Outdoors: Heavy rains have cut into turkey hunting

I am beginning to wonder if this area’s citizens are going to have to do a breast-stroke to get from point A to point B. A wetter spring I cannot remember, nor do I want to.
There have been a lot of excuses offered up by me as to why I haven’t been turkey hunting yet. Well, the main excuse is because of the torrential downpours we have experienced in the last two weeks or so.
I thought my time had come when I got an afternoon and most of the next day sans raindrops. However, after hooking up the trailer with the UTV (after siphoning the water out of the back where it mashed the waterproof cover down) I started down the road to my turkey hunting territory. As you have heard me say several times, I have to cross a creek to get to the hunting property. I was hoping that the water had gone down far enough to let me cross. Also, as I was heading that way, there was another creek that flows into the one I have to cross, and it didn’t look too bad as I was traveling along.
Hot dog I said to myself. I am finally going to get to go hunting. However, when the two creeks merged further down the road, I could see that maybe I had spoken too soon. With hopes still not completely dashed I journeyed down the road and turned off to go down the hill and across the creek. Whoa, Nellie. The water was still up in this portion of the creek and was just too deep for me to attempt to cross it there. So, I put the truck in four-wheel drive and starting backing the trailer back up the hill to the road. There was access to another drive leading back to the road to my right, and I took that drive because it allowed me to turn the trailer and truck around to where I was heading uphill with the truck in front of the trailer.
Was I aggravated? Well, yes. I couldn’t help thinking that I had wasted a lot of gas driving down there just to expend that same amount of gas again in turning around and coming back home. Bah, humbug. It’s no wonder I feel like Scrooge at Christmas.
To be honest though, as I’ve said in past columns, when the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons rolled around for us in the composing room at the Advocate-Messenger, it amounted to a considerable amount of extra work. Because we in composing were so rushed to get the paper out during the seasonal rush, I’m sure many of us would have been satisfied to just work on through as if there were no holidays.
Back to the turkeys. I received an e-mail picture showing one of my friends and his wife with their turkeys. They were both big birds, and the male friend said that his bird sported a twin beard with one inch spurs. His wife’s bird wasn’t quite as big, but still a very large bird with a beautiful beard. Their pictures showed the both of them with the tails of their turkeys fanned out. These two were perfect. I couldn’t see a missing feather anyplace in the picture. Many times if two gobblers have been fighting they will be minus a few tail feathers.
This spring’s turkey season will expire on May 8, so there is still some time to get out there and see if you can harvest your bird, or birds. Just remember you aren’t supposed to take both birds on the same day.
I might also mention that the deadline for submitting your application for elk tags expired yesterday. Also, you did not have to purchase a hunting license to get in on the elk lottery. If you applied, I wish you luck. As for me, I still haven’t been moved to try my hand at elk. I’ve talked about it, but just can’t seem to get too excited about doing it.
Can you believe it? There is even an article on how to quarter an elk in one copy of the Kentucky Afield magazine. There are a number of steps that one can read about in this publication leading you to being able to quarter your animal and process it in the field. This process is called the essential seven. So, get the magazine and make a copy of the different parts of the process and put it in your field pack if you are lucky enough to get an elk tag.
Now, if I can just get across the creek.