photo courtesy of Teri James
This article was first published in Dallas Safari Club’s Member Stories From the Field, Volume I.
There’s a genre of music specific to geography in this great nation of ours. The blues are belted out in Memphis, and bluegrass is played in every holler across the Appalachians. Detroit is home to Motown, and Texans are sure proud of their Red Dirt. Where I live in the heartland, most radio dials are tuned in to country stations. Not the Red Dirt country you hear in Texas, though. And definitely not the skinny-jeans country that’s coming out of Nashville these days. No, here in Oklahoma, we listen to classic country. Country-and-western country. Willie-and-Waylon-and-the-boys country.
So do the birds we hunt.
I’m convinced that wild turkeys are the music lovers of the great outdoors. I’ve seen jakes scratch and spin like deejays on a turntable. I’ve watched hens launch themselves into each other like they were in the mosh pit of a punk rock concert. And I’ve seen toms saunter into setups like they were throwing the saloon doors open at the local honkytonk, knockout the closest jake, and then two-step with the cutest hen in the crowd. That’s exactly what happened one afternoon last spring.
It must have been Ladies’ Night in the back pasture, because the decoy I had just staked out in front of me was already being invited by a group of gossiping hens to powder her nose in the ladies’ room. With all their chatter, it didn’t take long before a jake sidled up and tried to get friendly with the new girl. The youngster trotted out every pickup line he knew, but before he could seal the deal with my decoy, a drumming so loud it sounded like the idle of a diesel truck rumbled through the woods.
A sure enough stud of a tom turkey strutted in then and scattered every bird on the dance floor except for my decoy and the lovesick jake. The newcomer’s head glowed like a neon beer sign in a tavern window. His broad chest was puffed all the way out, and the secondary feathers on his shoulders glittered like rhinestones in the late afternoon sun. The bird had a buff colored bar across his tail fan that looked just like the leather hatband stretched around a black Stetson. He wore sharp spurs on his boots, and he sported a beard that would turn Charlie Daniels green with envy.
Needless to say, when that tom cut in, that jake cut out. The tom turkey snatched up my decoy and spun her around the dance floor, strutting and sashaying and singing at the top of his lungs. He belted out the chorus to “Friends In Low Places.” He line danced to “Copperhead Road.” And when the opening notes of Alabama’s “Feels So Right” came easing out of the jukebox, the tom pulled my decoy close and crooned in her ear.
It was about that time that the jake tried to cut back in. He tapped the tom on the shoulder and didn’t get a response. Then he did it again and got backhanded for his trouble. When he tried it a third time, the tom turned away from my decoy and gave the jake his full attention. He looked his challenger up and down, and then, without even a whiff of a warning, the old tom karate kicked the younger bird square in the chest. That broke the jake’s spirit, and he slunk off to nurse his wounded pride. Eventually, the hens found their way back from wherever they’d scattered to, and the dance floor filled up again. They were nothing but wallflowers, though, because the tom only had eyes for one girl – the pretty little plastic one wrapped up in his wings.
The two of them two-stepped together right up until the moment a lonesome coyote hollered out last call, and as the tom was trying to convince my decoy to let him drive her home, I pulled the plug on the jukebox. Everybody cleared out pretty quickly then. Everybody except for the tom, that is. That tough old country-and-western bird is now singing the blues.
Wright Outdoors 