Farting for Shock Gobbles: the Curse of the Swamp Rooster (Part One)

     Of all the things I hate in this world, the eastern wild turkey takes a top seat on the list.  Positioned on my list somewhere below the entire state of New Jersey and slightly above Dubstep, these overgrown swamp chickens remain the bane of my 25 year-long hunting career.  While I’m self-aware enough to recognize that the fact I simply suck at hunting them is by no means any fault of the turkey…eh…they can go fuck themselves anyhow.  My loathing runs so deep I once published an essay back in college describing my history of spring gobbler season as something of a “curse.”

    I came really close once, on my first turkey hunt.  And that first hunt set the precedent for every proceeding hunt in my life: CURSED!  Maybe 14 or 15 years old, I joined my Uncle Wayne and cousin Randy on the opening morning of the West Virginia spring turkey season.  We walked down this old logging road and went our separate ways, connected to each other via a walkie-talkie.  I had my grandfather’s old Ithaca 20-gauge Featherweight (circa 1950) and an old hand-me-down box call from probably the 60’s.  On the edge of the dirt road, I positioned myself behind some briars and hit the ancient box call with a “yelp-yelp-yelp.”  Shockingly and suddenly there was this blue head popping up curiously from behind a knoll.

    The bird kept walking toward me and when he wasn’t looking I yelped a few more times until he was love-sick with the 40 year-old hen emanating from wood and chalk.  A jake!  And almost in range!  I had the gold bead of the shotgun fixated on his blue and red head.  Just a few more steps, steady your breath I told myself.  Just then “Hey Josh!” came over the walkie.  “You see anything!?”  The turkey disappeared over the edge of the road and ran down into the holler.  I ran after it, but he was gone.

    “Yeah.” I responded over the walkie.  “Until you just scared it off.”

    When I moved to South Carolina and hunted deer on the public land in Abbeville county in my late teens and early 20’s, I noticed a lot of turkeys around my deer stands.  Excited, I made plans to correct my failure as a kid and finally bag a spring gobbler.  Returning to the areas around my deer stands in March and April, I was surprised to find the huge flocks of turkeys were gone.  I couldn’t even find a feather.  Leaving in the early afternoon, I saw gobblers strutting on the private land that cut in between the Wildlife Management Area.  With the brain the size of a pea, how were these birds outsmarting me?  I was top of my classes, being bumped from entry-level courses into upper-level philosophy and writing classes because “you seem bored.”  But a stupid fucking bird that will gobble at the sound of a closing car door just made me seem like the dumbest kid in school.  I hated those fucking turkeys.  I killed deer where no one could; I caught fish when no one else had any luck.  My reputation was ruined from these overgrown swamp chickens.  

    I didn’t have a place to turkey hunt when I lived in Myrtle Beach.  Four years were empty of embarrassing myself in the spring woods.  But when I returned to Greenwood, I went back into Abbeville where I had found feathers and tracks during deer season of flocks of turkeys.  I hunted and I hunted.  No gobbles, no turkeys.  You would think I would just give up at this point.  But I didn’t.  It felt like asking the hottest girl out in school over and over and being turned down over and over.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.  I was insane over wild turkeys, that strutting gobbler with the flamboyant feathers and long beard, long spurs.  I dreamed about them.  Nightmares.  Like the dreams of “the one that got away,” they tortured me in my sleep.  I envisioned them at night but they always slipped away into the far corners of my mind—the corners reserved for failure, longing, and despair that come out in dream.  Then I awoke, covered in sweat.

The “curse” followed me into my 30’s as I plan a hunting trip with Eva and Dawson.  Finished with these “canned-hunts” I want to go back to my roots.  Even if that is pursuing an animal that has eluded me for 25 years.  First, I informed everyone we would not have the luxury of port-a-johns in our vicinity for the duration of the hunt.  We will have to dig holes in the woods.  Surface-shitting is not a vice I choose to participate in.  Eva expressed her dismay.  But then she texted me a picture of a military-style shovel for the purpose of burying her poop.  So she’s on board at least.  I’m not sure about Dawson.  All of the campsites are “primitive.”  Which is fine for the lot of us, but he needs an electrical outlet to plug his CPAP machine into.  What a pussy.  Not wanting to risk dying for a chance at a swamp gobbler.  Jesus, what have my friends come to after all these years?

    I’m going down to scout two weeks from now.  The hunting weekend is planned, just uncertain as to the date and if Dawson can find a campground where he won’t die.  If not, we’ll carpool from Eva’s place.  Just have to wake up earlier in the morning to beat Charleston traffic.  I’ve got calls, decoys, and a shotgun Eva can use.  The same one I used on my ill-fated hunt.  Her hand-me-down 16 gauge has too much of a stock for such a small girl.  

    The curse follows, but I won’t let it define my hunting trip.  Maybe this time it will be different?  Maybe we’ll each bag a gobbler?  Hunting will be hard.  I can’t wait.  Maybe we’ll shock gobble a turkey from our farts as we take a shit in the woods?  The possibilities are endless?  I’m excited.