On Target

Calling wasn’t going to work. The gobbler — a hundred-plus yards away across a field of corn stubble — was already with five hens. From behind a screen of trees, I admired the bird as he strutted.

Since dawn, I had been watching mist roll through fields and woods, hearing the occasional distant gobble. About to head home five hours later, I spotted this longbeard. Silent and majestic, he had materialized out of nowhere. Now he paraded in full sun, following hens as they meandered and fed. The birds drifted away, fooling me into thinking they were headed for the far tree line, then drifted back again.

When I started chasing deer two decades ago, didn’t give turkeys much thought. But my uncle had started hunting them as their population rebounded in eastern Massachusetts. Each spring, he shared tales of his adventures, describing birds gobbling from the roost, toms responding to his calls with excitement but keeping their distance, others coming in quiet and wary. Year by year, I grew more intrigued, until his stories finally lured me to the spring woods.

Now, in my fourth season pursuing turkeys near home in Vermont, I was hooked. Hunting these birds, with their quirky, unpredictable ways and astonishing eyesight, was humbling. I quickly learned, as my uncle had, that my deer hunting skills were of little use. Climbing a precipitously steep learning curve, I made more mistakes than I could count.

Somehow I had managed to tag a few jakes, but had yet to take a mature bird like the one strutting before me now. And this longbeard, like others I had seen, seemed out of reach.

Eventually, the hens began to disappear one by one, vanishing behind a tiny finger of land covered in tall grass and dotted with small trees. Beyond that little peninsula, I knew, was a secluded field corner.

As I watched them go, a crazy idea began to hatch. When the last of the hens slipped out of sight and the longbeard began to drift their way, it began to fledge.

I could still see the top of the gobbler’s fan when I set aside my usual caution, dropped out of the woods, and began to trot across the field. The grassy finger of land stood only a couple of feet above the stubble, forcing me to stay low. Halfway across, I began to crouch. Twenty-plus yards later, I began to crawl.

Realizing I would soon be on my belly, I unbuckled my vest and left it in the stubble, then wriggled onto the grassy peninsula, easing forward just far enough to see part of the field beyond. No birds. Had they heard or seen me coming?

After a few minutes, I heard yelps from the hidden field corner. Then, much closer, a quiet alarm putt. Lying prone, I looked up to my left and saw a hen peering down at me from less than 5 yards.

Game over, I thought, as other hens echoed her alarm.

But I stayed still, 20-gauge shouldered, recalling a group of hens passing close to my prone, camouflaged form three years earlier. They seemed nervous but never ran.

Then, miracle of miracles, birds began to appear in front of me. Hens, alert and putting, eyes fixed on me, paraded parallel to the grassy strip. With them came the longbeard, still strutting. He was bunched up with the hens, crowded too close for a clean shot. Then, as the hens began to parade back the other way — still putting, still trying to figure out what I was — there came a moment when he was clear of them.

I nearly rushed the trigger pull but caught myself. At this range, under 20 yards, the pattern of TSS pellets wouldn’t be much bigger than my fist.

Take it like a rifle shot, I thought. The gobbler was still in full display, head tucked low. To avoid damaging meat, I had to stay away from his neck. Focused on the base of his skull, I squeezed off the shot. 

The gobbler went down flapping as five hens lifted off toward the woods. My heart pounded. 

Approaching, I reached out to touch the bird’s iridescent back, powerful wings and magnificent tail. I could hardly believe it. The madcap dash had worked. Here was my first longbeard: what my uncle would call a tyrannaturk.

After freezing the breasts and legs, I trimmed as much tissue as possible from the tail and wings, pinned them out to dry, and drilled small holes into the marrow of each wingbone. Beard and spurs, similarly cleaned, went into a small open jar. Every bone, plus the beard’s base, was buried in borax.

I wanted to craft something to honor bird and hunt alike. Online, I found design ideas but nothing that felt quite right.

So I started playing with shapes — fan, extended wings, cardboard mockups in place of wood — until I found a pleasing pattern.

After gluing, cutting, and sanding white cedar scraps I’d found in the garage, I pinned two layers of wood together with a pair of screws and affixed the fan with two more.

Attaching the wings was a more delicate business. I drilled through each wing’s largest bone in two places, re-using drying holes, then screwed the wings to the wood. The bones were fragile, so I worked carefully, reinforcing with epoxy in places.

Once the main parts were assembled, I marked positions for the beard and spurs, then detached the front cedar piece and, using a Dremel tool, carved out pockets to trap them in place. Finally, I did a little woodburning, applied a satin finish, and stood back to appreciate the result.

To my eye, it was more tribute than trophy. My wife, no fan of taxidermy, commented on its beauty and suggested we hang it in the living room. Wings cupping naturally, the primary and secondary feathers just touch the wall. The cedar stands almost 8 inches off it.

The display is one of the first things people see when they walk into our home. If they ask about it, I have a story to tell.