The last Moose hunt
Sunday was Moose’s last hunt as a Yute. He will turn 16 in a few weeks. It passed without much notice or fanfare. We went out to the honey hole and waited for the light to come up. Nothing. After 10 minutes of silence. I finally spoke.
“That’s how I went through so many seasons.” I said. “I’d drive 200 miles– go out in the dark. The light would come up. Nothing. I’d call a bit and then go back to my car and go home.” I had started hunting turkeys only a few years after the modern seasons were instituted in Ohio. Even though I was hunting in one of the counties that had a remaining native flock, it was still hard pickings. Most years, there were no flocks actually roosting on the land I hunted. My only hope was a gobbler would walk onto the property while I as there.
We just sat there and talked for a bit, and then I reached in and pulled out the Dixie Darlin’. Yawk. Yawk. Yawk. I got a half-hearted response from just at the edge of our hearing.
“I don’t think that gobbler’s even up on our property.” I said. “My guess is that he’s up on 539.” That is the county road up on the next ridge. That box call really had reach. My next idea was that if we went over to our campground, we might get one to respond from the same general direction. There is the head of a hollow there, and we might get something to come up the hollow. Ten minutes later we were sitting at the picnic table. This has become a bit of a ritual over the years: no turkeys? Go sit at the picnic table and wait for something to come up to the saddle that joins the two hollows on the back of our property. Sure enough. After a bit of calling we got a lukewarm response.
We finally set up down the logging road from the Campground amid some downed oaks. At one point, we had two gobblers that seemed like they might come up, but one hopped down from his roost and walked the other way. The other gobbled once and disappeared. We did not hear another gobble all morning.
Moose has had six seasons under his belt now– only a total of a couple of dozen days afield with me as the result of visitation, and few of them what I would call good hunting days. By the time next Gobbler Season comes he will probably drive himself to the farm. Still, it is more than I had in my first ten years as a turkey hunter, and he has the rest of his life to wander the hills.
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I hope that I can get my daughter into hunting, as she seems to be the only child my wife and I will have. I’ve got a small farm that we roam together, hopefully I can keep her interested in it throughout the years enough that she will wander it with her children.