By John Cross
Once again, it is that time of the year.
Now if you have to ask what time, you probably won’t understand. We’re talking turkey here — wild turkey.
And fellow turkey hunting enthusiasts can commiserate with this; turkey hunters — and turkeys — live and die by the weather.
Oh, with some luck and lots of patience, it’s still possible to kill a wild turkey on even the most windy, wet, cold, miserable days. But generally, under such conditions, the woods can be depressingly quiet.
That’s because the kind of weather we’ve all recently suffered through is to a tom turkey what a cold shower is to us. It just kind of puts a damper on a guy’s amorous intents.
Like any fellow, a tom turkey is still interested. He’s just less inclined to brag for the ladies by gobbling.
And let’s face it. A gobble from a tree top is music to the ears of a turkey hunter. If turkeys didn’t gobble, a good measure of the fun in pursuing them would be lost.
The gobble of a wild turkey cutting through the morning pre-dawn epitomizes the essence of what hunting them is all about. It sets the back of the neck tingling, the heart pounding.
What’s more, the noisy approach of a gobbler makes it less likely a hunter’s errant move at the wrong time will send a keen-eyed bird packing.
The bottom line is that a tom turkey eager to gobble to the come-hither yelps of a hot hen or a hunter’s calls is more likely to become dinner.
The kind of weather we turkey hunters hope for is the same kind of weather any winter-weary soul longs for by now — quiet, mild, clear mornings.
And precisely the kind of weather we haven’t had in these here parts for the last two weeks.
Except for putting the crappie fishing on hold on area lakes and infecting many of us with a toxic dose of cabin fever, the dismal weather of late has been of little consequence.
Now in mid-April, at least to turkey hunters, the weather begins to matter very much.
The first of Minnesota’s wild turkey seasons will begin on Wednesday. And things are shaping up quite nicely for a that first five-day session in the turkey woods.
My own Minnesota hunt begins on May 8, and by then, the weather hopefully will have settled into a much more seasonal pattern.
But closer at hand, in fact as you read this, I will be in northeast Nebraska, nestled against the trunk of the same basswood from which I have shot four wild turkeys in the last three years.
And darned it would have been five, had I not peeked over the barrel and cleanly missed a nice tom on a tremendously windy day last April. Alas, stuff happens.
For the last two weeks or so, I have been anguishing over the extended weather reports for this part of the country. When the forecast was favorable, I was a believer, when it was not, I dismissed it as an inexact science.
By Thursday afternoon, things definitely were looking up and even though a strong spring storm was predicted, weather pundits promised it would drift eastward on a path too far south to have much impact on northeast Nebraska.
Light winds, clear skies, temperatures in the 60s — by any measure it is perfect weather to bag a bird.
Or as any turkey hunter knows, perfect weather not to.
John Cross is a Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 344-6376 or by e-mail at jcross@mankatofreepress.com.
