My turkey hunting experience was truly eventful

After a restless night we got up well before dawn. Our guest, Rodney, was anxious to get going. It was his turn to shoot first and I was to do the calling from behind him while the whole thing was caught on tape for television. I should say that thinking about those darn snakes caused the “restless” night.

We walked to the place where we were going to hunt and before long we heard a big gobbler striking off not far from us.  We were struggling to find a good place to setup because it was coal mine dark. No moon and lots of clouds meant I ran into more trees than I care to admit.  We surely didn’t want to use flashlights because this bird was close.

Rodney finally found a tree to his liking and sat down. I picked a tree behind him and thought about sitting down when a question popped into my mind. What good were snake boots going to do with my butt sitting right on the dirt? Too late to answer that one, I sat down as well.

After a few minutes of that turkey gobbling in the dark I heard something moving to my right and behind me. It wasn’t one of those something-walking-through-the-woods type of noises. It was more of a slow cruuuuunch, shufffffffffffle, scooooooot. The hairs on my neck stood up.

I sat dead still. Sweat started to form from head-to-toe. Whatever was slowly moving through the dead leaves was getting closer, a lot closer. Now my imagination was starting to kick into overdrive.

“Rodney.  Rodney”

“Shut up.”

I tried to whisper as loud as I could, “Rodney.”

My sense of urgency must have worked because he sounded irritated, “What?”

“I think there’s a snake next to me!”

“Huh?”

“A snake you fool!”

Meanwhile, the gobbler is still going crazy and that is all that Rodney is thinking about.

“Rodney, I’m gonna shoot it if gets any closer.” In retrospect, that was a dumb thing to say considering I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, but if that forsaken reptile was coming at me I wasn’t going to die in the middle-of-nowhere-Georgia without a fight.

Rodney told me to grow up. Huh? Easy for him to say, he’s not about to have a six-foot cottonmouth curl up in his lap and do Lord knows what.

The sound was getting closer. It was well within reach. I could of stuck my hand out and touched whatever it was. I still couldn’t see it, but believe me; it wasn’t for a lack of trying. My eyes were the size of pizza pans trying to figure out what this menacing noise was. Somebody could of told me Sherman’s troops were storming right toward us and I still wasn’t going to move. I was frozen like leftovers forgot about in the deep freeze.

The sun was just starting to creep over the horizon. The noise was now inches away from my right leg. I just knew that cotton pickin’ snake was sensing my warmth with its forked tongue and was going to curl up where no one would want a snake to curl up. My clothes were almost soaked through with sweat.

I heard Rodney turn, “Start calling.”

I don’t remember what I said exactly in return but I know I couldn’t write it if I did. This had the potential for being my last minute on Earth and he’s still worrying about that bird.

At long last, glorious Mother Nature gave me enough light to start to see shadows. My eyes grew even bigger as my heart almost went into cardiac arrest. There it was! A tortoise! I couldn’t believe it. Just about half and inch from my right foot was a little tortoise making his way across the forest floor.

I let out a sigh of relief that might still be carrying to the heavens all these years later.  The adrenaline let off nearly knocked me into a coma. I haven’t been back to Georgia to turkey hunt since.