"A Case of the Veterans"

The day seemed hell-bent on being a total bust. Despite ideal conditions, the morning was frustratingly slow. By 7:15, my friend Jackson and I had not heard a thing, unless you count the lone gobbler that sounded off from a neighboring property. Yet the weather was absolutely perfect: cool morning; no humidity; high pressure; blue bird skies. We couldn’t understand the turkeys’ lockjaw.

Then around 7:15 or a little after, a gobbler within an approachable distance decided it was time to end the silence. He fired off a nice, long gobble and our hopes were restored.

We trekked up a steep road and listened for another gobble once we reached the top of the ridge. After a few more gobbles, we were able to pinpoint the towering hardwood from which the roosted bird was trumpeting his pronouncements. We snuck down the road about ten yards and then skulked our way across the back side of a ridge that jutted off the road and into the woods.

Steep hardwood ridges rose and fell all around us. I took note of a thin drain or stream that meandered along a bottom where the many ridges ended their sharp descents. The ridge we were dissecting came to an abrupt end and we mused about needing to rappel down to the bottom if the gobbler pitched and began working the drain instead of the ridges. It was a straight drop of at least fifty feet.

We set up within sight of the crest of the ridge and began calling. Each of us had to find oaks with wide bases, as we would have fallen backwards and tumbled down the face of the ridge had we not had trees against which to lean.

We called sparingly at first; mostly clucks and purrs as we raked our hands through the oak leaves to mimic the sound of hen scratching. The tom all but ignored us at the onset. After fifteen minutes or so, however, the gobbler became a little more interested and before too long he was pretty fired up. Soon, we were enjoying the age-old game of getting the gobbler excited and then frustrating him by shutting up for long periods of time. It worked well and for a minute there, I thought we’d drive him crazy enough that he’d pitch down to check us out.

Right about that time, however, we heard a gaggle of hens on an opposing ridge break out in a cacophony of yelps, clucks, cutts and purrs as they made their way toward the gobbler in front of us. It wasn’t long before we heard the gobbler fly down and then lead away his cackling harem several hundred yards away from us.

We thought we were finished. We walked up the ridge – this time along its crest, in full view – and out of the woods to the road. We began walking back toward the golf cart and strategizing our next move when, lo and behold, a turkey gobbled from the very same spot from which the first turkey had gobbled.

At first we thought our ears were playing tricks on us. But sure enough, the second tom fired off again and we were certain he was near the same tree in which the other bird had roosted. We raced back up the road, ducked into the woods and scurried down the back side of the same ridge we’d worked minutes before. This time we descended all the way down to the bottom and set up along the drain.

We captured this gobbler’s attention almost immediately upon calling, and soon discovered that purring and scratching in the leaves was his preferred dirty talk. After a few minutes, he began cutting us off and double-gobbling. When we’d go silent on him, he’d become unglued. It was just a matter of time before he lost his composure and flew down to find us.

Or so we thought. As it turns out, that stubborn ol’ longbeard sat in that tree until 8:25, gobbling at every single call we threw at him. When we finally saw and heard him pitch, we thought we’d sealed the deal. Heaven knows we were patient enough. After he pitched and sailed to the earth on the other side of a ridge about 70 yards in front of us, I raised my gun and settled in for the shot.

Moments later, we heard another bunch of hens start cackling and cutting up precisely where we’d seen the gobbler fly down. That wily rascal wasn’t coming to us at all; he’d stayed in that tree gobbling (at us, mind you) until he finally called up some hens, and only then did he fly down.

Later that afternoon we tangled with a longbeard we heard drumming behind us off-and-on for two solid hours. When he finally gobbled, he was about a hundred yards to our right, around a curve in the road. He’d gobble. We’d call. He’d gobble. I’d cutt. He’d gobble. We’d call some more. Every time, he’d answer us with a little more enthusiasm than the time before. His gobble rattled like a lead weight shaken in a rusty can.

We called up two hens that pecked and fed and meandered in front of us for a while. Once, I saw the gobbler’s big red head at the end of the road, but he soon ducked back around the curve and resumed gobbling. He was either indifferent to the hens or insistent that they come to him.

The longbeard carried on like this until we heard him fly up to roost close by at 6:35. We were pinned down and had to sit there until it was pitch black. Finally, we were able to sneak out of there at ten minutes after eight.

