Turkey Shoot
Two weeks after hearing the story of rabbit hunting, a portly and smiling middle-aged man sat at a table in the street ministry. He was telling another man, in fact, rabbit hunting man, about an atypical yet excellent week of meals he'd prepared in his solo camp 30 miles east of the ministry. His makeshift domicile stood next to a creek that emptied into the Clackamas River in the Mt Hood National Forest. It was one of the few places in the area not burned to a crisp by the historic Riverside wildfire of 2020 that blackened 140,000 acres.
His story was about a wild turkey he'd recently shot and barbecued.
I was whipping up a coffee drink a few feet away, finished that task, then wheeled over to turkey man to catch the rest of his story. It wasn't long before I dominated the conversation by bombarding him with questions that he was eager to answer. What man doesn't want to talk about a wild turkey gunned down in the woods and cooked up for survival? It's a goddamn original Thanksgiving tale except that the Indians saved the Pilgrims from starvation. America's first handout.
So the story went like this.
He'd lived at this particular camp for over a year. He'd discovered this idyllic spot while hiking with his daughter and her boyfriend. They all left together that day, but he returned not long after because something felt right about this place and there was a swimming hole as well!
His transportation to and from his camp varied. He sometimes drove a vehicle, bicycled, rode a bus, walked or some kind of combination into the nearest towns of Sandy or Estacada for supplies. How he came to find the ministry and its benevolence, he didn't say. But he was there every Tuesday morning on my shift and one of the friendliest men around.
The last several months, he'd seen and heard a flock of turkeys around his domicile. He was determined to bag one so he modified a crossbow into a kind of sling shot. He practiced for weeks with stones from the river and was getting pretty good at hitting trees from 30-40 yards away.
One morning, he saw a flock angling toward his camp. He didn't have his sling shot apparatus handy and wild turkeys generally don't hang around for very long. (I know this from personal experience.) He grabbed his 22-pellet rifle with scope, took aim, fired, and blew the head off the lead turkey. He attributed his success to his training as a sniper in the Marines. “I know how to shoot, but my accuracy surprised me.”
He plucked and cleaned the turkey, cut out choice drumsticks, breasts and thighs.(Nothing about the gizzard!) He started a wood fire in a pit, let it burn down to coals, placed a drumstick on an improvised grill, covered the pit with tree boughs to trap the heat, and soon was feasting on wild turkey and a side dish of rice. He stored the rest of the choice cuts in a cooler immersed in the creek and barbecued them up over the course of the week.
Was the turkey taken out of season? Did he need a permit? Turkey man just laughed and said, “I don't know.”