There’s very little I feel I do right in turkey hunting. I don’t think I’m an expert on the birds, I’m not that good a caller. I know my own birds pretty well, but mostly they give me the slip and stand there laughing at me. Wherever I have the barrel pointed, the gobbler always seems to show up somewhere else and usually it is from a quarter where I will have a devil of a time getting turned around. I misjudge distances and time. I fall flat on my face when I’m trying to be sneaky. I miss easy shots. The list is endless. They say hunting turkeys under modern rules is the hardest game in North America. I believe them.

You would be better off asking when have I gotten it right? The answer would be seldom, and those rare times stand out like crystals of shining brilliance on the face of abject muck. It is hard for me to reconcile those successes with the rest of my turkey hunting career. It is as though somebody else did them.

But that’s not the point. I got into this sport for a whole other reason. It became clear early on that I was not going to be a great turkey hunter. It took me several seasons before I could even blow a mouth call. It took me years to even get a bird into shooting range, and more to get a shot. I missed. It took years before I had another shot. That was not the point.

There is a church up on a hill east of Downtown here in Cincinnati where every year the faithful come out on Good Friday and crawl up the stairs from Downtown to the top of Mount Adams reciting the rosary. All told you have to go up 150 steps. Nobody keeps score. Nobody hands out trophies. The only people that know how or why they did it are the people who do it. Most of those people have no clue why I hunt turkeys, but I know why they go up those stairs. I am a turkey hunter.

KYHillChick had a music professor back in college that told her, “Anything worth doing is worth doing mediocre.” She never understood the prof. It always stuck in her craw. She told me and I understood right away.

It is not like I gave up trying. In fact, you can see a general progression over the years. I have gotten better. In fact I am running out of room to hang turkey fans. I have several in the freezer I am not going to get to for a while. It is not like deer hunting for me. I’ve gotten deer hunting down to where I can pretty much get a deer in the scope anytime I go out. Turkey hunting is and probably always going to be a supreme struggle for me. Mastery is not even a pipe dream when it comes to turkeys, and I prefer it that way.

I want something in this world that is always going to be a struggle for me, something that I can always be a rank beginner no matter how long I do it, and something that never gets routine and never gets boring. I always want to have the turkeys laughing at me. I want something that is ultimately futile and appears ultimately ridiculous in my life, and I want to practice it until I die. I want to be a turkey hunter.

This post has already been read 621 times!

Views: 1

Related posts:

Is turkey hunting really all that? Turkey Hunting and Daylight Savings Time I am a Turkey Hunting Troglodyte Mooselette Goes Turkey Hunting Afternoon Turkey Hunting A Ninety-Niner’s Look at Turkey Hunting What Is the Hardest Part of Turkey Hunting? Personal Ethics in Turkey Hunting