‘The Legend’ offers hunting tips to bag a turkey
They call him “The Legend,” and after one of the most incredible hunts I’ve ever enjoyed, I can personally attest that Robert “RC” Callaway is an extraordinary turkey hunter.
We were hunting on the final day of last year’s spring turkey season at Green Glades West, Ron Bergeron’s pristine wildlife haven north of the Big Cypress Preserve in Hendry County and about a 90-minute drive west of Miami.
Callaway and I had heard a turkey gobbling as the sun was creeping over the horizon. After Callaway pinpointed the bird’s location, we scrambled over to a gap between two cypress heads and set up just inside the cypress on the western edge of the gap.
Three hours later, the gobbler, who had been more than 500 yards from us, came strutting to within 30 yards of where we were sitting. When Callaway yelped excitedly on his mouth call, the bird gobbled one last time before dropping to the ground.
“That was awesome,” Callaway said after the conclusion of his perfectly executed plan.
When the spring turkey season in South Florida opens March 4 and runs through April 9, there will be plenty of frustrated hunters because of the often unpredictable nature of wild turkeys.
When you expect them to walk in a certain direction, they will go the other way. Or a gobbler might be walking straight to you but before he comes within shotgun range — which with lead shotshells was a max of 40 yards but now with hard-hitting tungsten shells turkeys can be cleanly taken at 60 yards — he will see something he doesn’t like and turn around.
Turkey hunters use mouth, box and slate calls to imitate the yelps, clucks and purrs of a hen turkey. Spring is when turkeys mate, and lovesick gobblers are attracted to the seductive calls that they hear. But it’s not unusual when a tom turkey is coming in to a hunter’s calls for a real hen to show up and she will entice the gobbler to walk away with her.
Hunters also use decoys to attract gobblers. One or more fake hens, which look totally realistic, can convince a gobbler to come in for a closer look. In recent years more hunters are using a jake decoy, which looks like an immature 1-year-old male, to tick off a mature gobbler. An older gobbler who sees a jake with hens will sometimes come charging in to beat up the jake, giving a hunter an easy wisdom Johnson has to offer, and the deal came with spotter Earl Barban, who debuted with Johnson in that 2006 Daytona 500 victory.
“New leader ... 48,” was Barban’s trademark call as Johnson led nearly 19,000 laps in his career.
Johnson didn’t want a new spotter, but made a business decision to help his young, new driver.
“Wearing my teamowner hat and knowing the experience that Earl has and what he can share with Noah ... I just sensed it was the right thing to do,” Johnson said.
Although Petty won the Daytona 500 seven times, the last Petty-owned car to win the Daytona 500 was in 1979. Johnson has shot.
Callaway, who lives in Davie and has hunted turkeys for 37 years — he killed his first gobbler at age 19 — is careful where he places his decoys. On this hunt, he put a jake and a hen to the right of our impromptu blind so the gobbler, which was to our left, would have to walk past us to get to the decoys. And he never knew we were there.
“You don’t want to be in the same line of sight with the decoy and the area the organization in the conversation for Sunday.
Other things to watch on Sunday:
BUMPER CARS
NASCAR is in the second year of its new Next Gen car and still seeking solutions to a problem with the bumpers that caused several concussions last season.
The rear bumpers were supposed to be softened this year so that the car would absorb more energy during routine contact, but drivers earlier this month complained the hits were just as hard in the exhibition race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Racing at Daytona requires deliberate bump where you think the turkeys are going to come from,” Callaway said. “If the turkey is coming and looking at the decoy and sees you in the background, that’s not good. He’s concentrating on that decoy and any movement that happens right behind it, he’s going to catch it.
“If you’re hunting a gap, you never want to put your decoys in the gap to block a turkey’s path. You want to station them so that the turkey could still walk through the gap without drafting, and it’s an aggressive race in which the stakes are higher than a typical Sunday.
“Daytona has its own set of rules that everyone plays by,” said Brad Keselowski, who was fastest in Saturday’s final practice. ”At the end of the race at Daytona, you have to ask yourself, ‘What am I willing to do to win this race?’ More often than not, especially over the last three years, it’s taken wrecking the leader to win the
500.”
HAMLIN’S HISTORY
Denny Hamlin seeks a fourth Daytona 500 victory in a career he already finds beyond fulfilling.
The knock on Hamlin is that he’s never won a Cup championship in 17 tries. But when asked whether he’d trade a Daytona 500 trophy for just one title, Hamlin snapped: “No. I got asked that last year. No way. No chance.”
Hamlin finished ninth in his qualifying race and the entire Toyota fleet sat out of Saturday’s practice. Both the Ford and Chevy camps seemed both fast and organized — Hendrick Chevys Bowman and Kyle Larson start on the front row, Ford drivers Joey Logano and Aric Almirola on the second — but Hamlin still likes his chances. feeling intimidated by the decoys. If we put them in the middle of the gap and he didn’t want to come through that gap, he would’ve just turned and went the other way.”
Another key to our hunt was Callaway making the kee-kee run call of an immature bird to let the gobbler know that our jake decoy was not a threat to him.
“The bird didn’t want to come over to us, so for whatever reason he decided to go away, maybe because he didn’t want to challenge a gobbler,” Callaway said. “When we did a kee-kee run and he thought it was a smaller gobbler that couldn’t gobble, then he decided that maybe he could challenge him.”
Unfortunately for that gobbler, he was wrong.
TURKEY TIPS
Callaway said that as hunters walk through the woods, it is critical for them to see a turkey before the turkey sees them.
“If every time you turn a corner and you expect to see one, you will,” he said. “But if you just walk around the corner not expecting to see one, you’re only going to see one running.”
If hunters who camp on South Florida’s two public areas where no permit is needed to hunt turkeys, J.W. Corbett and Big Cypress, can boil water, they can eat healthy and filling meals.
Colorado-based Backpacker’s Pantry has a variety of tasty freezedried breakfasts, entrees and desserts that come in pouches. After a long day of hunting turkeys, just add boiling water to the pouch and seal it and in 15 minutes you have dinner. There are meals for most diets, including vegan and dairy-free, as well as entrees like Pad Thai, Fettuccini Alfredo and Lasagna. Visit backpackers pantry.com.