Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 11 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
They were staying in a cabin, getting up at 4 so they could be out early enough to get off a few plausible owl calls and perhaps elicit some gobbled counterpoint in the pre-dawn. It seems turkeys will not only answer turkey calls but owls, too—anything that sounds natural.
This one fellow had a habit of hitting the sack early and rising at 3 a.m., clattering around the kitchen and depriving the others of their precious last hour of sleep. So one night, as he ripped off his first snore, the others moved his clock and watch up to 2:45 and then jumped into bed to await his alarm.
It wasn’t even 10 o’clock when he was awakened to the startling illusion that it was 3 a.m. The rest feigned sleep while he fixed breakfast. Then they made a big thing of stretching and yawning and rubbing sleep from their eyes when he got them up.
By law, turkey hunting may commence no earlier than sunrise, though you are permitted a premature hoot (an “owl,” the turkey hunters call it).
The party arrived at the appointed jump-off point for their pursuit of the most elusive game bird in North America. And they sat awaiting the dawn, which by the victim’s watch, was due in 25 minutes.
“It was absolutely black,” Clay recalls. “You could not see your hand in front of your face.
“Now, this fellow was known to be a very religious man,” Clay continues. “And he started getting nervous as it got to be 5 o’clock and the black was still as thick as pitch.
“I assured him the sun would be up in another 10 minutes. I even said I thought I could see the sky getting light on the eastern edge. The other guys agreed.
“When 5:10 came and went and he still couldn’t see the light, this fellow clearly started to panic. We knew what he was thinking: this was the end of the world!
“About 5:15 or so, he stood up and he said, ‘I know what’s happening. It’s just never going to be light again and there’s nothing anybody can do!’ ‘
“I said I did think perhaps one of us could say a prayer,” Clay recalls. “But he said, That’s fine, but please, somebody do an owl; I just want to hear one more gobble before I die.’ ”
That was Clay’s, way of illustrating the overriding intensity the faithful 2,000 feel for not only turkey hunting, but the turkey itself.
“You know, a lot of people think we go out there to kill something. They think that’s what it’s all about,” says Clay. “That’s really a very small part of it. You pull the trigger and it’s over in a flash. What hunting is all about is the hunting.”
This explains why Weakley and
89.3%