Trail cameras and talking with land owners are both great ways to access wildlife numbers and locations, but whether hunting deer, turkeys or coyotes, nothing replaces actual “boots-on-the-ground” where you want to hunt. Retirement can easily make a person lazy, and I can still remember the argument I had with myself one spring morning last year over whether or not I really wanted to get up with the chickens to spy on a group of turkeys whose routines I was trying to figure out before hunting season opened. You can never lose by arguing with yourself, so I still don’t know whether I won or lost, but there I sat watching the sun come up. The river was just to my right, and about a quarter mile in front of me it wound around to my left, then right again and was gone. I sat overlooking a meadow bordered by trees along the river where a small flock of turkeys usually roost each year.
The morning was very calm and the sounds were nothing short of spectacular. A pair of great horned owls called back-and-forth to each other, their smooth cooing “hoots” serenely ushering in the day. To the far left end of the crop field a creek wound like ribbon candy through a small pasture, and from somewhere in the trees there, the sharp crisp call of a barred owl pierced the silence. Its unmistakable pattern of “who cooks for you – who cooks for you too” is easily distinguished from the great horned owl call when heard together. Loud noises often compel tom turkeys to gobble near or after dark, helping reveal to the hunter where they are roosted, and the loud shrill call of the barred owl is often mimicked by turkey call makers.
I sat in a small woodlot that teemed with songbirds of every description, their sweet melodies filling the gaps in time between owl calls. I recognized the “pretty pretty pretty pretty” song of several male cardinals, frequently punctuated by the sharp crisp cackle of a rooster pheasant or two. The time frame was very interesting, as the symphony began in earnest at the first hint of daylight, but the lighter it got, the quieter the symphony played.
Then there were the stars of the morning show, the wild turkeys. I was there trying to pin down just where they roosted, as their chosen nighttime perch high
in the trees changes slightly from year to year. That morning, two or three toms were gobbling quite a ways ahead of me along the stretch of river running across the end of the crop field. After a while, their gibberish gobbles were a little fainter each time, telling me they had flown to the ground already and were heading in the opposite direction. I drove around the section, stopping at a couple spots to glass the fields with binoculars, but I never found them.
Starting any morning by watching and listening to God’s miraculous Creation awaken makes it easy to say “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.” But like I said, retirement can make a guy lazy. So, the next time my decision is whether to stay there beneath the warm covers next to my warm wife, or to arise with the chickens to go to the woods, I imagine the argument with myself will be just as strong as it was that morning. But I predict I’ll rise with the chickens again, and I still won’t know whether I won the argument or not…. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].
