Just got back from a trip with my son and two friends to Nebraska to hunt Merriams. Had a great time and learned some very valuable lessons. The first lesson was learned before we ever left SC. In case you didn’t know, reservations are for the convenience of the car rental company. They have nothing to do with whither or not you get what you asked for and were promised a month ago. Car rental people are a close second to used car salesmen as the lowest life form on earth. I also learned that if you let them over hear you threatening to kill everyone in the building while talking on the cell phone, that the building empties pretty quickly, but that they will jump through hoops to find another van to replace the one that you were promised to begin with..
The next thing I learned was that just because mapquest says you can drive 1360 miles to Spencer Nebraska in 22 hours doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea to do so, esp in a suv that is smaller than what you originally planned in packing four people and all their stuff in.
I learned that it’s not a good idea to tell your guide “ Go as hard as you can and if I can’t keep up, I can catch up.” Especially if he is 10 years younger and 50 pounds lighter and his other job is guiding elk hunters in the Bitterroot mountains at 6000 feet above sea level and his hobby is marathon hiking. I also found out that if there is the promise of a chance of a turkey at the end of a 45 minute uphill hike, that despite being 47 years old and having survived 5 by-pass surgeries, I can keep up with anybody. I have to use a slate call because there isn’t enough air left to use a diaphragm call when I get there, but I can do it.
I learned that while Nebraska doesn’t have the cactus that Texas has, there is still plenty of things that will stick you till you bleed. Another valuable lesson was that it’s much funnier when the guide backs into a yucca plant than when I do. Results in a pretty good locator yowl as well, no matter who does it.
I relearned what a good kid my fifteen year old son is. He told the guide several times how bad he felt that he shot the first bird and I hadn’t had an opportunity to shoot. It was clear that my son felt much worse that I didn’t get a bird than I did.
I learned that I really do mean it when I tell my son that I would rather be there when he shot a bird than shoot my own and that I can have a great time even when everybody else in my party shoots multiple birds and I never come closer than a hundred yards to a gobbler.
I learned that I never, ever want to be a guide in another life. Those guys work way to hard for the money they get paid. Job satisfaction has to be the motivation because those boys worked like pulpwood loggers to get us on the birds. They got up at 4am and didn’t stop hunting and scouting until pitch black dark at 9:45 that night.
The main thing I learned though was that turkeys are turkeys no matter where you hunt them. Nebraska turkeys will leave you for a hen in a minute. They will go the other way for no apparent reason. They will stand there and gobble at every sound they hear but a turkey call. They will leave hens that come to the call and stand there and watch from a safe distance to watch those same hens walk right by the tree I am set up against. Jakes will take every opportunity to run off a strutting gobbler and then will practically beg you to shoot their young asses.
The last thing I learned was that last, long, slow walk down the hill to the truck on the last afternoon of a three day hunt is just as bittersweet as that walk back to the truck on the last day of the season here in South Carolina and that this time next year, if God is willing, will find me making that same walk in Nebraska.
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