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April 2006 Newsletter
Jim Casada
Web site:
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
1250 Yorkdale Drive
E-mail:
jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com
Rock Hill, SC 29730-7638
803-329-4354
Rambling Ruminations on
the Misery, Magic, Mystique, and Enduring Mystery of Turkey Hunting
As many subscribers to this monthly
epistle already know, I long ago surrendered a corner of my sporting
soul to his majesty, the wild turkey. When one of my favorite
writers, Archibald Rutledge, suggested that “some men are mere
hunters; others are turkey hunters,” he was squarely on target. I’m
a die-hard member of the latter clan. As to whether or not that’s a
good thing, I guess the jury is still out.
From my wife’s perspective, for example,
there’s the annual problem (in my case, semi-annual, since I hunt
turkeys in the fall too) of in-house calling practice. Add to that
day after day of wake-up calls long before dawn, loads of stinking
camo clothing, missed meals, grouchiness when the birds aren’t
gobbling or Dame Fortune is frowning on my efforts, and
unquestionably she has a heavy load to bear.
Sometimes I even wonder if I’m not a
victim of either a hopeless addiction or a most pleasant misery.
When I first started hunting, for example, I was still “professing”
(in a previous life I was a university professor). I arranged my
spring classes so I could be in the woods at dawn, hunt for a couple
of hours, then scramble back to the campus just in time to change
clothes and take care of my teaching duties. Late afternoon would
find me back in the woods, hoping to find a lonely tom or at least
roost one for the next morning. A full month of that, with a huge
ration of mistakes and restless nights thrown in for good measure,
left me pretty much a zombie.
Things aren’t quite so bad now—if
nothing else I know a bit more about dealing with the big birds and
manage to kill one from time to time—although honesty confesses me
to acknowledge the fact that I’m just as eaten up with the bug as
ever. Over the years I’ve killed precisely 230 birds (see below for
the explanation of why I know the exact number), but the fact
remains that when one is at close range, whether visible or not, I
am prone to attacks of nerves that threaten to reduce me to a mental
wreck. I wouldn’t have it otherwise.
Enough of that though. Let’s turn to a
collection of thoughts, tips, suggestions, and reflections that you
will hopefully find interesting or even useful.
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The reason I
know I have killed 230 turkeys is simple. Every time I enjoy a
grand moment of success I gather up the spent hull, write a
little story about what happened, and if it isn’t too wide,
insert the beard in the shotshell along with the story. My
mentor suggested this as I stood admiring my first gobbler,
stating that “if you like this as much as I think you will,
there will come a time when you can’t remember every successful
hunt.” It was a wonderful piece of advice, and now I have boxes
of memories ready at hand to relive hunts past. You might want
to consider a similar approach.
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Whenever you
kill a turkey, savor the sweetness of the moment to the fullest
extent. After I’ve gotten to the gobbler (and I don’t believe in
the pull the trigger and run like a mad man approach—after all,
if a crippled bird gets up and starts off, you are much more
likely to finish up the deal in a solid, seated position than
while participating in the fat man’s 40-yard dash), I check the
beard and spurs, admire its beauty, check wingtips and the point
of his breast to see how much strutting he has been doing, and
then step off the distance of the shot. At that point I sit back
down in my set-up spot and relive the entire encounter from
beginning to end.
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I constantly
hear folks bragging about how much a given turkey weighed.
That’s fine and means a bit more meat in the skillet, but weight
is not a particularly meaningful measure of a trophy tom. Nor,
for that matter, is beard length. Both weight and beard length
are products of environment—what kind of food is available,
whether ice, fire, a melanin deficiency, or mites have affected
a beard, where you are in the mating season, and the like. On
the other hand, spurs tell the tale of whether you have taken a
seasoned veteran of several springs, an old bronzed warrior with
the long hooks that make him a true limb hanger, or just an
over-sexed under cautious two-year-old. Don’t get me wrong, any
gobbler fairly hunted and cleanly killed is, in my humble
opinion, a true trophy. But the most memorable and meritorious
gobblers are those with the finest spurs.
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Turkey hunting
is a sport that lends itself to mementoes. You can save beards,
collect books or magazines on the sport, take photos of
triumphant moments, amass a holding of calls, or make the sport
one for all seasons according to your personal tastes.
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Thinking along a
similar line, for the craftsman turkey hunting is a veritable
gold mine. You can make all sorts of things with spurs, fashion
wingbone calls, use feathers to tie flies, and much more.
Similarly, you can use deer antlers for turkey totes, make an
old leather belt into the same useful device, figure out special
ways to preserve memories, and much more.
