Speaking of turkeys

My father was a hunter.  When I was very young, I thought it was because he was in the army. But once I reached school age, I realized he’d been hunting all his life.  If we were stationed anywhere within a reasonable distance, we spent most Thanksgivings on the family farm while I was in school. Friday morning the men would go out hunting rabbits and birds.  Frankly, I didn't have much interest in killing small animals but I wore the coat and carried the gun to look the part.

In my father’s later years, after hunting just about everything but what Africans call big game, he had one item on this bucket list. He wanted, as he put it, to “harvest” a turkey. After retiring from military/government service in Washington, DC, he returned with my mom to Indiana, where they both had siblings still living. 

The McConnell family farm had been sold but my mother's clan still owned acreage and livestock in the western part of the state. The woods on their farm became my dad's sanctuary. He tried bow hunting for deer, with no luck. He built a blind in a tree to watch for game but he fell asleep there one day and fell out of the tree.  He dragged himself to his truck and drove to the hospital.  After that, he stopped sitting in trees with a gun across his lap and bought a cell phone.

It was on the farm that he first caught sight of the turkey.  The bird walked proudly across the open field and seemed to know exactly where he was going. He was quite a specimen.  Dad said you could judge a turkey by his beard and this one had a very long black beard, a sign of maturity and stature in the bird world...so I'm told.

Dad watched the turkey for months and finally named him Clarence.  Why Clarence? I guess I'll never know. Dad just said Clarence this and Clarence that and we accepted it. The bird had his route and each day he would come and go the same way with Dad studying every move and nuance.

We never knew exactly when Dad shot Clarence.  He took the bird directly to the taxidermist. I prefer to think that we didn't eat him for Thanksgiving dinner when the bird showed up at Christmas time as proud as ever, showing off that big long beard, sitting right next to the fireplace, nice and warm.

The battle of man versus beast can be an honorable undertaking. I support the native Americans view of the hunt and the respect they have for their conquests. That drew me to the Na'vi in the movie Avatar, as well. My dad and Clarence had an understanding.  There was a meeting of the minds.  My father was an honorable man and I choose to believe that his "harvest" was at least in part a spiritual one. Clarence looked at peace with the world. And so did my father.