The Last Show

The wildest turkey hunt of the season

I’ve been living on turkey time for the last 30 days, and have barely opened a computer — hence the radio silence here. I’m excited to get back to regular weekly stories/posts. Stay tuned, and thank you for continuing to follow along.

PS - I made some I Brake For Longbeards bumper stickers, and the first batch of 100 sold out in 5 minutes. Grab one now if you want one, there’s only a few left of the second batch.

The final day of California turkey season didn’t go quietly. It didn’t end with a triumphantly slung bird over the shoulder and a smug drive home, even though I was definitely hoping for that. Instead, the season’s closing day was a beautiful mess. It was a chaotic, totally absurd, and ultimately sacred day in the turkey woods. It was without a doubt the wildest day of turkey hunting I’ve ever had.

I’m lucky to have hunted my share of private ranches here in California. Big, sprawling oak savannahs and vineyards where the birds don’t know the difference between a box call and a car alarm. But this was very different. This was a working man’s hellman mission to the depths of public land. We left home at 2:30 in the morning on a Saturday, hopped in the truck, and drove 4 hours to a patch of ground I’d poured a lot of time into this season.

By the time we got boots on the dirt, it was already 6:30. The birds had already flown down from their tree limbs. The gobblers were already quiet, sulking through the woods with hangovers from the early morning’s breeding party. We walked in with no element of surprise, broad daylight and all. We held faith, but hope was thinning by the minute. Every step deepened the late-season dread that it might all end in silence this year.

Then… boom. Out of nowhere, a nesting hen explodes out of the tall grass like a banshee, shrieking and bawking, making sounds that I had no idea turkey made. We froze. Her poults were there, tiny and alive and squawking with her. She screamed, they screamed, and suddenly we were intruders in something far more primal than a hunt. We backed off, as the last thing we want to do is disturb a hen’s nesting process for fear that she may abandon her nest. And she’d probably also spook every gobbler in town if she kept making those noises. So we backed off like we were tiptoeing around a crime scene, gave her space, and took the long way around.

We continued hiking for a few miles to a spot I had pulled in a bird a few weeks back, and sat down under the same exact oak that I’d leaned against before. I let out a few yelps on my box call, with no expectations of anything to return communication, and as if it read the script, a faint gobble responded in the distance. It was far off, maybe 5-600 yards. Hope flickered. We might be in the game here.

“He’s too far,” Owen said. “Should we make a play for him?”

“No,” I said. “If he’s anything like the last one, he’ll come.”

If there’s one thing about wild turkeys: they don’t give a damn about your plan. The only thing that’s guaranteed, is that nothing is guaranteed. They're anarchists in feathers. They zig when you bet on zag. But sometimes, just sometimes… they do what you think they’re gonna do.

The same oak tree where Owen and I sat, two weeks earlier. Things went as planned that day.

This one was hot. He was gobbling, and kept gobbling, and did not stop gobbling - answering every yelp and every bubble cluck. He got closer and closer, until we saw him, coming in at 80 yards in full strut. He was coming right in on a string. But a barbed-wire fence stood between us and him - and he was on the private side of the fence. Eventually he got to within 10 yards of us, gobbling loud enough to rattle your ribs. He strutted and paced as he drummed, flirting with the idea of crossing the fence. We sat there in twenty agonizing minutes of strutting and gobbling purgatory as we could feel his drumming reverberating in our bodies behind the tree we were sitting on.

Then, with the softest possible sound I could make on my glass call for one last hail mary, he ducked the fence like a gentleman thief, stepping into range, and gave Owen a shot opportunity. He was now on public land, it was a clean setup, and he was 15 steps away. Everything was perfect.

Owen took the shot.

The bird rolled... and then jumped up, flapped its wings, and flew 100 yards down into the timber. He was gone.

Owen stood up and his knees buckled as he faceplanted into the grass. It was his third miss of the season. He sat there all but dry-heaving into the grass. After a minute of necessary silence, I daringly said, “It happens man. I know right now, this is not the time for me to say anything at all. But f*ck - that was the most epic hunt I’ve ever had.”

Because that—that is the show. That’s why we do this. The interaction. Getting that close to wildlife by playing the game the right way, and getting within arms reach. Seeing that bird come in on a string from 500 yards away. No decoys, no gimmicks today - just playing the game as fair as we could. Hearing every note and pitch of a turkey’s gobble at 10 steps away, and feeling his drumming in your throat. That — is the hunt.

We sat under that oak, trying to piece together what just happened. We then got up, and started walking, shooting the shit about what had just transpired.

I got out my box call, and joked, “Maybe that turkey that just flew 100 yards will come back over here running”. At this point, we’re talking at full volume - no more whispering, as this spot has been blown up by us already.

In a half-assed, half-sarcastic move, and mostly as a joke, I ripped a few yelps on the box call.

Two gobbles detonated not forty yards away.

“Dude. Holy shit. Sit. Now.”

We dropped behind the nearest cottonwood, the ground rising in front of us just enough to hide us. Two white-headed gobblers appeared. Then two more longbeards emerged, and then two more longbeards joined the other four. We now had six big toms along with two jakes that joined late — eight birds total, all gobbling their brains out in unison like a damn barbershop quartet. As I call softly, three of them walk into ten steps in front of us and poke their heads up. We can see the hairs on their ears, and we can see the tongues in their mouths, it was that close.

They were within spitting distance, and we couldn’t move — even the slightest movement, and it’d all be over. At that point, it was almost as if the turkeys were now hunting us. The three that came in, came in as jakes would — their movements and heads moving in unison, seemingly too curious for their own good. I had my shotgun’s brass bead on one at 10 feet, but was unsure if it was a mature tom or not. So I did not shoot.

Eventually, they busted us, even though we hadn’t moved. They just knew something was off when the hen they were looking for that should have been right there, turned out to just be two blobs at the base of the tree. The three birds turned, putted away—and now we could see them clearly. All three were mature toms. They left us there like dumped lovers as our hearts continued to beat out of our chests.

We stumbled back to that original tree again, and sat down to soak it in. And just for the hell of it—just because—I yelped again. Two more gobbles returned my call right away, as two massive gobblers and a hen stepped into the clearing about 150 yards away.

They began walking toward us slowly. Then they looked over in our direction, then veered off to the right, and faded into the woods. It was like the forest itself was tipping its cap. Like it was saying, “That’s enough for now. See you next spring.”

No bird came home in the truck bed that day. But we sure as shit didn’t go home empty.

The last day of the California season was more than a hunt. It was a full-throttle brain-melting experience. A reminder that wild things still exist, and on public land at that. This day was loud, beautiful, and fleeting—and it was a reminder that if you’re lucky enough to be there when these days present themselves, you really don’t need a trophy. You just need to be there.