Gusewelle: Hunt renews fraternal bonds amid fond memories

Not much of a snow — not even a noticeable dusting, just a few vagrant flakes. But enough to serve as a reminder that nature rarely takes our plans into account.

In the last two days, friends began assembling for the annual ceremony we call our spring wild turkey hunt. Two have come from the West Coast, two more from Florida, one from New York and two from Kansas City.

Others, including the Indiana pair, will arrive in the week ahead.

And tomorrow we’ll be striking forth at a pitch-black hour of morning to take our stations in the Ozark woods, listening to the melodic calls of whip-poor-wills, the hoots of barred owls and the annoyed replies of turkey gobblers.

That is, if the weather obliges, which sometimes it does not.

One year, on the first day of the season, I sat against my tree, hunkered miserably under a poncho while thunder crashed, lightning rent the pre-dawn sky and hail the size of popcorn came rattling down.

Another year — it may even have been last year — on the Sunday before the opener it snowed a real snow, an inch or so of heavy, wet flakes the size of quarters.

On such a morning, when the clock radio emits its howl of country music at half past the hour of 4, it’s somehow hard to remember what grudge it was you had against the turkey. And when wives later ask why it is that every spring must be organized around this curious enterprise, no answer readily comes to mind.

But here we are again, at this humble little cabin at the edge of the oak woods. And somehow it does feel right.

Rich memories surround us. The rush of years is halted and turned back by pictures on the walls. In several of those, one longtime member of our group is alive again, his presence with us still.

Near that is an informal snapshot of a teacher to whom I owe an unpayable debt for the luck of my working life. Gone several years now, that fine man.

And in the hallway to the bunk room there’s a photo of my parents in the boat on the pond — the two of them much younger than I am now — my mother holding a fine big fish, my father behind her at the oars, smiling proudly.

And tacked up on one wall is a good-humored reminder of mortality, whose author I don’t know.

When I die, it says, I want to go quietly, in my sleep, the way my grandfather did — not screaming like the passengers in his car.

I’m well aware that there are readers who will be mystified, or even repelled, by this account of a gang of friends, come together for the declared purpose of hunting turkeys.

But, for some of us, the hunt itself is the least part of the reason for our April gatherings.

In any case, I have no intention of writing about my occasional successes. There was a lady out in Kansas who used to send messages written in orange Crayola, signed only Ms. Sue, saying that if I didn’t give up my vile hunting habit, she and her associates would injure me or maybe take me out.

One wouldn’t want to cross as gentle-hearted a soul as that.