Hunting wild turkey from pickup truck

Not sure whether scouting turkeys from the seat of my pickup makes me smart or lazy.

It worked again Thursday for about the ninth time in the past 10 years.

When I first started hunting turkeys more than 15 years ago, I did so where most people thought turkeys lived - in large tracts of timber as far from roads as they could get.

Scouting them there required woodcraft - preseason sneaking in camouflage, trying to ascertain, without being seen or heard, where the turkeys roosted, ate, and congregated.

I had fairly good luck with a technique known as 'putting a gobbler to bed,” in which I watched one fly up to roost in the evening and returned the following morning to ambush him when he flew back down.

I also practiced other aspects of woodcraft such as looking for turkey wingmarks in the soil, an indicator that one or more gobblers favored the spot for strutting, and for their distinctive L-shaped droppings, an indicator that one or more turkeys had been roosting in the trees overhead.

Now I no longer care where turkeys roost, strut, or poop.

Now that turkeys have colonized most of the smaller riparian woods in the midst of farm country, the only thing I want to know about a gobbler is where he goes when he leaves his roost in the morning.

Now that turkeys reside within many mile-square sections of farmland circumscribed by gravel roads, I can find that out simply by driving around, watching for their large, dark shapes so conspicuous in the sparse vegetation of early spring.

Having previously observed a flock of turkeys feeding in a cornfield next to a wooded creek, I set up my decoy there well before daylight on Wednesday, the first day of Iowa's third shotgun season.

They came out to feed on schedule but could not be urged within 200 yards of my decoy.

After sighting the flock in the same area on a Wednesday evening drive, I returned Thursday morning to hear an extremely vocal gobbler in a nearby tree.

He soon flew down and started for my decoy in full strut, pausing every three or four steps to execute what I would call a partial pirouette, displaying himself in profile first one way and then the other.

My decoy, for which his moves were intended, failed to notice his splendor, but I could not help thinking how convenient it would be for me to raise my shotgun to my shoulder while he was looking the other way and to fire it when he turned back.