stand on his tiptoes looking for the hen that he knew should be in or very near the well-grazed field. After not seeing the hen he expected to find, the turkey seemed to dig his toes in the ground, rare back, and gobble with everything he had. I think I actually said audibly- “My goodness” when he did it. He took another five to seven steps in our direction and stopped there to look again, periodically going into a quarter strut with a spit-n-drum as a subtle reassurance to the hen that he was on-scene in case she was unaware. He stood there and gobbled with everything he could muster another two or three times and finally turned away from us. Oh boy, I’ve got to do something here. I thought to myself. With no decoy, there was no visual reference in the field to appease his caution, and it was easy to see that the turkey was not going to come any closer without something. I did not want to risk a yelp or even a cluck and purr because that would be a dead giveaway to our exact position. I readied my call in my mouth and with his next gobble, I cut off the end of it with three or four notes of a soft yelp with only one or two notes lasting past the end of his gobble. A short, soft yelp like that at the on top of the tail end of their gobble seems to be hard for them to course, and in a situation like this can sometimes be all that’s needed. 

The turkey immediately raised his head and within seconds turned back to face in our direction. With another gobble, he began stepping our way and closed about twenty yards or so on our setup before stopping again. He gobbled a couple of times and I cut off the end of the second with another three-note soft yelp. That did it. He relaxed his head into about a quarter tuck and walked right up the spine of the ridge that followed through the center of the pasture and tied into the woods a few yards to our right. Ross, who was to my left and ready on the gun all along, squeezed the trigger just as he stepped across the forty-yard line. The turkey never knew we were in the world.  

After the normal pleasantries and a few minutes admiring the beautiful gift that the Lord had provided, we decided that there were too many turkeys gobbling earlier in the morning to not go give another one a try. The pasture in the creek bottom where we made our first setup of the morning was a historical gobbler hangout. One of those spots where you could almost always find a turkey in or around, and we both felt that it was our bound duty to go back to the pasture in the bottom and step back up to the plate. We hung Ross’ turkey on the fence and made our way back into the bottom. 

Carefully re-entering the pasture, we crossed a portion of the upper end in the open before stepping in to the woods for cover on our final descent into the bottom not far from the ditch bank where we had made our setup in the dark earlier that morning. With no turkeys visible in the whole of the approximately fifty acres of open ground, we settled into the shade along the pastures edge in a good hide that yielded a decent vantage point in both directions for the length of the creek bottom. Ross was on my right performing over watch to the left of our position, and I was covering the right. Gobbling was in a lull, and we were essentially standing watch over the creek bottom pasture. “If we sit here long enough, there will be a gobbler in this field.” Ross said. I nodded in agreement. 

We sat tucked into our hide and called sparingly as we waited. Crows kept up their normal fuss, but none seemed to be concentrating their work to one area which at times can tip off a silent gobbler’s position. Twenty minutes or so into our sit, only a few seconds after a calling sequence, I looked back to whisper something to Ross and immediately caught movement over his right shoulder. It took a second for my brain to classify what my eyes were seeing- turkey…. Gobbler. For sure. “Gobbler right here! I quickly reported to Ross. The turkey was to the right of our position and appeared to have come down the hill and entered the field in the bottom following close to the same path that we had taken on entry. He walked at a quick pace toward the creek until he reached the bank of the ditch near where we had been setup at first light, and he paused momentarily. I gave a series of clucks and a soft yelp. He stretched his neck to full length, and you could immediately see his head color-up. He peered in our direction and with another series of soft clucks and purrs and a contented yelp, he changed course and was headed our way. 

The turkey shifted his line of approach slightly to our left to skirt a shallow low spot in the field. He continued toward us at a steady pace until he reached about sixty-five yards where he stopped to look, and his mood completely changed. The gobbler picked his head up for a brief second and then took a hard right that ended up sending him angling away from our position at a fast trot. “What in the world?” I said to Ross. “Man, I have no idea.” We continued to watch as the gobbler vacated the premises, crossing the ditch and ending up in the pasture on the other side blocked from our view by a thicket that was situated on the ditch line. 

We sat and considered what had just taken place for a few minutes before the answer appeared from the same general direction that the gobbler had. Out in the middle of the field and approaching from west to east were two more turkeys. A quick check with field glasses confirmed- jakes. Super jakes we call them. It is fairly common for a group of jakes to use their strength in numbers to gang up on an adult gobbler, and this very clearly had happened here. The gobbler was instantly intimidated by the jakes entering the field, and they knew they had the bluff on him, as well. They trotted to the center of the field and gobbled a few times in the gobbler’s direction to reiterate their supremacy as he retreated for cover. 

Soon the gobbler had exited the field, and I was able to gather the jakes attention with my calling. With little consideration, the jakes were headed in our direction with only the ditch through the center of the field between us, which they crossed with very little thought. Following the same path the gobbler had just been taking the pair of jakes hastily approached our setup, and before long they were both at twenty yards picking apart our hide with their keen eyes trying to locate the hen that they were certain they had heard calling just moments earlier. One of the jakes was visibly larger than the other and sported a beard that was very likely six inches or longer which would have made him legal to harvest, however his under-developed wing patch was a true indication of his adolescence despite his impressive gobble and authoritative demeanor. After convincing themselves that the hen they heard had moved on, the jakes began to work down the tree line to our west and away from our setup. “If we sit here long enough, there will be a gobbler in this field.” Ross said. It had worked the first time, so why not try it again. I again nodded in agreement. 

No more than five minutes had passed when I looked back out near the middle of the pasture and saw two big turkeys following the same path the jakes had entered on. I could tell immediately- gobblers! “Gobblers in the field- two of them- right where those jakes just came from!” I reported to Ross. The pair continued to work from right to left in the pasture across the ditch until they neared a point where they were about to pass from sight behind a thicket. “I think we’ve gotta call to them.” I said. “I agree.” Ross quickly responded. With my first call the pair of gobblers stopped in their tracks and both of their heads immediately colored up vibrantly. After waiting a few seconds, I gave another sequence of calls that was quickly rewarded by a gobble from them both. With that, both turkeys turned and made a couple of steps in our direction. “They’re coming.”

With only one more call, the pair of gobblers were progressing quickly toward the ditch that lie between us. Ross was keeping tabs on the jakes that were to our left and outside of my field of vision, and they too had made an about face and were headed back in our direction. Eventually the gobblers made visual contact with the jakes which only sped their approach. The gobblers crossed the ditch and began to swing around the shallow low spot in the field, same as we had watched the other turkeys do, and closed inside of sixty yards. With the looker in the lead, the second of the pair followed along five yards or so behind and stopped to strut every seven to eight steps. A tangle of vines draped down from an overhead branch in front of our hide. One small gap in the center of the vines furnished the only shooting hole that I had once the pair of gobblers crossed into comfortable range. If they passed through that gap they would end up behind a ten inch sweetgum tree that would block my shot until they were inside of twenty yards assuming remained on their heading. 

The looker passed through my gap in only a couple of steps. The dominant gobbler went into strut just as he entered my gap, and I clucked twice to raise his head. The gobbler dropped his fan from strut and stretched his neck in search of the hen nearby. With the safety off, I squeezed the remaining slack from the trigger ending the hunt in a way that Ross and I had so many times before. Regardless of how many times the two of us have been blessed to experience this together, the glimmer had not been tarnished by repetition. There is something that is always special about being blessed with the harvest of a wild turkey, something that Ross and I have never discounted rather always acknowledged and enjoyed. There is a sense of reverence and a sense of gratefulness called forth in these times, and this morning we paired those with a sense of pride to have another pair of feathers to stick in reverent memory of "The Champ".