"The Cutover Tom"

If you go outside before dawn on any cool, still morning after turkey season, face due north of Mobile, Alabama, and listen very hard, you will be able to make out the unmistakable sound of laughter. When you hear this laughter, you will note that it distinctly resembles the long, drawn out, throaty gobble of a mature longbeard; but make no mistake – it is not just a gobble. It is laughter; heavy, uncontrolled belly laughter. If your ears are keen enough and your concentration great, you will discover that this laughter originates from a single pine tree located next to a branch running north-south along the property line beside a two year old cutover on my hunting lease.

The source of this laughter is a weary old gobbler I have respectfully dubbed The Cutover Tom. The object of his waddle-borne cachinnation is me. The joke is two years old and running.

I encountered The Cutover Tom on opening morning two seasons ago. Since then I have thought of little else when it comes to hunting turkeys. He was the first bird to sound off that crisp morning. I had been standing at the foot of an old-growth pine twenty yards into the woods off a food plot since long before sunup, listening for that distant gobble by which to set the morning’s compass. His first gobble was an irritated response to his arch rival, the boisterous barred owl. I remained in place, excitedly hoping for a second offering to nail down his location. He was even louder the second time he gobbled, and I immediately set out in his direction.

The sun was not quite up but it was light enough that I knew I had to use the terrain to get close. I worked my way through a bottom, a swamp, and up a ridge that led to a logging road on the edge of a brand new cutover. There I stopped and waited, mindful not to get too close and bump him off the roost. After a minute or so, he throttled his long, rattled gobble two more times. I took off across the logging road and through the corner of the cutover to yet another wooded swamp where I knew my approach would be concealed. I trudged through black water and mud, thankful it was too cool and too early for the cottonmouths to be out, and inched closer to the next section of cutover ridges.

I owl hooted and the roosted tom all but cut me off. He was roosted in some old pines about 100 yards from a food plot at the eastern boundary of the cutover. Despite myself, I had arrived in the perfect location to hunt him. I was at the base of a ridge below the food plot within 150 yards of the bird. And he had no idea I was there.

I got set up and waited about twenty minutes before calling to him lightly with tree yelps and some soft clucks. He must have gobbled in response to every one. A few minutes into our duet, I slapped the stew out of my right leg and gave a loud fly down cackle and then shut up. Moments later I watched him fly down into the food plot. I could hardly contain my anticipation.

From that moment on he never made another sound and I never made another sound decision. Because I was below the ridge in front of me, I could not see what he was up to or where he was. I had to assume this gobbler could pop up at any second, so I remained motionless with my gun in the ready position waiting for my heart to burst right out of my chest.

Not long after the gobbler pitched, three hens flew down from overhead into the cutover to my left. This was perfect. I was now between the tom and three live hens which immediately began cutting and clucking when they hit the ground. I was already deciding how the taxidermist would mount my gobbler for me. “Hell,” I thought to myself, “I might even make it to work before nine o’clock at this rate.”

One hour, one numb left foot, and one tingling backside later, I still had neither seen nor heard that tom. I decided I’d better go to him if I was going to seal this deal. I belly-crawled up the ridge to a pile of tree debris and began glassing the expansive cutover with my binoculars. Not a bird in sight, not even the hens. Frustrated, I slowly lowered the binoculars back onto my chest and settled back on my legs which were folded beneath me. At that precise moment, the gobbler emerged from behind a cut down pine 35 yards to my right, putted twice, ran through the food plot, and took flight like an airliner lifting off the tarmac before disappearing over the trees and out of sight.

I was sick, physically nauseas. I fell onto my back and stared at the bright morning sky as I tried to fathom how I had so poorly prosecuted such a promising hunt. I had covered almost 400 yards and crawled to within 35 steps of this mature gobbler without either of us knowing how close I’d been until it was too late. One innocent movement had busted the whole deal. His silence after hitting the ground had saved him from the dose of Hevi-Shot I had set aside to offer him. Had he gobbled or drummed just once I might have known he was there.

I stood up and walked over to where he had stepped out from behind the downed tree. I became even more ill when I surveyed the logging road and realized he had spent the past hour and a half walking back and forth in a 30 yard stretch of the road, studying the cutover in search of a date. The long-toed tracks with little divots behind them that cluttered the logging road dashed any hopes that I had spooked merely a hen.

I spent the better part of last season hunting that Cutover Tom. I got close a couple more times but always he prevailed. Halfway through this most recent season, I patterned his tracks in the same 30 yard stretch of logging road beside the food plot and decided to hunt him again. I told my wife I was borrowing trouble by doing so and I was right. No matter where or when I set up on this bird’s hangouts, he refused to keep our appointments. Yet again I walked out of the turkey woods the last day of the season with nothing slung over my shoulder but a shotgun.

Getting bested by a mature longbeard is no reason to feel ashamed or insulted. Finding a tom’s tracks on top of yours in the road, on the other hand, constitutes grounds to shoot him off the limb with a .270 if presented with the opportunity. Not really of course, but losing the chess match to this unpredictable and regal adversary is no reason to sell your turkey gear and take up scrapbooking. Although in my case being owned lock, stock, and barrel by that Cutover Tom sure seems like a good reason to at least place the classified and see if I get any nibbles.

Ol’ Cutover’s still alive and well. He still roosts in the pines above the branch, safe and sound. Speaking of sound, is that laughter I hear?



(c) Roger Guilian 2006 - NO LONGER FOR HIRE. ACQUISITIONED FOR PUBLICATION IN 2007.