Talking turkey

For all the times we’ve seen wild turkeys around the place, and the few times we’ve heard toms gobbling, this morning is the first time I can remember hearing a hen yelping. I was busy loading the tractor onto the trailer so we could take it off to the dealer for service, and amidst my hearing the tie-down straps ratchet tight, were the hen’s calls. Was she calling poults to stay away from me, the Jeep, and the trailer? Was she just trying to gather a family together? Could she  have been responding to the ratchet noise? I’ll never know, but it was fun to hear a real version of what I’ve been trying, off and on, to imitate during years of (unsuccessful) spring turkey hunting.

either sex is legal quarry in fall season

Photo by J. Harrington

Since Minnesota has a fall turkey season, this may be a year to get a license and spend some mornings sipping coffee on the deck and seeing if anyone wanders through the yard. Maybe I’ll even try playing with some of my turkey calls, although I’ll need to practice to minimize the likelihood of scaring the quarry away rather than drawing it in close. All of this presume that the smoke from Canadian wildfires has ceased and none is being generated by Minnesota burns. The past week or so has been smokey enough that I’ve even held off on burning some of the downed dead branches in the burn pit. It also depends on the disappearance of most all of the mosquitoes by the end of September. Think we’ll have had our first hard frost by then?

It feels odd thinking about turkey hunting in midsummer, since it’s usually an early spring affair, but then this has been one of those decades, hasn’t it? One where the unusual is becoming more common and most of US are struggling to figure out what, if anything, to do about it.

Wild Turkey

Heid E. Erdrich

Not the bottle
Not the burn on the lips
lit throat glow
Not even wild     really
but a small-town bird
whose burgundy throat
shimmers like nothing ever
A huge bird    impressive
who lurches and stalks me
window to window in this
desert retreat
What does he want?
Clearly he is lonely
pecks his reflection
and speaks to it in a low gubble
(not gobble) gubbles so tenderly
Soon as I think of him     his eye hits on me
We have watched each other for days
His shifting colors fascinate me  his territorial strut
But it is his bald and blue-red head
his old man habits and gait that move me
If I even think of him        I taste whiskey
Drunk on solitude    I’d talk to anybody
I try his language on my lips
His keen response burns     like shame

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