4/10/08
Here’s the real reason turkey hunters hunt turkeys
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

Johnny Garris runs a Supreme Pure Death friction call, searching for gobblers in a hardwood bottom.

Sometimes turkeys will gobble dozens of time on the roost and you think you’re in longbeard heaven. Other mornings they get lockjaw and you couldn’t drag a gobble out of them with a John Deere while they’re sitting on the roost.

For some hunters, these quiet mornings mean a short stay in the woods. They do the required owl calls, followed by the obligatory crow calls. They will offer up skillfully performed tree yelps in soft subtle tones. Then they pitch the more aggressive yelps, fly-down cackles and finally some just hard-core cutting.

Then they’ll hike to the truck and when the frustrated hunter slams the truck door shut, the old longbeard will probably gobble at it.

But the hunter’s mindset is gone and so is he.

It just finally got to be his time to start gobbling on that particular morning.

“Turkeys are on their own schedule, not on ours,” said Johnny Garris of Columbia, S.C. Garris likes to go by the nickname of Johnny Mac.

“Just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they change up on you. But one thing is for sure, when he wants to gobble, he’ll gobble. And when he doesn’t, he won’t. Like everyone, I have theories of what makes a good gobbling morning, but then they’ll do something that contradicts it.

“I have learned that if you have confidence in the situation in terms of where you are hunting and your calling ability, you can still enjoy a very successful hunt,” Johnny Mac said.

Garris is a guide at Bangs Paradise Valley Resort and on the pro staff of Supreme Turkey Calls. The Supreme call is certainly among the best pot or round calls in the turkey hunting world and a primary turkey-calling weapon for many expert hunters. Johnny Mac and I had slipped into a pine stand just above a huge hardwood swamp before dawn. We had set up adjacent to a bright green food plot. Johnny Mac had already told me the place was home to several longbeards.

He placed two hens and a jake decoy in the food plot and had them positioned and was back in his calling place well before it began to get light.

“One of the things I love most about turkey hunting is being in the woods early and watching the spring woods come alive with the sounds of all the wildlife,” he said.

The owls, crows, small birds and of course the deep-throated booming gobble of a lowcountry longbeard combine to create a chorus of singular sounds transposed into a wildlife symphony. As Johnny Mac said, it is one of the reasons we hunt turkeys.

But on this morning, there was but one lone gobble in the early morning. The response was a distant, echo in the swamp at the end of Johnny Mac’s second run of light yelps from the Supreme Pure Death turkey call.

But it was enough for Johnny Mac to stay where he was.

“I’ve learned that when a longbeard gobbles to you, he’s essentially saying, he’s coming,” he said. “But what he doesn’t tell you is how long you’ll have to wait.”

That occurred at a little after 7 a.m. Despite some of the best calling I’ve heard, no other gobbles were heard from that direction. He did get a far off response from one gobbler in the opposite direction a while later.

About eight o’clock, soon after another series of turkey calls from the pot call and the mouth calls, a crow maneuvered in to squawk at the decoys. When the crow cawed, a booming gobble echoed though the pines from a bird less than 100 yards away at the edge of the swamp.

“Better get that gun ready,” Johnny whispered. “He might get here pretty quick.”

As the shooter, the heat was now squarely on me. Johnny started calling and it quickly became apparent that what we thought was one gobbler was two. The birds gobbled several times as they marched across the pines, well out of gun range but taking a look at the decoys.

They eased away from us into another hardwood bottom, circled and slipped back in from our right, with a bit of an elevation advantage. This time they were in the 65-70 yard range and moving through much more open woods. They wanted to come, but the natural instinct is for the gobbler to gobble and the hen to come to him. Johnny quickly got their “number” in terms of what they wanted to hear and had them gobbling and double-gobbling. If Johnny didn’t call back quickly enough, they’d gobble on their own. They did the spit and drum. They went into half strut at times and into full strut at others, following every effort with booming, come hither, gobbles. They literally gave their all into convincing the hens to come those last few yards to them.

Johnny Mac had these two huge longbeards totally convinced the decoys were the sure ’nuff real thing. For 75 minutes they stayed there and gobbled. Usually at a distance of 15-20 yards out of the effective range of my gun. But the gobblers were almost always in clear sight, no brush or bushes between us. We were right behind the decoys as they stared at them so we were pinned down. We didn’t dare to even take a deep breath … quite difficult when your heart rate is pumping at about 110 beats per minute from the excitement.

Finally, almost mercifully, a live hen joined the game. It is an all-too-familiar trait we dread from those gobbler-stealing crooks. She escorted the two gobblers over the hill, into the swamp and out of earshot. Even then, the rumble of a thundering gobble could be heard echoing down the swamp. It was the long gone longbeard’s final plea for the hens to come hither.

Johnny Mac and I began to muster up our stuff to initiate the next phase of the morning’s hunt. We paused a few moments to reflect on what had just happened.

“If they gobbled once, they gobbled 300 times,” he said. “This was playing the game at its very best. This, for me, has been an awesome morning.”

There was no remorse from either of us for not getting to shoot. It was the best way I could imagine to start a day on God’s great Planet Earth.

“The Good Lord let us see a show this morning,” Johnny Mac said. “This morning is the reason I hunt turkeys.”

I nodded my ditto.

Johnny Mac softly scuffed the ground with his boot, looked skyward for a moment and smiled. Then he hitched his heavy pack of turkey gear into position and headed for the swamp to find another gobbler.