{"id":202,"date":"2008-11-07T17:40:57","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T17:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gandgmag.wpengine.com\/articles\/uncategorized\/the-turkey-whisperer\/"},"modified":"2017-03-10T10:42:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T15:42:59","slug":"the-turkey-whisperer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/articles\/the-turkey-whisperer","title":{"rendered":"The Turkey Whisperer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The art of wild turkey hunting is the art of misdirection, but, then again, most art does that \u2014 deals in camouflage and commitment.\u00a0 And Duff Holbrook is the master in both.\u00a0 In the months leading up to the spring turkey season, he\u2019s often in the woods scouting for signs, and on opening day he\u2019ll get his turkey. But only one. You\u2019re allowed two a day, but only five for the year, and he\u2019ll be spacing those out.\u00a0 No, he\u2019s not going to shoot a turkey every time, but he\u2019ll have his five soon enough, and then he\u2019ll spend the remainder of the season still waking before \u201cnewspaper sunrise\u201d and entering the woods.\u00a0 Calling up turkeys is sport enough, and, as Duff would have it, more than half the fun.\u00a0 Duff is eighty-three, and he\u2019s been hunting wild turkeys for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

And an even longer time ago, my father, William P. Baldwin, Jr., was a wildlife biologist here in the Southeast and ran one of the earliest wild turkey restocking projects.\u00a0 He took a handful of turkeys from South Carolina\u2019s Francis Marion Forest and released them onto nearby Bull\u2019s Island, at Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge. Except for a few small coastal pockets, the turkey was gone from the state, and the federal government had high hopes for this project. But my father\u2019s effort turned into a dismal, twelve-year-long tar baby. The exceptional tick population of the island literally ate his birds alive, and no amount of work and worry could make it otherwise.\u00a0 \u201cDuff Holbrook,\u201d he would say, \u201che started trapping in the Francis Marion in 1948 and spreading the turkeys around the state.\u00a0 From the midlands up, if you see a wild turkey, Duff put it there.\u201d<\/p>\n

So even before Duff Holbrook retired from government service in 1983 and returned to South Carolina to care for private forest in our McClellanville area, I\u2019d heard his name, and after that I\u2019d bump into him in a restaurant or at a community gathering.\u00a0 I watched him grow a bit bent, and saw the plentiful lines on his face deepen \u2014 lines he credits to the bumps and bruises of a busy life, but a fair number of them are smile lines and the product of an unstoppable optimism.\u00a0 Even today, he and his wife Eleanor strike me as eternally young.\u00a0 Four children with successful careers, grandchildren to visit, and who visit them, and the outdoors to enjoy all make for an excellent second retirement and even more smiles.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Peter Frank Edwards<\/p>

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Now, Duff\u2019s always had nice things to say about my father\u2019s turkey work, and he claimed that the two of them together had refined the cannon net now used for turkey trapping all over the United States.\u00a0 We\u2019d chatted off and on, and finally I got around to tape recording a couple of hours of turkey trapping reminiscences complete with calls (which are almost ready for release). Duff\u2019s a master turkey caller.\u00a0 I know that\u2019s said of others \u2014 of hundreds of gifted others \u2014 but, as far as I know, Duff is the only person who\u2019s called a gobbler up close enough for the turkey to be grabbed by the neck.\u00a0 And it was. A rare New Mexican Gould\u2019s turkey. The bird charged angrily into the blind, and Duff\u2019s companion grabbed it. Eight other wildlife biologists were there to serve as witnesses. Validation?\u00a0 Duff received an official reprimand from his Forest Service superior.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t get any more real than that.\u00a0 But last month when I told that story to an itinerant turkey hunter, he said, \u201cIt couldn\u2019t happen.\u201d I said, \u201cIt did.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIt couldn\u2019t happen,\u201d he repeats, then leans close into my face and adds, \u201cDon\u2019t make me say the word \u2018lie.\u2019\u201d Christ, I thought, why would I want to lie about something like that, or, more exactly, why would Duff want to lie about something like that?\u00a0 \u201cWhy would he lie about something like that?\u201d I asked. But apparently that question didn\u2019t even deserve an answer, and we went on to coon hunting and the state of the nation.
\nThen, last week, Duff said, \u201cLet me take you turkey hunting.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been twice this spring and got two turkeys.\u00a0 I know a place.\u201d\u00a0 I readily agreed.\u00a0 \u201cBut don\u2019t say where I took you,\u201d he continued.\u00a0 \u201cIf anybody asks, just say Dorchester County.\u201d\u00a0 Dorchester County starts eighty miles from where we stood and covers four thousand square miles.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re going to ask you.\u00a0 You wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morning. An hour before newspaper daylight, and we\u2019re in Duff\u2019s truck bumping along a narrow logging road. A major South Carolina river is a mile to our left (I won\u2019t say which river, but Hampton Plantation, past home of the poet laureate and premiere turkey hunter Archibald Rutledge, is several miles to the south). There\u2019s a pale gray suggestion of light, and when the truck stops we\u2019ve got visibility of a hundred feet or so.\u00a0 We\u2019re in a loblolly forest, a regeneration one, but as we follow a sandy fire line trail off towards the river, this gives way to a more mature mixture of towering pines, oaks, and hickories.<\/p>\n

