I’ll remember this morning because we don’t get many like this, especially in spring. I don’t need my jacket but I’m wearing it because it’s camouflage and I want to blend in. If there’s a breeze, I’m not feeling or seeing it, as the tail feathers of a jake shot seasons ago and slipped into the rear of the decoy aren’t moving, not even a little.
It’s a half hour or more before sunrise and the ring-necked roosters are the first to open the day in this neck of Morton County with their loud and unmistakable caw-cawk crows to advertise to hens their whereabouts and to warn other males to keep their distance.
Not nearly as loud, but noticeable, is the traffic on I-94 running east and west about a mile south of here. People heading to work, trucks hauling freight … and I’d guess that only a minority of the commuters know it’s turkey season in North Dakota and understand the want and need to purposefully roll out of bed at an unlikely hour to hide in ambush of a big bird that spent its night up a tree.
We’re hiding in a brush thicket on top of a hill that allows a decent view into the many deep folds in the land. Yet, some of the draws are steep enough that if birds don’t come in making a noisy fuss, they could be on us with little or no notice. To add more concealment to our setup, we staked a ground blind on the east side of the thicket that reminds me of small fence if that small fence had three triangular shooting windows.
While I haven’t shot a turkey in a number of years, it doesn’t feel like that long ago, which likely has much to do with the fact that I’m hunting the same piece of property where I last pulled the trigger and the same buddy sitting behind me will be working his turkey call just like he did in 2021.
Good vibes, if nothing else.
As we inch closer to sunrise, the turkeys start talking. We converse in low voices and wonder when they’ll leave their roosts and mentally cross our fingers that they venture our way when they do. Like tennis fans, we turn our heads left, right and left again as the seemingly warring rafters of turkeys call back and forth from different roosts.
We’re not close enough to hear the big birds thumping to the ground when they leave the trees, but their dark shapes are easy to see in the low light when they do at 400-plus yards. The big toms, having played this spring courting ritual before, don’t waste time spreading their wings and tailfeathers to impress the hens, while the younger birds are seemingly more interested in stretching their legs after a night of doing very little off the ground.
We have until noon. That’s when we need to fold our chairs, collect the decoys, take down the ground blind and hike out of here. As we watch the flock of turkeys slowly move maybe 15 yards in our direction, we question if at this pace they’ll make it to us by our noon deadline.
I’ve killed a lot of time in turkey hides over the years — in buffaloberry patches, leaning against trees, hunkered in an abandoned hog barn once — and there a far worse places and ways to while away a spring morning on the prairie. Part of me doesn’t want this to end. I could do this tomorrow morning or the next if the weather holds, if work doesn’t get in the way, if my retired hunting buddy is free, and if the landowner is amenable once again to our company.
Turns out, that’s a lot of “ifs” we won’t have to answer today.
