On Absurdity

Turkeys; misses; lessons; a birthday ribeye.

It’s fitting for the absurdity of my turkey season that my best opportunity on a bird happened accidentally, unplanned, with me wearing a white t-shirt¹, khaki stand-up shorts², and sandals³. After three weeks of sitting and calling and waiting and hoping, I drove by one of my spots to see if I had left the key to my hitch rack there the day before — and was greeted by a hen and a jake parading around the access road. One refines and fine-tunes a strategy… and one is laughed at by walnut-brained birds… One finds oneself in such a situation — and creeps down the single track, scatters the birds into the property, gets out, grabs one’s bow, release, chest pack, rangefinder and box call, loops ahead of them and cuts over, sees them drift into the woods, drifts over oneself, stops, listens, hears a bird through the dry leaves, sees a bird through the dry leaves, draws, holds one’s draw, keeps holding, sees the hen, sees the jake, keeps holding, readjusts, accidentally knocks the box call out of one’s chest pack, sees the jake unfazed, holds and holds and then, finally, when the jake is broadside, focused on the hen, one releases one’s arrow — fitted with a new broadhead, a fixed-blade, that one didn’t actually mean to grab but in the heat of the moment nocked anyway — and then watches it soar an inch over the jake’s back, who — still unfazed — continues trailing the hen no worse for the wear.

One then exhales, slams one’s fist into one’s exposed thigh, sighs, and goes to retrieve his arrow, now broken — of course — and returns to one’s car to drive home in silence replaying those fifteen minutes over and over in one’s head. One doesn’t even find one’s key.⁴

***

In a construction trailer I once frequented, there was a plaque: “Some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue.” I hunted a full half of the total days this turkey season — and on each of them, I felt as if I were the statue. A series of close-encounters and near misses and just enough excitement for me to realize why people get hooked on turkeys⁵. My friend Charlie, in response to one lamenting text I sent him, an elegy on the fickleness of turkeys, of crazy hens and confused toms, pointed out that this pursuit is taking years off our lives — and that, still, we continue at it. Ah, the frustration — ah, the rush!⁶

Instead, I take solace that this year, as I resolved myself to do, I did expand my web of awareness, did look around and ground myself in a place. I have now two properties I’m intimately familiar with — with the red-tailed hawks who nest in the pines; the two bucks that browse the wood line; the roost trees and the strutting fields; the backyards — so close, but off-limits — where the birds prefer to congregate. I finished the season more aware of how I was hunting — a consolation which will only really be apparent next season — the sting too fresh.

Still, one might wish one could have back a few minutes, might wish one could get another shot.

One always does.

I turned thirty-six yesterday. We had tomahawk bison ribeyes from my friend Matt’s ranch in Montana⁷; Mrs. CWD made me a chocolate cake with Oreo frosting; the kiddos sang me happy birthday. One is born into a life that begins with limitless possibility; one is gifted a life that is lived exactly as it’s meant to be.

We’ll see you back here next week with our regular programming.

1. One — of course — with broken arrows on the back.

2. 5-inch inseam for true athletic mobility.

3. These ones, from Bedrock, which Mrs. CWD calls my “contraceptive sandals.”

4. It was, the whole time, buried underneath the rachet straps in one’s trunk.

5. Mrs. CWD at this point is laughing — as if I weren’t hooked already.

6. Tom Kelly writes in his seminal The Tenth Legion: “Any man who has called up turkeys and killed them with a bow is entitled to wear a sign all the rest of his life, a sign which has printed on it in large letters, ‘I am a better man than you are.’ I will cheerfully step off the sidewalk and take my hat off to let him pass in complete agreement.”

I redact this not to brag, but to remind myself of the self-inflicted inanity of this hobby.

7. Well, I did at least; every one else got regular ribeyes.