(Bad joke alert.......)
I feel compelled to report some
INTERNET BULLYING going on last night. The spirits of JRYoung and Hank Shaw appeared to me in my garage as I was preparing to break down my Kansas fall turkey into scrumptious edible parts, when the specters visited me and commanded me to not make waste of the free range turkey I had so carefully and stealthily ambushed whilst he was on his way to roost last night. "THOU SHALT NOT WASTE ANY MORSEL OF THIS MARVELOUS BIRD" they commanded me, and thus the plucking began. (End bad joke)
This bird was in a group of 25 or so birds feeding in a winter wheat field just off of the public wildlife land (legal for hunting) at a nearby reservoir. A patient of mine had given me a tip about a flock of turkeys that visited his backyard quite often, and he told me where they generally roosted. I told him we should go after them together, and he shared that while he loves to chase pheasants, he didn't think that turkey hunting would be for him.
Arriving a couple of hours before sunset, I had thought that Friday afternoon's adventure would be more one of scouting and determining if the tip had any hunting merit. My youngest was dancing at the halftime of the football game, so I had put a time limit on when I needed to be headed back home. Parking the car in the designated lakeside parking lot, I took a hard look at the map that shows this particular lakes amenities, state park areas, and delineated hunting zones. I found that the little yellow signs that designate the public/private boundaries are woefully lacking in this area, and after taking a little stroll, and seeing this flock of birds 300 yards out into the wheat, I hatched a plan. I was hoping that the birds would head towards the woodlots that surround the lake, with the benefit to me being that the lakeside trees were public hunting zones.
Creeping into position, the binoculars confirmed that the feeding flock was working it way towards me. As I fell back into ambush position, I was guessing that the birds would use the road through the woodlot that the farmer used to access the wheat field, but had set up in such a way that if the flock instead made its way through the middle of the woods, I would have a shooting lane in that direction.
Siting down, I discovered that moments before while at the edge of the woodlot, I had taken my gloves off to use the binoculars and check the time on my phone. Instead of putting my gloves in my pockets, I had instead in my "turkeys-are-nearby" mind fog, dropped them to the ground and left them there. My chosen ambush area was not poison ivy free, and I made the determination that if went back to get the gloves, I might be busted by the approaching flock of birds. As I type this, I will tell HuntTalk that the wrist and face itchiness is worth the final outcome.
Sitting on the ground, and finally hearing one reassuring cluck, I knew that the moment of truth would be coming soon. As expected, the first birds seen were hens. Allowing them to continue down the road, they were followed by several jakes, and a little voice in my head started to yell at me......pick one out and shoot! I believe that I could have waited for the expected lagging behind toms, but I was concerned about the location of the flock in regards to the public/private boundary, and as the young jake had taken a couple of steps off the equipment road towards me, I took the shot. The rest of the flock jumped and cackled, and milled around for nearly a minute before melting away down towards the lake.
Walking to pick up my free range Thanksgiving bird, I saw that he had fallen right in a newly made scrape.
Walking back to the car with a bird on my shoulder, I found my cap laying in the middle of the field where I somehow had dropped it. Turkeys in close proximity seem to just discombobulate my brain just a bit. I considered adding this pic to the "As they lay" thread.
After the football game, I went home and pulled the bird out of the refrigerator and had my "VISITATION" from JRYoung and Hank Shaw. The disemboweling of a turkey can go one of two ways..... stinky or extremely stinky. Fortunately for me, I had the stinky variety. Opening the crop of the jake showed that the wheat field had been yielding lots of green and sprouted seeds and earlier he had dined on finer sized seed heads. Opening the crop totally eliminated all of the previously smelled "stinky turkey guts smell" and instead made my garage smell like a fresh spring day, just after a rainstorm.
I have never had turkey heart, liver or gizzard, so lunchtime today will be a new and hopefully wonderful culinary experience.
