Return to Turkey Camp

Originally Post #1 , “The Shaman Enters” at The Quaker Boy Forums 1/9/2007

The wind was stiff enough that it blew the door open as soon as it came unlatched. It was snowing lightly, but it wasn’t cold enough to stick. It was cold, it was muddy. It looked like the sky was going to open up.

The shaman bolted the door and kicked a clod off his boots and surveyed the inside. In the murk, you could still see an open box of thirty-thirty and a broken grunt call on the dining table. An orange vest hung off the back of a chair. The mice had carried a box of D-Con out into the middle of the floor, and you could tell there was a dead mouse somewhere.

The shaman went over to the panel box and started flipping breakers. The lights came on. He went to the stove and started a fire. After a few trips out to the truck and a run out to the cistern, all the bags were in and water was starting to fill the pipes. It was starting to warm up.

The shaman then performed the one great act of magic that he had come to do. He reached down and pulled up the gun case he had brought in, and opened it up. There, inside, was a rudely camoflaged 12 GA pump shotgun. He hefted it out of the case; after checking the chamber, he cycled it three times and walked it over to the rack.

“There,” he said. “That’s better.” Then he reached down to the pile and pulled out an old ammo can and opened it. He grabbed an old cedar box call and held it up for a moment to examine it’s trail-worn finish and then started to pull on it. It sounded horrible. He rummaged around and found a piece of chalk and then tried again.

“Yeeeaat. Yeeaat. Yeeaat-aat-aat-aat-aat.” It was as if the very Gates of Heaven had opened. The day was not so gloomy. The room felt rich again.

The shaman looked satisfied at his work, for in an instant the sleeping deer camp had been transformed into Turkey Camp. The world had turned. The hearty and profane world of deer hunting had been banished. The camp had become sacred once more.

The preparations for the coming of Spring and the Season had begun. Soon men would begin their pilgramage back to the woods after a long Winter’s sleep, looking for redemption. Soon large winter flocks would start to break up and the gobblers and hens would begin their yearly dance. Soon it would be time.

“It’s like a second religion,” said the shaman once. “You can be anything you want to be and still be a turkey hunter. All it demands is your complete and undivided attention for a few weeks a year, and in return it will haunt your dreams forever. If you don’t believe me, take a call out once into the Spring woods and give it a stroke or two. If that old gobbler answers, you will have your calling for life. That old gobbler hooked you and you will never get away.”

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