Gobbler Struts Where No Turkey has Strutted Before

   My late friend Tom Heberlein liked contemplating whether odd occurrences were spiritual signs sent by deceased friends or beloved family.

   For instance, he shared stories about a friend — let’s call him Bill — who died unexpectedly one autumn. A week or so later, Heberlein saw a rooster pheasant while hunting a marshy island where he had never before seen anything except ducks and other waterfowl.

   Soon after, on a mild, mid-October afternoon, two pretty women in bikinis smiled, waved and canoed past Heberlein’s duck blind before disappearing into the wooded marsh with no known exit. At least he knew of no canoe take-out they could use.

   Heberlein was so smitten and amazed that he hung around till dark, assuming the women would surely paddle past on their return trip. They never did. He finally gathered his decoys and went home, wondering where the women went.

   And then he started thinking. His late friend knew Heberlein loved hunting pheasants and admired pretty girls. “Maybe he was reaching out with signs he knew I’d appreciate, but maybe my European culture blocked me from seeing the obvious,” Heberlein said. “When I share those stories with friends and wonder if they’re ‘a sign,’ they shrug and say: “Huh. That’s interesting.” But when I tell the same stories to Native Americans, they say: “Of course they’re signs. Why do you ask?”

     A gobbler pokes out of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Ashland County, as if taunting the author, who filled his turkey tag with a jake before sunset the previous day.     — Patrick Durkin photo

   Either way, it was a fun, recurring subject when Heberlein and I swapped hunting stories. For instance, I’ve had friends and fellow writers tell their dying fathers to “Send a big buck past me this fall.” I’ve also heard cousins claim a rare pheasant in their backyard was a sign from my late uncle, and a sister once suggested two bald eagles landing on a nearby shoreline were our late parents checking in on a family get-together.

   Me? I’m mostly in the camp that says, “Hmm. Fascinating.” Though I don’t look for help or comfort from the spirit world, I find it charming when others do.

   And yet …

   Similar thoughts crossed my mind last week after hunting wild turkeys in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northwestern Wisconsin. On previous Northwoods turkey hunts from Heberlein’s old shack, the professor and I relied on invitations from friends to hunt properties they own or monitor in Ashland, Bayfield and Sawyer counties.

   After arriving April 15 for this year’s solo hunt, I stowed my gear in the shack and drove to a friend’s nearby property where I shot a 1-year-old “jake” during my 2025 hunt. That hunt took patience. I neither saw nor heard a turkey the first four days, but my friend sent trail-camera photos of hens and gobblers taken nearby. Plus, I found turkey tracks and droppings on trails, so they had to be around. Sure enough, I shot my bird four hours after sunrise during the hunt’s fifth and final day.

   I tried the same spot last week, trusting everything to faith. My friend’s trail cameras detected no recent turkey activity, and I found neither tracks nor droppings nearby. I also heard no gobbling while sitting in my blind till sunset Wednesday and noon Thursday. During those 10 hours, the winds stayed calm and temperatures reached 65 degrees; perfect for hunting turkeys.

   I texted another local friend, hoping he’d offer encouraging scouting reports. Nope. He hadn’t seen anything except hens and poults on a neighbor’s field a day earlier, and those were his first turkey sightings of spring.

   Though I felt I was betraying long-held loyalties, I fled Heberlein’s turf before dawn Friday and drove 20 miles to national-forest lands I had never before hunted. Conditions were brutal for hunting turkeys, with temperatures in the high 20s and winds gusting to 22 mph. I set up atop a recently logged knoll after finding acorn caps and turkey tracks in lightly frozen mud.

   I pulled out my pot-call after nestling into the crotch of a toppled oak. Nothing answered after I stroked a few yelps and purrs on the call’s aluminum plate. A few minutes later, I pulled out my wingbone call and yelped several times. A gobbler answered, but so did two hens he was shadowing. Though I coaxed a hen into range an hour later, the gobbler somehow slipped past me and called a final time after dropping over a knoll into thick brush and timber.

   As rain blew in at midafternoon, I drove toward Hayward to eat bratwursts, drink beer and whine about turkeys with John, Brenda and Kelsey Maier. Saturday morning I again forsook Heberlein’s haunts for the distant oak ridge I hunted Friday. But if a tom turkey was nearby, the day’s cold, blustery winds blew the gobble right out of him.

   At noon, I gave up the knoll, retreated to a nearby trail and walked deeper into the forest, my attention split between deer and turkey sign. I eventually set out two hen decoys and called several times after finding tracks in a small clearing. Then I tugged up my jacket’s hood to warm my head, and fell asleep against a big oak.

   At 4:30 I walked farther down the trail to a long-forsaken log landing. Once there, I stumbled onto a gobbler and hen, and took several minutes to set up a 50-yard shot. And then I missed. Though bummed, I set up my decoys and hid behind some young balsams. Two hours later, just as the sun settled atop a tall hemlock in the western sky, I shot a jake strutting between my decoys.

   I slept in until 6:30 a.m. Sunday at the shack. When I stepped outside, my eyes red and puffy from dehydrating two days in chilly winds, I saw the shack’s thermometer read 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Behind the outhouse, ice covered a temporary pond formed from snow-melt. Well, at least the winds were still.

   Then I heard something I never expected. In disbelief, I retreated into the shack to grab my hearing aids and wingbone call. I yelped three times after stepping back outside.

   “No way!” I muttered when a gobbler answered.

   I looked toward Heberlein’s gravesite 200 yards to the southeast. I imagined him laughing, ridiculing me and waving a finger.

   “Gave up on my woods, eh? Doubt me, will you? Well, how’s this, Durkin?!”

   Then the tom gobbled again. And again.

   And all the while, it strutted ever closer into shotgun range of the nonbeliever whose turkey tag was less than 12 hours filled.