Orlan Love's day off

Fictional film character Ferris Bueller's famous day off was barely more exciting than mine Tuesday.

At 5:20 a.m., as I planted my decoys at the edge of a cornfield, the raspy gobbles of two roosted toms triggered a flow of adrenaline that continued with few interruptions until 1:30 that afternoon.

While the roosted gobblers echoed each other repeatedly, I scratched out the occasional cluck on my slate call so they would know where to find me when the sun rose.

When the first slanting rays lit up my decoys, the clucking, putting and gobbling of unseen approaching turkeys told me I'd better get ready.

Before I could, however, the turkeys, 10 hens and a gobbler, caught me sitting flat-footed on a log, rather than on the ground with my back against it.

With my camo mask, hood and gloves in place and my loaded shotgun across my lap. I would have a chance, I figured, if the acutely vigilant, head-bobbing and neck-rotating hens did not detect the glint of my spectacles or an inadvertent body movement.

Trying hard not to breathe or blink, I tracked the gobbler out of the corner of my eye, hoping that the surrounding hens would give me a clear shot. With hens seeming to look directly at me, and my breath escaping in what to me sounded like engine exhaust, five minutes passed with no open shot.

Then, with the exception of one hen, the turkeys wandered back the way they'd come, out of my sight. But before I could relax, inhale deeply and get a new purchase on the log with my slipping butt, she called them back, and the same obstructed milling resumed.

Just before I reached the point where I would do anything to relieve the tension, the gobbler separated himself from his harem, and I shot him.

An hour later, with the gobbler butchered and the harvest called in to the Department of Natural Resources, I rounded up tackle for an effort to catch my first smallmouth bass of the season.

Arriving at the Wapsipinicon at noon, I went from zero to 27 in 90 minutes.

The first two were each 19 inches long, validating veteran Marion angler Steve Harty's adage that “Mama eats first,” and the catch included five more in the 16- to 18-inch range.

I changed lures repeatedly in an unsuccessful effort to find one they wouldn't hit and, with the fish still biting, left the river at 1:30 p.m., thinking it would not be good to educate them all at once.

Had it been just a few days later in the month, I'd have gone for one more adrenaline rush, completing the April hat trick with a bag of morels.