Talking turkey 101
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Clearly, the turkey had not read the script.
“Get ready – here he comes,” Devin Homick whispered, his urgent undertone cutting through a tense silence.
A tom made his high-speed appearance, stage right, and as he progressed within 75 yards, the dry-mouthed rookie steadied trembling hands and eased the safety on his venerable 12-guage Mossberg into the ‘fire’ position.
The day had begun according to Hoyle, if horrifically early, a 4:15 a.m. wakeup call for a 5 a.m. rendezvous at Homick’s home, south of Tillsonburg. Headlights cut through inky darkness as we headed out, parked along a sideroad and began a short – and quiet - hike.
Wild turkeys have incredible eyesight and hearing, and hunters require camouflage, personal or peripheral, to bring them within an ethical 40-yard shotgun range.
“If they could smell like a deer, I don’t think anyone would ever get one,” Homick theorized.
Those choosing to sit in the woods against a tree will do so motionless while wearing head-to-toe camo, down to footwear and face netting. Exclusively employing a compound bow for the past four of his 13 years hunting turkey, Homick uses a camouflaged blind with a blacked out interior to disguise movement associated with nocking an arrow and coming to full draw.
He set up the blind and a pair of decoys (upright and feeding hens selected from five in varied sexes and poses) quietly and efficiently, and ‘ninja’d up’ (black gloves, shirts and balaclavas to blend into the background), we eased back into relative seated comfort, another perk of blind hunting. At least one of us was reflecting on the comparatively short, if eventful trip to the edge of a woodlot in North Walsingham.
Wild turkeys were extirpated from Ontario in the early 1900s, but a wildly successful re-introduction program began in Norfolk County has seen this area develop into prime turkey – and turkey hunting - country.
Historically, any conversation beginning with ‘we head out around 5 a.m.’ has been a non-starter. But based in part on surviving and thoroughly enjoying an inaugural early-morning duck adventure on Long Point’s inner bay; a suggestion from Charlie Cadman one afternoon at Goble’s to take a conveniently-scheduled turkey course at the Tillsonburg legion (interesting, and heavy on safety and ethics); and finally, and mainly, Homick’s eloquent description of the transcendental nature of the spring turkey hunting experience, combined with a gracious willingness to share it - we found ourselves trading convivial whispers in the pre-dawn darkness.
The attraction of being intimately connected to one’s corner of the world coming to life on a beautiful spring morning became clear. Songbirds were the first to meet the day, their varied greetings punctuated by a pack of howling coyotes to our southeast. As if on cue, a pair of Canadian geese flew gracefully by at sunrise, their distinctive honking dominating for the moment, intermittent caws from passing crows.
Homick welcomed legal hunting time (a half-hour prior to sunrise) with a gentle series of purrs from his slate pot call, and was rewarded with an immediate gobble in return. Proficient with a diaphragm call, Homick in the main prefers a pot call for its versatility and ease of use in reproducing the purrs, yelps and cuts that constitute the majority of a turkey’s vocabulary. (See Homick featured on the video Turkey calling 101 on The Tillsonburg News website and Facebook page).
Calling, he says, comes down to practice and experience.
“There is no written book on how to do it, practice, try and sound like a turkey and learn from the turkeys in your area.”
A second gobbler joined in from the northwest, and Homick continued to work both as dawn advanced – by 6:39 a.m. when a tardy rooster crowed to greet the day, we had been in the field for roughly an hour-and-a-half.
Considerable scouting, not to mention prior behaviour, indicated the ‘southwest’ tom would trail a harem of hens through a gap in a cedar windbreak to our west, meander along the creek bank, pitching (flying) across from the south, to its north bank roughly 50 yards before a culvert, thence easing into an extensive woodlot via a gap – strategically occupied by Homick’s blind.
A trio of hens’ pitching over the break, rather than easing through the gap, indicated the day was not unfolding to plan. Despite Homick’s best attempts to lure them in our direction, and theoretically the tom in their wake, they made a beeline for the woodlot’s edge to our west, lost to view after a short hike down its fringe.
In their wake, explanatory motion in a small gap further west caught my eye – a large, yellow dog was cheerfully wagging his tail as he cast about. His appearance was trumped by the tom, sprinting east across an open, picked but unplowed cornfield, a path leading directly in front of our blind.
It’s hard to describe in mere words the shock, awe and anticipation his sudden, and then rapidly measured approach generated, nervously bobbing head a brilliant combination of red and blue. Improvising off Homick’s script appeared acceptable as the yardage dropped below 100, and then 75, until the tom made an abrupt turn toward ‘exit, stage left,’ 50 or 60 yards out.
Homick tried gentle, and then increasingly aggressive calls in an attempt to bring the bird the final 10 or 20 yards within ethical range, but there was no derivation from his spur-of-the-moment decision to head for the safety of the woods.
“When I heard that safety click off, I thought I heard a little heart pounding too,” Homick laughed quietly.
“He was nervous to start with, and saw something that wasn’t right,” he continued, as the safety was eased back on, and a 7:36 a.m. post-mortem began. “Tried to calm him down, but at that point, it seemed a lost cause.”
Homick estimated the gobbler at two years of age, a ‘super jake’ weighing 18 and 20 pounds, based on a ‘skinny’ head compared to the ‘pumpkin head’ of an older, more mature bird. “It’s tough to judge.”
Although Homick said the bird hadn’t been anywhere near top speed – “That wasn’t full bore, those things can move, he was on a trot,” – slowing the tom down with a load of number 5’s to get a good look at his spurs would also have provided a better idea.
“That’s the best estimate of age.”
The dog’s presence explained the turkeys’ unusual behaviour, said Homick.
“Dogs are not helpful when you are hunting. Waterfowl yes – turkeys, no. Usually a dog running through the woods will equal me moving to another spot.”
Even so, courtesy of Homick’s expertise built on years of passionate pursuit, dedication to the ‘art’ of turkey hunting (typically he gets out five times per week during the month-long season) and access to good ground, we had come within yards of an ethical shot on a debut hunt.
“It was close, you don’t get much closer.”
Things can change day to day, hour to hour and turkey to turkey, says Homick. He prefers the early morning, but has shot turkeys in the last hour of the hunt as well. A hunter may do everything right and be frustrated, and alternatively, many things wrong and be successful – that’s just part of the sport, and in the end, part of its unique attraction.
“You hope you are putting the odds in your favour and you hope it all plays to script, but like this morning, the script didn’t have a dog in it.”