A mature male wild turkey, or tom, lies against an oak tree with its wings and tail fan feathers unfurled shortly after it was shot by Pioneer Press outdoors editor Dave Orrick Thursday on public land in the metro. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Often appearing black from afar, the feathers of a wild turkey actually contain an array of hues. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

The pads of a wild turkey's feet catch the sun shortly after it was shot Thursday. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)?



Wild turkeys suck and so do I.

That’s how I felt at 10:45 a.m. Thursday.

I was in the woods on my belly — bare belly, since my pants were twisted around my waist and mostly below it and my shirts and jacket were crumpled up under my arms.

Something prickly was poking me in my navel and ticks were crawling God knows where.

I had been working myself into this gradually worsening position for the better part of an hour as a tom, a mature male turkey, taunted me from 30 yards away, literally running circles around me. I was on an elevated knob. The turkey was just below the edge.

The few times he popped his head up momentarily, he wasn’t where my gun was pointing. First off my left shoulder, then off the right. In the meantime, he kept circling my position, or rather, the position of a $9.99 rubber decoy of a female turkey that couldn’t fool a bat.

He kept circling, and I kept swiveling to match him, I hoped, while in the prone position, gradually disrobing myself.

It was a sight gag, and I was the chump. The keystone cop chasing Benny Hill. The Stooge who steps in front of Moe as he’s swinging the hammer.

This was nothing new to me. This was my third season of turkey hunting. I got hooked on my first season when I found myself in the middle of a gobblers’ ball but still failed. Last season was a more pathetic affair that left me so birdless as to afford me time to write a poem.

This year was supposed to be different. I had enlisted the help of outdoors writer Jack Hennessy, a slayer of many turkeys. We had high hopes.

On Tuesday, we scouted the area and hatched a plan so quickly that we had time to pick some morels and fish a nearby trout stream. That’s where Hennessy wound up with a hook deeply embedded in his trigger finger while trying to unhook an ornery pike. Field removal tactics failed us, so we headed for urgent care. Not 100 yards from us in the field, we saw a strutting tom preparing to mount a hen. In a parking lot near the clinic, two bearded turkeys milled about. Good signs for sure — and the hook was removed without a scalpel.

But dawn broke silently Wednesday, save one distant gobble late. My promises of a landscape packed with turkeys were hollow.

Alone Thursday morning, I found myself on a different patch of public land. I arrived after first light — a stupid thing to do when turkey hunting. Then it started raining — an unforecasted rain that wasn’t even acknowledged under my weather apps’ current conditions. And the woods were silent.

Stupid me, stupid meteorologists, stupid turkey hunting.

Of course, turkeys did eventually show. But I was set up on high ground when that tom was low. Then I moved low only to find him high, some 100 yards out, fanning, apparently, at my worthless decoy and gobbling at the silly croaks emanating from a hunk of latex in my mouth (known as a diaphragm turkey call).

Eventually this cat-and-mouse game led me back to high ground, atop this knoll, where the comedy was turning into a farce.

Then I got angry.

Don’t hunt angry. Don’t fish angry. Don’t drive angry. Don’t write angry. Good advice, I think, to live by.

But there’s another school of thought. Willie Mosconi, the affable pool legend, used to say you’ve got to hate your opponent “a little.”

I was beginning to hate this bird. I got more aggressive, scurrying toward the bluff’s edge where the bird was, rising from prone to sitting, and eventually to one knee. And making an obscene amount of noise with my call.

Finally, from behind a tree, some 20 yards down the bluff, his face popped in front of my shotgun barrel. And I shot that face. I was certain I would miss but happy to get the whole thing over with. To at least scare the jerk, to teach him a lesson not to make fools of earnest hunters.

But he dropped.

I ran to him, stomped my boot in his neck, and pressed his wings against his body as his final thrashes — perhaps the last moments of life, perhaps postmortem twitches — subsided.

I had never held a wild turkey before, or actually seen one so close.

The sun was out, and the bird’s feathers caught the rays and threw them back in an astonishing array of hues. From auburn to green to blue, it was autumn and spring, the entire spectrum on a quill. The feet were dirty, yet pristine.

And I felt bad that I had gotten angry with him. No, not guilty for killing the bird; for that, I was elated. Feathers and bones for my son, a mountain of meat for my wife and parents visiting over the weekend.

So I hated a wild turkey, shot it in the face and now loved and admired it. It’s a paradox that makes no sense except to those who have shot one.

Those of us who have shot one.