Pulling a Bendel
When I was a junior in high school, my school added ultimate frisbee as a sanctioned spring activity, fortunately falling opposite to fall soccer. The sport was played as a co-ed team, requiring at least three of the seven players on the field at one time to be female. At the risk of sounding incredibly nerdy, ultimate does actually have designated positions, generally three handlers, those that primarily throw the disc, and four cutters, those that run routes to receive the disc and generally pitch it back to a handler quickly to progress down the field to the end zone.
As a relatively new sport, it didn’t take an immense amount of talent to contend for a playing spot and it turned out I was in excellent shape from soccer and had a knack for both throwing and catching, but I was most normally positioned as a cutter.
Growing up, in both ultimate and soccer, I was commonly referred to as “Bendel,” which did cause a little hiccup, as my older brother and I sometimes played together, but we seemed to figure it out.
I crept in on several groups of gobbles in the dark and set up near a logging road where I’d noticed lots of sign the afternoon before. I packed in the full strutting tom decoy and even took the time to build myself a little blind with some branches as the birds fired off. It looked money. I waited for daylight.
Before it arrived, a hen, roosted just 10 yards away in a tree above me, began yelping the most sad, scared, desperate yelp I’ve heard and she, of course, didn’t let up. At first I thought it might play to my advantage, but as the morning proceeded the gobbles faded in every direction and she finally got down, alert chirped and left me in silence.
What a waste of a perfect morning.
I tried relocating each of the groups to no avail. They seemed to have already worked miles away as I’d sometimes catch a far-off gobble. I returned to roughly where I started, now nearly an hour later, dropped all my stuff and sighed.
I knew I had about an hour and a half until Scott said he’d pick me up. I slipped in my diaphragm call and gave it a go. To my surprise, a gobbler responded. I thought to myself “that actually doesn’t sound miles away.”
I packed up my stuff and headed in that direction, hoping to avoid setting up in the spot I started in case there was any lingering suspicion still surrounding it, but hardly made it 10 yards past there when he gobbled again, gaining ground on me.
I had to scramble. I unbagged decoys, set them up and scurried off to my left to hide. But as I was trying to get in position, I just wasn’t liking my cover or my shot. So, at the last minute, I chose some brush on the other side of the decoys.
Gobble.
I calmed myself and gave him one more call. He gobbled again and I knew he’d be heading down the road toward me.
In an attempt to avoid last year’s “Bendel” where I killed a nice tom and also shot a good dose of BBs into the decoy, I said to myself to be ready to shoot him when he goes through this gap before he gets to the decoy. But as he stepped into the gap, full strut, he did that thing turkeys do where they walk so fast they almost float in.
I missed my opportunity.
He was now on top of my tom decoy, jumping up and down repeatedly as the plastic wings scraped against the ground. And conveniently, I had no shot, as a rather large tree was located right between me and him.
Great, Cayla. After four long, fruitless days, you’ve now called in a mature gobbler to about 15 yards, the decoy is being destroyed by him instead of you, and you are going to end up telling this story with an unpunched tag.
Classic Bendel.
I could have leaned to my right or left for a shot but that would have exposed me, leaving me with a flustered shot opportunity, not my preference.
I waited. It’s gonna happen Cayla, you got this.
He finally gave up on the decoy and eyed the hen. No longer behind the tree, he twirled, giving me the fan so I could remount my shotgun I had lowered because my arm was tired, and I shot.
Can we start calling that “Pulling a Bendel” instead?
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