TURKEY CHALLENGE

Why Not Kill The Bird?

EDITOR'S NOTE: There have been times in my hunting career when I've had to fight my natural urge to take a turkey so that I could learn important lessons about turkey hunting. But, on no hunt was my patience tested more than when I hunted with Allen Jenkins, president of Lynch Calls. Jenkins learned to hunt turkeys from an old master during the days when few people even knew what a wild turkey looked like, much less how to call and hunt one.

By now my two hunting buddies could see my frustration. I knew how to kill the turkey, but my methods were not in agreement with the way these men hunted turkeys. "Listen John," Jenkins told me. "The sport of turkey hunting does not revolve around killing the bird. Anybody can do that." Although I had my doubts, I kept quiet hoping to learn why we weren't that concerned with killing a turkey since we were turkey hunting. Jenkins went on to explain, "When you call a turkey to within gun range, you make him do something that is unnatural. The hens are supposed to go to him. He shouldn't have to go to them. If you can fool that bird into believing that you are a hen ready for mating and make him come to you, then you have beaten him at his own game. You deserve to take the tom. But whether you bag the bird or not, you have played fairly and won the game. If for any reason, you can't call the turkey to you, the turkey wins. You should have to hunt him another day."

This philosophy sounds noble when a sportsman is sitting at a campfire trying to convince other hunters that he is the greatest outdoorsman alive. But when there is a hot turkey gobbling his fool head off 100-yards away from you, and he's been gobbling for over an hour, playing the game fairly doesn't seem nearly as important as killing the turkey.

Not only did the turkey have to cross a ditch, but Jenkins and Brown were determined to call the bird with a box caller -- one of the first modern callers developed for turkey hunting. I have used a box call to take turkeys, but my progression as a turkey hunter made the box seem a tame means of calling and not quite as glamorous as a diaphragm mouth caller.

"Okay, John, here's what we are going to do," Brown said. "Allen and I will start cutting and calling on top of each other. That old gobbler will think there are two or three hens over here. He won't be able to stand the thought of all those hens waiting to be mated. So, he will walk all the way to the end of the ditch, around the ditch and come up through the woods on the opposite point of the field from us. Then we will call him across the field. When he is at 30 yards, you can shoot him." I couldn't believe that Brown thought he and Jenkins could make that bird go through all that trouble to mate a hen.

"Don't you think you are asking a lot of that turkey?" I inquired. "Sure we are," Brown whispered. "But that's what makes calling turkeys so much more fun than hunting turkeys." I found that the two men were really enjoying this hunt, although they knew that I didn't have much faith in this sit- and-wait tactic. But when the cutting and cackling started, Jenkins said, "Okay, the turkey's coming."

TOMORROW: CALLING IN THE HUNG-UP TURKEY