Sometimes, disappointment is all you bring from the hunt, says Flint Journal columnist David Graham

by David V. Graham | The Flint Journal

Wednesday April 23, 2008, 10:57 PM

FAIRVIEW, Michigan -- By Tuesday, my friend, David Leathley, and I had been scouting or turkey hunting for several days, and it was beginning to look very discouraging.

Here we were in the town that bills itself as the wild turkey capital of Michigan, and we weren't seeing or hearing many birds, even on our road trips.

We were beginning to wonder if the local turkeys had been wiped out or at least greatly reduced by the harsh winter we had in Michigan this year.

At 11 a.m. Tuesday, the second day of Michigan's turkey season, I was packing up my blind and hunting gear for a lunch break in town when Leathley hailed me on the two-way radio. He was several hundred yards away at the time.

"Turn up your radio and listen to this," he said.

I could clearly hear a hen turkey yelping and putting in the not-very-far background. "How far away is that bird?" I asked.

"About 15 yards," he whispered.

Just then, I heard a gobble over the radio.

I dropped what I was doing and sat down against a tree. There I waited, my shotgun at the ready in my lap.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a shotgun blast was heard from Leathley's direction. I didn't have any doubts about the outcome.

Ten minutes later, Leathley, looking very red-faced from the excitement, walked up carrying a huge gobbler that must have weighed close to 25 pounds. It had a bright red and blue head and large 1 1/4 inch spurs on its feet. They were so large that Leathley suspended his prize bird from its spurs on a tree branch and it hung there with no trouble.

Leathley has killed eight gobblers in years past, and this one was very close to being the largest and most impressive.

Leathley said he was on the verge of packing up, too, when he heard the hen yelping down in the swamp on his left side. He started using his calls to yelp back at it when it walked into the thick brush behind him.

That required him to turn his chair around inside his pop-up blind and close some blind windows while opening the rear window. He had been facing an open meadow where he had three decoys spread out.

Thinking the hen might attract the local gobbler, Leathley said he talked back and forth with the wandering hen for about 15 minutes when a gobbler showed up behind Leathley in a creek bed about 40 yards behind him.

It gobbled several times while hidden from view down in the creek bed. It took about five minutes to coax him out of the little ravine and up into the brushy pine trees behind him, he said.

When it was about 40 yards out, Leathley said he pulled the trigger when the gobbler stretched out his neck. He dropped there and barely moved, he said.

We went into Fairview and had a great lunch to celebrate and then returned to the woods a few hours later. This time, we set up my blind overlooking the same meadow and we sat side-by-side in my blind.

Within a few minutes, Leathley was working another hen -- perhaps the same one -- which again came in behind us. We had to turn our chairs around quietly just like Leathley had done a few hours before.

For several minutes, Leathley worked the hen and then, again, a gobbler showed up, too. Both were down in the same creek bed, just yards away, but we couldn't see them because they below our field of vision. We knew if we were were patient and quiet, we would get them up out of the creek.

Long minutes went by as Leathley called back and forth with the hen and the gobbler. The excitement was building, and both of us were geared up.

Just then, a red pickup truck drove by on the two-track across the creek, not 60 yards away. The woods fell silent and we never heard either one of the birds again, despite an hour of calling. They never returned.

Maybe the driver heard our calling and the birds' responses, and he went to investigate. Maybe he intentionally wanted to interrupt our hunt on private land we had permission to hunt. Who knows?

Sometimes disappointment, and not elation, is what becomes of a day afield.

David V. Graham is an outdoors columnist for The Flint Journal and a retired Journal reporter. He can be reached by e-mail or (810) 766-6306. Read more columns by David V. Graham.