A man from Florida assures me
there is no bird anywhere as wily
as the Osceola. Try slipping
past panthers through palmettos
and cabbage palms, roosting
in live oak hammocks overlooking
irrigation canals where alligator
eyes glow red in the moonlight.
"Son, we've got mosquitoes
that will chip the paint off
your Thermacell," he'll say.
But the Montana man won't believe.
Merriam's may be soft-spoken,
they may have the smallest hooks
and shortest beards, but one morning
he watched a bird on the limb,
a five year old tom in a ponderosa pine
with a fan white tipped and glowing,
hit the ground and gobble non-stop
for fourteen hours. That bird covered
thirty miles across twelve drainages
and never once broke strut.
No matter where you travel,
someone will say, "The pasture
was full a month ago, but they disappear
just as soon as turkey season gets here."
They will read your face and laugh,
pass the wit off as their own like stories
of Volkswagon-sized catfish that cruise
the base of the local dam. The diver,
their uncle, won't swim down again.
The man in Mississippi says
crooked letter birds roost
by the road to inventory
headlights. Long box, short
box, scratch box, slates,
tubes, trumpets, wingbones,
Jordans, Roanokes, Fool Proof,
there's not a call on Earth
these Easterns ain't heard.
The only trick a man has
left is an old family secret:
strip naked, bend over,
walk backwards. Sometimes
curiosity kills the cat.
The man in Texas may agree
with the Mississippi man
that the hardest bird to kill
is an Eastern. Then again
he may very well tell you
it's a Rio. But regardless
of the subspecies, one thing
is clear: only Lone Star birds
wear spurs like cowboys.
It's the windy day gobbler,
the rainy day gobbler,
the henned-up gobbler,
the call-shy gobbler, the early
season gobbler, late season
gobbler, the gobbler
that won't gobble gobbler.
But all I know is this:
a turkey is a turkey is a turkey.
"What chance you got
with something that can
evaporate before your eyes?"
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