It has a been exactly a year since I posted this story about my dad, and with so many new readers, I thought I would put it up again…

It has now been five years since my dad died, and I still think about him all of the time, especially when I am alone in the woods where I spent so much time with him. I wanted to remember him in a post since he was the person who introduced me to the outdoors and first took me hunting. The picture above is of us on opening day in 2002 after I killed a young 8 point. The picture means a lot to me because he had worked all summer to keep my stands corned up although he was already in failing health. I was just thrilled to kill something so we could take a picture together before he passed away. It now hangs on my office wall, and I often refer to it when I talk about my dad with my two baby boys.

I have also written a short story about our last days together, and I thought I would share it here…Caution: This is not my usual post. If you are here only for the hunting reports, you may want to skip this.

Jeff

Listening To Turkeys

As I came into the hospital room, my dad’s eyes lit up. His face said it all. He was always excited to have a visitor, but especially his only son.

I strode over to him and gave him a big hug, then a kiss on his forehead and leaned close.

“You should be hunting” my dad said, his hoarse voice barely audible over the steady inhale and exhale of the ventilator.

“I can go later” I replied, trying to hold back the tears. “Those turkeys will be there tomorrow”.

His deep blue eyes welled up, and he gripped my hand tight. “You’re a good man, bubba”, he replied.

As I stared deep into his eyes, I could no longer deny that my 63 year old father was now quickly losing his war with ALS. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it is an incurable neurological disease that paralyzes all of a body’s muscles and ultimately ends in death. I just did not want to believe that his disease had progressed so fast, and that it was just a year ago in April that we had gone to listen to the turkeys

It was near the end of South Carolina’s 6 week season, and the birds were gobbling like crazy in the lowcountry. And although my dad had been born and raised here, he had never heard a wild turkey gobble. Turkeys were literally non existent in this part until about 20 years ago, and he had been lured away by city life and big money long before their return. However due to a string of bad choices, he had ended up back home two years ago, just before he got sick.

I was up from Florida for the week hunting, so I encouraged him to go with me one morning late in the season, not to kill one, but to hopefully just hear one. And since he had just been diagnosed with basically a death sentence, I thought it may also be a good time to talk about the things we both knew were coming in the days ahead. On average, ALS patients live less than a year and a half after diagnoses of the disease!

We arrived just before daylight on our lease. I parked my 87 Jeep Cherokee, and we headed off through the planted pines towards the line with our neighbor. He had just recently burned the fields across from us, and I knew a couple birds were usually roosting nearby. And while I also knew those birds were pretty much impossible to call close enough for a shot this late in the season, they would be the perfect candidates to provide the turkey mating calls I longed for my dad to hear.

About a 100 yards into our 200 yard walk, I stopped and made a quick owl hoot to see if their were any birds ready to entertain us. Thankfully not just one, but three big birds fired back from near the line! Two were close and another was just past them.

My heart jumped into my throat. That was all I wanted. For my dad to hear a big gobbler do his thing, and possibly see one strut. We tried to hurry along, but my dad’s balance was already going, and he was having to walk carefully over the downed trees and limbs.

We eased up close to the line and sure enough, two big old redheads were sitting up in a giant pine about fifty yards out into his burn. I told my dad to just slide down against a tree where he could see them, and I began to yelp. Those two hammered back and went into full strut on the limb. I called some more, and they gobbled back, and so did their nearby buddy. I just kept on it, literally making them choke trying to answer my incessant calling. They double gobbled, triple gobbled and even quadruple gobbled back. Which was all I wanted them to do since I had no delusion that they would come in. I just wanted a full show for my dad, and they obliged with twenty minutes of it.

They then flew down and away from my calling, but continued to strut and gobble as they made their way further out into the regrowing burn. We just sat there watching and listening to them until they were more than 400 yards away. Then, after a few minutes of silence, we began excitedly replaying the morning’s events.

My dad was blown away! He said he couldn’t believe that just a couple of gobbling toms could provide such a amazing display, and he now knew why some hunters were fanatics about going after them. He also however marveled over the fact that he had grown up in this area and never heard them.

After a few more minutes of talking while basking in the rising sun’s warmth, I finally started in on the subject of his illness, beginning with his funeral.

“Dad, You know how Nana is. Is there anything you don’t want me to let them do?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t give a god damn!” he laughed. “Whatever will make her happy. I won’t be there, so I don’t give a shit”.

I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud too. I had worried that his funeral arrangements were going to cause a problem, and I was determined not to let that happen. My dad, just like his father, did not believe in God, and he had always been upset that he had let his mom give his dad a religious funeral. So I was prepared to make sure that did not happen if he did not want it. However he was obviously fine with it.

We then talked at length about the years he had wasted away from my mom and I, as well as many of the things he had done that he was not proud of – One of them bad enough to warrant three years in prison. I just reassured him that we all make mistakes, some just worse than others, and we talked of all of the people that had given him a second chance, including me.

It turned out to be one of the best times I had spent with my dad in a long time, but certainly the hardest conversation.

Several months later, as I visited him in his final nursing home, I found him weighing just over 100 pounds. Always a round man, my dad now looked like he had escaped the concentration camps of Europe. We went out in his electric wheelchair to the courtyard to eat, and I fed him a requested favorite meal, fried shrimp. By now nothing worked on him except his eyes, and he was supposed to use a feeding tube. However he wanted to try and taste it, so I cut them all up in to fine pieces and fed him slowly. He devoured his meal, and then even had a blizzard to finish it off while I updated him on our deer season that had just started. I also reminisced about the deer he had helped me kill on opening day just the year before.

Later that afternoon I wheeled him back inside, and since he could no longer speak, he just listened while I talked. I told him how he was one of the toughest people I knew, and that anyone else would have given up with such a horrible disease. I told him how proud I was that he was able to turn his life around, and how much I loved him for it. I then explained I had to go back to work in Florida, and that I would be back in two weeks, just like always. However deep inside I had a feeling that it would be much sooner.

We sat there for a while longer while I held his hand and told him about how our business was going and how my wife Amy was doing. I then gave him a kiss and said good bye. After such a exhausting day, he was already asleep by the time I got to the door, so just stood there for a few minutes watching him before I left.

He died two evenings later, just an hour after a visit from his sister. At the funeral, almost the entire town turned out. You would have thought that Elvis was being buried. He now rests just a few hundred yards from where he grew up, in Black Swamp Cemetery in Garnett, SC surrounded by ancient oaks that saw our country founded and shaded Sherman’s troops as they marched to the sea.

I now live and hunt just down the road, and often see flocks of birds going to roost on them, so I am sure he is still listening to the turkeys.

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