Sonrise Magazine

John at age ten after a successful first turkey hunt in 1950.

Chapter 3 Excerpt A Time to Shine from Johns Short Story “The Place to Be”

            On the fall after his tenth birthday, the skill and patience he had been taught at turkey hunting by his father’s side paid off when one Saturday afternoon on a deer stand at Cane Swamp, he had as he had often done after the dogs had run the deer out of sound range, taken out his yelper and practiced his calling skills.  It had never happened before when he was alone like this but this time as he yelped the call of a female turkey into the waiting and surrounding woods on his deer stand with a buckshot load in his 20-gauge pump action shotgun, he heard the unmistakable answer of a wild turkey to his call.  The law at the time was that only the male of the species, the gobbler, was legal game and for young male wild turkeys the similarity of appearance to the older hens is so close, that it is really hard to distinguish a legal from an illegal quarry.  The wild turkey gobbler grows a beard about as big around as a small cigar that protrudes from his chest as much as ten to twelve inches if he is fortunate enough to make it to maturity without getting shot.  The older gobbler is easy to spot due to this, but the young tom turkey shows no visible beard for several years.  So many questions ran through his head at this point:  Should I change the load to number twos or at least number four shot, a buckshot load would tear up the bird?  How to do it quietly? Should I yelp again to the turkey’s answer?  Will it be a gobbler or just a hen?  How can I tell? How close to let him come before shooting?  Will I always be this nervous?  The words of his father ran through his brain about what to do in a situation like this and calm settled over him that was beyond his eleven years of age and certainly his experience.  He slowly withdrew the buckshot shell from the chamber of the gun far enough to remove it with his fingers and carefully inserted a number two shot shell in the magazine. He then ever so quietly inserted it back in the firing position and eased the safety off the trigger.  He had been seated on the edge of a fire break where he could see in both directions.  Although it was November and most of the deciduous trees had lost their leaves by then, the Florida river country had an abundance of evergreen crepe myrtle and other plants such as the wild palmetto that grew along the break to hide him from view looking east in the direction, he had last heard the turkey answer.

            “Yelp yelp yelp, putt!” he softly and seductively in his best wild turkey imitation broadcast his location to the waiting bird and then for the surprise of his life, the turkey actually answered again, closer this time and within a few minutes stepped out in the firebreak looking for him.  Ronny watched the bird now in easy gun range with amazement and in terrible fear that the turkey could see him.  Wouldn’t any fool bird be able to see him, I’m not even hiding, he thought.  His father had always told him to watch the bird’s eyes and when he went behind a tree or some brush and not able to see you, and only then make your move, carefully and slowly.  “Time is your friend”, his father always said.  “Most important though Ronny, take aim before you shoot and keep your eyes open even as you fire, that way you can be ready for the second shot if necessary.  The buck shot will do just fine for a wing shot.  Believe me Son, if you miss the first one, that turkey will be airborne before you can say “Jack Flat”, he remembered those sayings as if Ben Sr. were here right now whispering instructions into his ear.  The most important thing, he remembered is “Don’t miss and don’t disappoint me Ronny, I’m counting on you to get this right”, his father had often said about shooting or anything else he was being trained to do as he painfully remembered it just right now.  He looked the young turkey over carefully before firing.  It was a gobbler he thought, tall, stately and heavier in the neck than the average hen.  The head was beginning to show that bluish grey color that young gobbler’s get about their second year, and he was pretty sure he could see the beginnings of a beard about to protrude from his beautiful neck.  It was a gobbler all right, he was pretty sure of it as he aligned the sight bead of the 20 gauge on the base of the neck as he had been taught and slowly squeezed the trigger so as to be surprised when the shell fired as all good marksmen have learned to do so that the barrel is not jerked by anticipation, off the target.  The turkey collapsed in a violent death struggle as Ronny pumped the spent shell from the barrel and rammed home the next shell just in case the bird was somehow able to recover and flee.  He couldn’t because death and the end of a young turkey life had simultaneously arrived along with the beginning of a new birth for Ronny.  He had just been born into the elite world of the successful wild turkey hunter.  None of his friends and most of his elders had ever done a thing like this.  There would be many more of these experiences as he got older and more skilled in his craft, but none were as sweet as the first one.  He reached the dying bird and the exhilaration of the victory of his first kill overwhelmed him.  The worst thing was there was nobody around to see this glorious moment.  But a good case of bragging buried carefully in a cloak of humility would just have to suffice.

            The next week, the local paper showed a picture of Ronny Collins with the gobbler in one hand and the trusty twenty gauge held over the shoulder with the other.  It was the talk of the town that year.  However, in that little place there wasn’t much news to talk about and the young son of a local prominent farmer shooting his first wild turkey at age ten was newsworthy in that small town and that was sure.

To read the whole story “A Place to Be” Click the PDF below.