Marsh bass will cover the banks this month. Here’s how to get them on the end of your line.
“You need to park a little way down the road and walk to the tram; you don’t want to drive in too close because you never know where one might be roosted.”
With these words of instruction from my host, Tommy Smith, I left the campgrounds at San Patricio south of Mansfield and parked my truck less than 100 yards down the road leading to the old tram, a long-ago abandoned railroad bed that ran adjacent to a creek bottom.
Wild turkeys were known to roost and feed along the tram, and I hurried along the sandy road, trying to outrun daylight which was rapidly approaching. A crow flew overhead, cawing loudly as I hurried along.
G-G-G-O-O-O-O-B-B-B-B-L-L-L-E-E — the roar of a longbeard turkey gobbler practically knocked my hat off as I skidded to a halt. The vocal bird that responded to the crow was roosted in a pine no more than 200 yards off the road, nowhere near the old tram.
I sneaked into the pines, placed a hen decoy in front and settled down against a tree. I softly yelped; the gobbler answered, and I heard his wingtips flicking branches as he flew down. When he stepped out from behind a clump of wild fern, he was 5 feet from my decoy. A load of No. 6s did the trick, and my hunt was over practically before it began.
Driving back to the San Patricio camp, I met my host, who congratulated me on my success.
“I’m glad you got that old sucker,” Smith said. “He’s probably seven or eight years old, and intimidates all the other gobblers in the area. Maybe they’ll start gobbling now that the big bully is gone.”
My bird was indeed a good one. With a beard measuring 12 inches and wide-based spurs just a tad under 1½ inches, the gobbler tipped the scales at 23 pounds.
I’d have never waylaid that gobbler nor the other three I took in the area in later years had it not been for the sound advice and tips offered by my host.
For several years, I have hunted turkeys as a guest of Smith on this property formerly owned by International Paper Company. Smith was and still is a wildlife biologist for these woods, which have since been purchased by Timberstar Southwest.
Over the years, I have sat and listened as Smith revealed details of some of his hunts. The thing that stuck in my mind has been the fact that more often than not, he has walked out of the woods with a longbeard gobbler swung over his shoulder.
I sat down with Smith recently and picked his brain, hoping that some of the turkey hunting expertise he has accumulated over the past 45 years of chasing gobblers might seep into my cranium, which has plenty of free space when it comes to having a grasp of how these majestic birds work.
Smith was reared in Dewitt, Ark., and grew up hunting turkeys with his dad, who learned how it was done from his father.
“My grandfather hunted turkeys in the 1920s when there were very few turkeys in Arkansas,” Smith said. “I started going out with my dad when I was seven or so years old. I shot at my first turkey when I was eight, and finally killed my first one on my 11th birthday.
“We were hunting on the land of a friend near the White River; he had given Dad and me permission to hunt there. We watched a gobbler fly up to roost one Friday afternoon, and were set up on him the next morning before daylight.
“I got to watch the gobbler fly down and break into strut, and Dad brought him in on a string with his old yelper. I shot him with Dad’s 12 gauge, and I’ve been hooked on the sport ever since.”
The rest of this story, which first appeared in the March 2008 issue of Louisiana Sportsman, can be read in our online archives.
And don’t forget that a growing number of digital magazine editons are available in our Sportsman Store.