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I love
quotations from some of the great writers on the sport. Here’s a
sampling from Archibald Rutledge (all of these come from stories
in my anthology of his work, America’s Greatest Game Bird,
which is available through this Web site). He didn’t
particularly favor spring hunting and wrote: “In the mating
season it is nothing to call a gobbler to you.” He also reminds
us that the sport is one where education never ends. “Turkey
hunting has been with me a kind of religion ever since a hatchet
was a hammer; and perhaps I have learned a little of the art.
Yet even after almost a half-century of hunting of the noblest
bird that graces America’s wild, I am going to confess that I am
still in the kindergarten; and I doubt if any human being ever
acquires a complete education in this high art.” I love his
thoughts on calling. “To call too much is fatal. You have to
vamp him. Like a man, he does not care for the ripe fruit which
falls into his hand. What he gets stirred up over is a siren, an
enchantress, a wildwood princess, shy and wonderful, hard to
obtain, full of shadowy avoidance, and therefore greatly to be
desired.” He also correctly notes that “calling is a thing to be
learned rather than told of.” Finally, some of his thoughts on
the difficulty of the sport. “A man is as likely to be able to
call a sacred wild gobbler as he is to make a hole-in-one
straight for nine holes,” he reckoned, and added, “you may hear
of men who have stalked wild turkey; and perhaps the thing can
be done—if the turkey is blind.”
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Now, a few of my
maxims on the sport: (1) The only absolute in turkey hunting is
that there are no absolutes, (2) Patience and persistence are
great assets when it comes to killing turkeys, (3) Calling is
only a small part of the make-up of a successful hunter; skills
in woodscraft loom much larger, (4) Anyone who says he has never
missed a turkey has just told you one of two things—he hasn’t
shot at a lot of them or he is someone given to playing fast and
loose with the truth, and (5) Turkey hunting is a sport which
you should quit as soon as you quit learning.
Now, as is my standard practice, let’s
finish with a few recipes. As these words are being written I’ve got
a big pot on the stove containing legs, neck, heart, and gizzard.
I’ll add the liver later. It will be slow cooked for a few hours,
then I’ll de-bone everything and make pate. If you overlook use of
the dark meat of a wild turkey, shame on you. That being duly noted,
there’s no doubt that the breast is the piece de resistance,
and it promises fine fare of the kind a country boy has to love.
Here are some suggestions in that regard. They come from Wild
Fare & Wise Words, a recently published cookbook that my wife
and I edited and contributed scores of recipes to its pages. I also
wrote the narrative sections, and we’d be glad to have you order a
signed, inscribed copy for $20 plus shipping.
FRIED WILD TURKEY BREAST
1 wild turkey breast
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
Salt and pepper to taste
1 ½ to 2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 cup water
Cut the turkey across the grain into
½-inch slices. Cover with buttermilk and refrigerate for 30 minutes
or more. Combine the flour with salt and pepper and coat the turkey
with the mixture. Heat the oil in a large skillet and fry the turkey
until brown. Turn the pieces, cover the skillet and let cook for a
few minutes longer. Remove the lid and continue cooking until pieces
no longer stick to the bottom. Drain on paper towels.
Drain all but ¼ cup oil from the
skillet. Sift 3 to 4 tablespoons of the flour mixture over the oil.
Cook, stirring, until brown. Add the milk and water to the skillet
and mix well. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. If gravy
becomes too thick, add more water. Serve with turkey. Makes 8 to 10
servings. This is my favorite way of all to enjoy wild turkey.
BLACK WALNUT-CRUSTED TURKEY
1 pound wild turkey breast cutlets
1/2 cup oil and vinegar salad dressing
1/3 cup finely chopped black walnuts
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon margarine
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pound the cutlets with a meat mallet to
a uniform thickness. Combine with the salad dressing in a plastic
zip-lock bag. Refrigerate for 6 to 8 hours.
Process the walnuts and bread crumbs in
a food processor until finely chopped. Add the chives and pulse to
blend.
Heat the margarine and olive oil in a
large skillet over medium-high heat.
Drain the cutlets and coat with the
walnut mixture, pressing the mixture into the cutlets so it will
adhere. Place the turkey in the skillet and lower the heat to
medium. Cook until golden brown outside and no longer pink inside,
about 4 to 6 minutes per side. Serve immediately.
Thank you for subscribing to the
Jim Casada Outdoors
newsletter.
Feel free to contact Jim with your comments, questions
or suggestions at
jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com.
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