Walk 'Em Up

Spring. Time to talk turkey. Honestly, I can't tell you anything about turkey calling that you haven't already read in myriad magazine articles on the same. There are videos and books on turkey hunting, too--all by people who have killed many more gobblers than I.

But spring is also a time to stalk turkey. At least, it is for those willing to bear the wrath of purists for whom calling a tom into a hail of 6s is a religious rite. "Stalk turkeys? Is that legal?"

That reaction hit me some years ago, on the tail of a week of fruitless calling. I'd never hunted turkeys, so I was keen to learn as much as possible from local slate artists. For days we laid elaborate plans to waylay invisible toms that gobbled from cottonwood strips snaking through Texas.

The callers assigned to me rotated, perhaps because a day with "the greenhorn" was all a seasoned hunter could stand. Or maybe it was the failure of each to live up to the stories he'd told at camp the evening before. Tales of toms as heavy as ostriches, with beards leaving furrows in the sand as they galloped into the call, and of hunters finished before the red sun had peaked over Louisiana.

"They're sure quiet today," I'd observe in a whisper after the morning had grown old enough to air soap operas. The caller would grunt something about the wind, moon phase and other complicating factors. The possibility that his calling wasn't seductive or that the birds had no interest in sex or violence that day never came up. Back at camp, I'd hear the same sage mumblings from other turkey gurus.

Now, even a rookie can get lucky on a hunt. But it won't happen in camp. So as we left the blind on my next-to-last morning, I told my guide I'd return on foot. He said it was far, which it might well have seemed to someone who drove a pickup from bunk to blind and back.

As the pickup rattled off, I shed my facemask and gloves, and strode out on a sand track, grateful for the chance to stretch my legs. The track led me into chest-high brush thick enough to hide an armored division. A mile from the ranch road, I started glimpsing deer and turkeys. I slipped into predator mode.

Padding around a tight turn, I glassed ahead and by great good luck spied a turkey's head. It went down into the bushes, and I eased forward. Up came the head. I stopped. Down. I moved. Soon I'd come to within forty yards of the bird. Then a whitetail snorted and dashed across my front. I knew enough to raise the Benelli--just in time. The wattled head shot up. A magnum charge of Federal 5s hurled it to the ground.

On my shoulder, the bird had that warm, heavy, dead feel of a trophy well earned. Back at camp, however, the guides eyed it warily. "Where'd you git that?" "I sneaked up on it," I told them. "Sneaked? You sneaked up on a turkey?" One of the older men grinned and congratulated me. "It isn't easy to move on a tom," he said.