Growing up in the midwest, the hunting season I mainly took part in was deer hunting. While I have for years been turkey hunting with my sons, this spring I was able to get my first turkey. This was my first gobbler, and I walked away from turkey camp with great memories, but also insights I want to share—mainly that hunting can be a family activity. And even if you don’t feel like hunting, you can be part of this experience, as it is a great way for families to unplug and spend time together.
Family
Let’s start with family. Modern life doesn’t offer families as many opportunities to spend time together without screens or interruptions as past generations have had. The season for turkey hunting—early to late spring—is a great point for families to take time (even a day) and be together. Maybe that is sitting in the turkey blind, maybe that is sitting around a campfire at night, maybe it’s sitting around the dinner table after hunting is over. Even if you don’t physically leave your house and go to turkey camp, you can still make the time something that you spend together and use it to interrupt the hectic schedule most families have.
Perhaps someone has invited you to go hunting and you never wanted to. Forget that! Go along! Listen to the birds in the morning singing, learn how to call turkeys, enjoy the sunshine and fresh air and time together, share stories about your family or talk about the upcoming year and what plans you have.
Food
The next thing that participating in turkey camp, or any hunting camp, gives you is an opportunity for good food. Whether you’re cooking for people because that’s what you like to do, or you get a break from cooking and you order a pizza after a long day of wandering the woods, hunting is another opportunity to share time with your family and just reconnect with each other over a meal.
Maybe you invite relatives, spend time with grandparents or siblings. No matter who you are with, sharing a meal is always something families can do together. And after a day in the woods, everyone is hungry! You don’t have to shoot a gun to be part of that.
Incidentally, turkey pot pie is one of our favorite dishes, and I cooked my turkey into a delicious pot pie when I got home. Turning wild game into a home-cooked meal is so satisfying. We used anything left from the bird to feed our chickens—yes, chickens are omnivores, and they loved it!
Fun
One thing turkey hunting holds that deer hunting doesn’t—you get to be noisy! You literally are trying to call birds to you. Maybe you’re scrambling through the brush and the puddles and the farmers field trying to crawl up on a turkey. If you’ve never crossed through a muddy field in hopes of getting a shot at a turkey, you haven’t experienced the fun and hunting! It brings me back to my childhood and wandering in the woods, building forts, just being.
The serendipity in hunting is something else that is good for the soul! How many things in life do we feel like we must control, manage and plan? Sure, hunting requires some planning and a little bit of effort is going to yield better results, but in the end even when you do everything right, sometimes that turkey is not in the cards, and that’s OK. It’s the experience that makes or breaks a hunt.
On this particular turkey hunt, we did some epic low crawls through mud, puddles, fields, vines and brush. I was soaked into my boots and when we finally got around to where we wanted to be, the big gobbler and his hens had flown off. We went back to the truck and laughed, and then a phone call for a delivery meant we took a different road back. We passed the field where our intrepid turkey guide saw some birds and while we quickly addressed the issue on the phone, we scrambled back to the field and set up a near a tree, and called that turkey in. It was beautiful! Meant to be.
In a world where people who work hard at life are constantly trying to make things happen, it’s good to spend any time that you can putting your best effort into something and taking every moment as it comes. That’s hunting! And doing it with family is going to create beautiful memories!
Being in nature, without the constant interruption of email and phones can help people reclaim some of our humanity. We don’t always have to be answerable to every electronic ding and vibration happening around us. Sometimes we just need the sounds of nature and the energy that resonates in the natural world. Sometimes it’s enough to just be.
