Show a Little Compassion

One of my shaman buddies is all into compassion right now. I was watching his thread over on Facebook, talking about compassion. ” Compassion, compassion, compassion!” It hit me: how does compassion fit in with Turkey Hunting.

You have to wonder some days why we go out and hunt turkeys. Our friends are right: it really is cheaper to go to the market. Turkey is about as cheap as it gets. It would seem just a little stupid to go out there and brave the cold and the rain and sleet and later the heat and the mosquitoes when there was turkey practically being given away at the store.

The answer is compassion. Take a good look at a turkey. Sure, they’re beautiful when they’re strutting but get up close and look at that head. Would you like to look at all that red, white, and blue, and all those carunkles and stray hairs in the mirror every morning? Bald. A useless little beard, a goiter and a freaking snood. That is as ugly as it gets, excepting of course what’s next to you on the branch.

Imagine waking up every morning with a hen turkey next to you. If you thought what was in the mirror was bad. Yikes. Your girlfriend has little blue head with hairs sticking out. Most of the time she runs away from you, but for a few weeks a year she tells that it MIGHT be okay if you came a little closer and she’ll make up her mind when you get there. How does she do this? By making noises that sound like fingernails being run down a piece of slate. In fact, if someone does run something down a piece of slate just right, you think it is your girlfriend calling and you come running. How sad and twisted and perverse is that?

I mentioned waking up next to your ugly girlfriend. What wakes you up? The one and only predator that used to haunt you as a kid. That old barred owl in the next tree comes home to roost after a long night of snatching little birds and such off tree branches and he lets out a good yell and it is enough to scare you clear plum out of your skin and you do the one thing you can do: you gobble! How totally sad and useless is that?

So what’s left for you? A life of eating acorns, clover, and insects. Have you ever tried to eat an acorn? I don’t mean chewing it either. I mean swallow one whole. Now figure that this acorn is about the size of a tennis ball when you get things down to turkey dimensions. Have fun with that. No home cooked meals, and no hands to eat it with neither– no fork or knife, no teeth, and nothing to wash it down.

Bullies? It can be fun being the cock of the walk, but most turkeys are not going to be that lucky. For the most part your lot in life is going to be spent with big guys with spurs knocking the stuffing out of you, while you try to run away. Spurs? You will have little nubs to defend yourself the first couple years or so. The big guys will out weigh you 3:2 or 2:1 for most of your sad life. They will keep you from food, and they will even knock you down and take away your ugly girlfriend, and y have nasty turkey sex with her while you have to watch.

There is going to be few answers to this that are going to be as compassionate as what you will find at the end of a good 12 Gauge. There is starvation, the occasional dog or coyote. You might get hit by a truck if you stand out on the pavement long enough, but you will lose your nerve and run. Your one hope is to find a that glint of a shiny barrel and run for it.

That, my friends is why we hunt turkeys. We have to have the compassion to go out there no matter what our wives, our friends, our bosses say and do what is right. We owe it to those poor ugly birds to do the one simple act of kindness that Nature so often denies them. It is with all our humanity that we screw up the courage and fortitude to go out and sit on our butts for endless hours and call to them. It is with complete compassion that we raise our barrels and pull the trigger. We have to do it! We owe it to the turkeys.

This post has already been read 574 times!