As we approached the golf cart, we noticed strut marks and tracks in the road not far from where we’d parked it. “Son of a gun,” Jackson said. “He did everything to us but steal the golf cart.” I chuckled at his folksy humor as I unloaded my shotgun and set my turkey seat in the basket. As Jackson climbed in behind the wheel he sighed and said, “Well, Rog, it looks like you’ve got a case of the veterans.”

When I killed that gobbler the next morning, I remembered my friend’s observation from the night before. He was right. And that gobbler’s veteran status made the hunt and the harvest all the more meaningful.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Right Down Peachtree"

A few years ago, a friend and I were sitting in a box blind on an unseasonably warm January afternoon, wishing some deer would visit the green field over which we were hunting. It was a slow afternoon, like so many hot ones down here tend to be. About twenty minutes before dusk, a few cautious does stepped out of the treeline and walked gingerly into the field.

“Who gets to shoot?” I whispered as we watched the deer alternate between eating and scanning the woods for danger.

“You take the shot,” my buddy replied, “I already have a couple deer at the processor.”

With that, I singled out a fat, bottle-nosed slickhead that didn’t appear to have any fawns in tow, and settled in for the shot. It crumpled stone dead at the bark of my .270.

“Nice shot,” he offered.

I threw open the action and ejected the casing. It bounced off the side of the blind and clunked to the floor between my feet. “Thanks,” I said. “Right down Peachtree.”

“Do what?” he asked curiously. He squinted his eyes like I’d just suggested we go grab a couple of champagne coolies to celebrate.

“Right down Peachtree,” I repeated. He just looked at me. “Come on,” I urged. “Atlanta Braves? Ernie Johnson? The Eighties? That’s what Ernie would say any time a Braves pitcher threw a called strike right down the middle. You know, Peachtree Street. Atlanta. Surely you’ve heard ‘Right down Peachtree’ before.”

But he hadn’t. He allowed as how he’d heard of Chipper Jones and knew that the Braves were “really good or something,” but had never been much of a baseball fan. I couldn’t believe that something so iconic and pervasive from my youth was totally foreign to him. I mean, “Right down Peachtree” is as ubiquitous a phrase in my dialect as “Like it had eyes” and “Bullseye.”

I pondered this as we cleaned my harvest. As I did, it dawned on me for the first time just how much those three seemingly obscure words mean to me.

The Braves I grew up idolizing in the 1970s and ‘80s were far from the powerhouse teams of the 1990s and beyond. They were a perennial National League doormat, with the exception of the anomalous 1982 season when Joe Torre – yes, that Joe Torre – led them to the NL West Division crown. I can still name the entire starting lineup from my youth. The men who made up “America’s Team” were – and still are – the heroes of my youth, winners or not. With all due respect to Cubs fans, the Braves were my loveable losers. And despite the Braves’ smashing success over the past 20 years, it is the cellar dwellers of my youth that hold the spot nearest my heart.

Looking back, it seems that Ernie Johnson and the other Braves’ announcers weren’t just providing analysis and commentary on the games, but on my very youth as well. And that which has stuck with me most over the years, dating back to when the Braves wore those putrid powder puff blue uniforms on the road, is Ernie Johnson’s signature call, “Right down Peachtree!”.

Something else that dawned on me while my harvest twisted on the gambrel from the tugs and pulls of our primitive processing job was that the outdoors have provided me with some unforgettable “Right Down Peachtree” moments, too. Like the outstanding shot my wife made to take her first deer a few years ago. My brother-in-law’s awesome shot to take down his first buck. The first time my son hit the can with his BB gun and landed his first fish.

And, of course, the shot I made on a doe back on that warm January day, when the simple act of explaining to a friend what I’d said, and why, connected my past and my present in such a poignant way.

So now if you and I are ever together in the outdoors, you, too, will know why on those rare occasions when I connect on a long shot at a whitetail, make an impossible crossing shot on a green wing teal or thread my fishing lure perfectly between two rotting logs, I utter, “Right down Peachtree.” It’s a not-so-minor tribute to the Braves, my family, and all the other memories that walk quietly alongside me, so many years and miles from my youth.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"The Other Fifty"

My phone rang on the second or third evening of turkey season. My friend Jamie was calling to invite me to meet him the next morning to hunt on a small local tract to which his family has had the turkey hunting rights for longer than 20 years. I believe he said it totaled 160 acres. He laid out the basics for me and made it pretty clear how the hunt could go, depending on the circumstances.

