The Rock Wall

Just got the bad news Monday afternoon about former superintendent Mark Koca who passed away in a Springfield hospital Monday. His family will make arrangements Tuesday at Bland-Hackleman according to Brent Bland.
Our condolences to the family. Mark was always fair to me and the newspaper. He had a dry sense of humor so you always had to keep your guard up or he’d nail you
He was a master craftsman and knew construction well. Brent Hillsman speculated that the contractor who built the addition to the school soon learned about Mark’s vast knowledge of construction Brent figured that saved the taxpayers a lot of money.
When you think you have turkeys figured out, think again.
Once I was hunting on the last day of season for me. (I don’t hunt on Sunday), I heard some turkeys ahead of me on a wooded hillside. I moved along behind them calling occasionally, hoping to get a gobbler’s attention. Suddenly three gobblers answered my call. Problem: They were out in the middle of a pasture and I didn’t have any place to hide.
So, I hotfooted it back the hundred yards of so I to the bigger timber then went up the hill to a big post oak close to the fence. I didn’t bother to clear a shooting lane in the fence row knowing that that gobblers always, milled 25 yards or more from the fence, giving me a chance to take my pick.
I cut down on one of my high pitched calls and immediately got three gobbles as they ran toward me. In seconds they were rubbing their beards against the sprouts in the fencerow. Try as I might I couldn’t get a shot. Then one of the gobblers decided to crawl under the fence on his breast to see about me. I found myself eye-to-eye with a gobbler at three feet. Advantage = gobbler. One alarm putt and he took off northeast. The two gobblers on the other side of the fence soon figured out that all was not well and one went airborne due east, the other due west. I may have been able to lost call them back in, butt that’s not the way I wanted to hunt.
I walked to a wooded hill a quarter mile north and called a little while. Nothing answered to I got up to go home and interrupted a gobbler that coming across the pasture from the northeast.
I went home empty handed with a new respect for turkey wisdom.
Later, I decided if I had a turkey that close again, I’d body shoot him. It wouldn’t damage the breast or the fan. But I‘ve never had that opportunity again.
Guess that’s the fun of hunting… the unexpected. I have a more vivid memory of the turkey’s I didn’t get than the ones I did. KL