“As far as I know, Duff is the only person who’s called a gobbler up close enough for the turkey to be grabbed by the neck. And it was.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Duff\u2019s come home. Growing up in the mountains of Virginia, he\u2019d lived the woods; he\u2019d hunted, fished, and even run a trap line. A wildlife biologist is what he wanted to be, and fortunately the best training in the nation was right there at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (I know it\u2019s the best \u2014 my father went there four years ahead of him).\u00a0 Duff enrolled, but then a detour as a bomber navigator carried him off to Italy.\u00a0 With the war over, he finished up with a Master\u2019s from the University of Wisconsin, took a job in north Georgia, and soon heard of the turkey trapping program proposed for the Francis Marion Forest in South Carolina.\u00a0 He got the job.\u00a0 \u201cYou want to keep this job, catch turkeys and deer.\u201d\u00a0 That was the directive in its entirety.<\/p>\n

Wild hogs were the problem.\u00a0 Turkeys nest on the ground, and the hogs ate the eggs.\u00a0 Duff ran a twenty-six mile fence around the most likely portion of the forest, trapped off 800 hogs, and after a couple of years began to capture turkeys with a net of thin webbing shot out with a black powder charge.\u00a0 He moved 350 turkeys into the upstate areas, and the birds now found in every South Carolina county, and some in Georgia as well, are descended from those.\u00a0 When I say Duff is home, I mean it as in \u201cwhere the heart is.\u201d<\/p>

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\u201cA kick out,\u201d he whispers, and nudges the cleared patch of leaves.\u00a0 \u201cAnd here, the limb, see.\u201d Only afterwards does he explain that, months before, a buck had kicked out a place to pee and then rubbed the scent glands beneath his eye on the low lying limb.\u00a0 I should know that, and maybe I did in some past life.\u00a0 I walk the roads nowadays.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t gone hunting in more than thirty years, and, in addition, I usually read until three in the morning.\u00a0 Since we were leaving at 4:30, I didn\u2019t bother to go to sleep, and am in that critical state of post-unconsciousness enjoyed by many insomniacs: semi-foggy.\u00a0 But lack of sleep is not the true culprit, for true woodcraft involves seeing, hearing, and smelling on a level so well instructed it becomes instinctive. Learning to truly see \u2014 learning to involve any and all of our neglected senses \u2014 requires a great need (a passion), and while this is true of art or music appreciation and a multitude of other pleasures, I can swear to you that it is the most true of turkey hunting.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"

Photo: Peter Frank Edwards<\/p>

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Holbrook<\/p> \n <\/div>\n\n

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\u201cHere,\u201d he whispers, and with a guiding hand he places me down behind and beneath a fallen post oak.\u00a0 He takes his own position in front and in the open.\u00a0 Lying on his back with only his head and a portion of his shoulders raised, he lays the shotgun out along his legs. I\u2019ve seen photographs of snipers in this position.\u00a0 And as to cover, he\u2019s wearing a camouflage coat and hat, and his body is below the level of the fallen tree trunk.\u00a0 It\u2019s the human silhouette you have to disguise, and the pronounced movements you have to avoid. We wait. A half hour. The sun is rising. Duff holds the wing bone in his mouth and gives a distinct but quiet chirp. Counting his voice, he\u2019s brought five calls, but this wing bone of a hen turkey is his favorite. He waits ten minutes and chirps again.\u00a0 This time an answer comes. A soft and distant gobble.\u00a0 Fifteen minutes.\u00a0 It seems an eternity, but Duff waits it out in complete and motionless silence, and then gives a second quiet chirp.\u00a0 We are the hen turkey, and the distant males are coming down from roosting the night in a tree.\u00a0 As mentioned, hunting turkeys is about misdirection \u2014 misdirection and passion.\u00a0 It\u2019s about love, and if Duff answers too quickly, the gobbler would be suspicious.\u00a0 He knows hens.\u00a0 A hundred thousand years of trial and error have brought him to this point.\u00a0 A real flesh-and-blood turkey hen is a sometimey thing.<\/p>\n

Gobbles and clucks, gobbles and clucks.\u00a0 Duff switches to a small mouth-held call and gives our flirtatious, fictitious hen a whispered anxiousness.\u00a0 And we hear a rising urgency in the calls of the approaching gobblers.\u00a0 Two gobblers.\u00a0 The males usually travel in pairs so they can best defend their territory and attract females, which they are now hurrying to do.\u00a0 The answering calls are close, a hundred feet or less, and my eyes fasten earnestly upon every branch and shadow. My untutored eyes, it would seem: I have seen nothing, and the hunt is over.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, at least we saw them,\u201d says Duff as he slowly pulls himself upright.<\/p>

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\u201cSaw them?\u201d I question.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo young gobblers. They strutted back and forth a couple of times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere?\u201d I ask, and point off into the woods before us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere?\u201d he laughs.\u00a0 \u201cNo.\u00a0 Back on the path.\u00a0 They were within range.\u00a0 But just barely.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t be sure of killing one.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s pointing off at a right angle to where I\u2019d been expecting the birds. More than a right angle \u2014 110 degrees.<\/p>

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In the restaurant the next day, a retired forester \u2014 and old Cajun woodsman \u2014 asks about our turkey hunt.\u00a0 \u201cWhere\u2019d Duff take you?\u201d he asks. \u201cAnd don\u2019t tell me Dorchester County.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Peter Frank Edwards<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/p>

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How one man brought the wild turkey back from the brink in the 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