James McKew

In October, I became a guest writer for High Country Spotlight, an award-winning weekly paper here in Colorado. My first story was on turkey hunting. Here is a reprint of the article:

My chances of catching West Nile Virus went up 1000% recently.

I ventured down a local deer trail into a canopy of cottonwoods, where leaves were turning taxi cab yellow. Knee-high summer grasses stood khaki-colored and crunched under my every step. Willow thickets kept me from seeing the river beyond, but the humid weight of the air floated past my nose, reminding me of a time when Zebco fishing poles, red salmon eggs, and flip-flops were a large part of my upbringing. The land swallowed me quickly, and I became a small thing in the enormous woods. My senses told me that somewhere down in the mass of trees was at least one big, beautiful Rio Grande waiting for me. I clutched the stock of my shotgun, balanced the heft on my collarbone, and went in quietly.

Instead of finding turkeys, I became a free meal for the local mosquitoes, who were more than happy to suck a couple of pints out of me. I went home that night with a hundred or pox on my arms and neck from their efforts.

Turkeys are probably my favorite creature to hunt: shaped like a basketball and low slung to the ground, I share common traits with these birds. My first experience hunting them was in Nevada. Turkeys were introduced to a wildlife area outside of Yerington, Nevada. This was early in my hunting career. I was a forty-year-old whippersnapper with a lust for the chase. The season fell in late September, and I was a sweaty, mosquito-bitten mess within minutes of getting out of the truck. My camo pants chafed my thighs, and the newly purchased shirt was still stiff in the collar. I tiptoed down the trail, feeling the electric silence around me, my archery bow leading the way. Just like here in Colorado, the birds saw me coming a mile off and stayed hidden behind thickets of Russian Olives where nightmarish thorns poked at my arms and face. After a couple of frustrating days of watching them dive for cover, my hero’s dream of Thanksgiving Day smiles and well-earned pats on the back dissolved like that cloud of mosquitoes after feasting on my carcass.

Opening Day for him, and the air was chilly. A yellow blaze crested the tree tops as we tiptoed through the briars in search of our quarry.

We spotted a group of turkeys, and his hands trembled with excitement. His face shone like a kid on Christmas morning, his eyes glowed like someone taped them over with silvery Christmas wrap. Everything was as it should be. His success would be my success. Blood runs deep, and my brother was about to put the turkey on the table and make us both proud. Only one problem, he had neglected to practice with his bow before hunting season.  So, when he drew back and fired an arrow, his aim fell everywhere but on the birds. Four times he shot, and four times failed to hit birds that stood close enough to throw the bow and hit them in the head.

Colorado has been good to me, though. I have posed for pictures with three tom turkeys in seven years. But for the last four years now, I’ve been on a dry spell. Bird populations move around. Sometimes coyotes discover a flock and decimate it in a single winter. A funny thing about taking trophy photos of turkeys is that, as the hunter, you have to get close to the birds’ rear end and hold up their fantail feathers like a big brown bouquet for the camera. (Sorry, ladies, men always have to work a butt reference into a story…part of our nature). Hunting at the river is more of an excuse to take a shotgun for a walk in the woods than an actual hunt. It makes me happy to wear camo and wander down muddy trails looking at the trees. My expectations for success are low. I get excited about finding tail feathers, wing feathers, and those fluffy little down feathers. I also get a thrill from finding turkey poop. Nothing says, “Stay longer and suffer the bugs” more than following dabs of white and green candy cane excrement that led me further into the woods.