Alabama Turkey Opener

The turkey opener is Alabama found me in the rural foothills of Sylacauga. Wow. I thought I had seen rural in Georgia, brother you ain't seen nothing till you been to Sylacauga. With a little help the night before from a combination of a hot fir, a cold bottle of Woodford Reserve whiskey, and an amazing amount of dust in my buddy's hunting cabin, Saturday morning's early rays found me with an extraordinary headache. Oh well. Nothing like a jaunt through the woods to cure that hangover.

We had treed several birds on a ridge top the night before, and were anticipating them flying down to a good clover foodplot that had belied the fact that they liked to eat there quite regularly. We set up with a couple of decoys right as the sun was peeking up over the ridge the birds were roosting on. They weren't making a sound, but I was using my Knight and Hale diaphragm calls to make really light tree calls, purrs, and clucks. I like to use two different diaphragms at the same time so as give the illusion of more than one bird. This strategy has paid off several times in the past. I use a simple double reed call, and then the Walter Parrot special half moon call that Knight and Hale makes. This gives a young bird and old bird type of scenario.

Anyway, the birds decided that the other side of the ridge looked better, so they flew down the side I wasn't set up on. Was it something I said? How smashing, I thought, as I looked at the gigantic size of this ridge. We are going to have to either A: Walk up and over the son of a bitch or B: Walk around the bastard. How horrendous for my hangover. So as I stumbled over to the decoys without my gun. Hello! There's mister gobbler! In full strut! We looked at each other eye to eye with utter surprise. That bastard was trying to slip in on me. I was standing there like I was in a ten foot jon boat with a two foot hole in the bottom. There was a little throw up in the back of my throat. He took off faster than land animal's are supposed to travel.

We didn't see another bird, but I did buy a bottle of wild turkey for that evening. It made me gobble.

More to come.........