“If we have a hunt, it’ll be a short one,” he said. “Assuming there’s a gobbler in there, we’ll get him. There’s usually birds roosting in there, all along that basin. We need to get in there real early so we can be sitting down while it’s still dark. We could end up sitting under a roost tree if they’re in there. Or, there might not be a turkey in there at all. This place is hit or miss, and we’ll know pretty quick. Let’s meet at the catfish house at 5:15.”

Never one to turn down the opportunity to see a new piece of property or learn from another turkey hunter or make new memories with a friend, I eagerly accepted and told myself that the bird I’d heard gobble on my own lease that morning would have to wait.

The next morning, Jamie and I met up and I followed him the short drive to the property. I never would have thought that decent turkey hunting was to be had where he took me; it was a small tract of timber nestled between a basin and some residential subdivisions. I’d driven past it hundreds of times but never knew it was there.

Jamie led the way in his truck and I followed closely behind with my headlights off. We stopped a few hundred yards past the gate and donned our gear. As we set out into the darkness, I fretted over every dark shape on the ground; it has been unseasonably warm this spring and the snakes have been out in force for weeks now. I distrusted any object that looked coiled or curved.

We covered a lot of ground quickly until Jamie stopped a few feet ahead of me and pulled down his face mask.

“There’s a food plot right down this road where they like to go in the mornings,” he explained. “They might be roosted on the back side of it in some hardwoods. We’re going to ease through these pines and sit down on a ridge on the edge of that bottom.” With that, he turned and pried himself into a young pine thicket overgrown with choking underbrush.

It’s a good thing Jamie’d been hunting this parcel for the better part of the past 20 years because I never would have found the narrow trail down which he led us. I trudged along with one hand out in front of my face to keep from walking eyeball-first into thorns, vines and pine boughs. We often had to duck under low-hanging limbs and climb over downed pine trees.

Finally we reached an opening and Jamie stopped. It was still quite dark and I could just barely make out the tops of the trees against the indigo sky.

Jamie stood silent for a minute or so before turning to me and whispering our next move.

“We need to sit down and set up on this ridge. The backwaters are only a-hundred-fifty yards out that way. They roost all in these tall pines. If they’re in here, it’ll be a short hunt. You remember that bird Seth killed last year? He and I set up right here. I clucked one time and that bird flew down seven steps from him and it was over.”

He qualified his puffery but remained optimistic. “This place is fifty-fifty, man. If they’re in here, we’re in good shape. My dad saw a nice gobbler in here the week before the season opened. This could be good.”

With that, we found a couple of good trees that overlooked the bottom and set up. Sunrise seemed to take forever as we sat there in silence. It was one of the prettier mornings I can remember in the turkey woods, and I tried to savor every moment of that sunrise.

As night surrendered to day’s unrelenting advance and the sky got lighter, the typical array of songbirds began to fill the morning air. We agreed that on such a clear, beautiful morning as this, we ought to hear plenty of gobbling.

Instead, we heard nothing. Not a gobble. Not a crow. Not a hawk. Not an owl. Around 7:30, we struck up a conversation with some hens, but they didn’t come to us. If they refused to come to us because they were anchored by a longbeard, he didn’t announce his presence in the form of a gobble.

Finally, when our time had run out and we had to retreat in order to make it to work, Jamie tried to offer some salve to soothe our having been shut out that morning.

“Well, man, I’m sorry. This place is fifty-fifty, like I said. I hoped there’d be one in here. There might be, which could be why those hens wouldn’t come in. Fifty percent of the time, we have good hunts in here. They either fly down right to us or there’s nothing.”

And I, in turn, offered him the only salve that I had. “Jamie, things don’t work that easily for me in the turkey woods,” I lamented. “They did for Seth, but I need better odds than fifty-fifty. I’m always the other fifty.” We laughed and turned back up the ridge.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, Jamie emailed me to tell me that our friend Seth had killed a gobbler under whose roost they’d inadvertently set up that morning. Their hunt didn’t last ten minutes.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011