AN ALMOST WILD TURKEY THANKSGIVING

I must have been around six or seven when my father decided to shoot a wild turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner. He also thought our hunting expedition would be the perfect time to teach my older brother and me to shoot rifles. We were enthusiastic wannabe hunters, so the three of us went on a bitterly cold November day in the Texas Panhandle to find a turkey in the Canadian River bottom.

The Canadian River, a tributary of the Arkansas River, begins in the Sangre de Christo Mountains in New Mexico and flows through the Texas Panhandle on its way to Oklahoma. When it reaches the drought-prone Panhandle, the river becomes a trickle of water in many places. You might think of the Panhandle as flat, and you'd be right, except for the area around Borger and Phillips. Palo Duro Canyon, the "Grand Canyon of Texas," is located 75 miles south of my hometown. Since the Panhandle is over 3,000 feet above sea level and semi-arid, much of the land is unencumbered by trees and shrubs. The cliffs adjacent to the Canadian River are composed of loose rock and red dirt. One can only imagine the dinosaurs that walked along this river. The Columbian mammoth, a relative of the modern-day Asian elephant but much more significant, roamed these parts approximately 11,000 years ago. 

My dad's only gun,  a .22 caliber rifle,  hung above my parents' bedroom door for many years, along with a Japanese bayonet my dad brought back from the South Pacific after WWII. I do t remember the gun being used except for the day we hunted for wild turkey.

We parked on a hill by the Old Plemons Bridge. The bridge, which crossed over the Canadian River, connected my hometown with the ghost town of Plemons and other remote parts of the Panhandle. My brother and I followed dad as we carefully tromped down the bluff. As expected, there was very little water flowing in the river, but we knew the turkeys would be somewhere near the water, hiding in the native grasses and low shrubs. We were told to stand still while listening for movement in the bushes. After some time, without seeing or hearing a turkey, we continued traipsing through the bushes along the dry riverbed. We finally abandoned our quest for hunting turkey and decided to pretend some old cans were the turkey. I killed a few pretend turkeys that day and gained confidence in using a firearm, although a .22 is not much of a gun by today's standards. Back in the day, no one needed an assault rifle to shoot a wild turkey unless you wanted to take out a whole rafter (flock)!

Several days later, my mother cooked a store-bought turkey in the oven. At the same time, she made sweet potato and green bean casseroles along with mashed potatoes, cranberry salad, and her still-popular giblet gravy. Mother also makes the best pumpkin, pecan, and chocolate pies. The smell of turkey baking while watching the Cowboys beat the Washington Redskins, especially Roger Staubach as the quarterback, was a perfect Thanksgiving Day.

Many years later, my "hunting" expeditions would include wildlife preserves in Africa and the islands of The Galapagos and Antarctica. Instead of a rifle, I carried a camera. I'm a much better shot with my Nikon than I ever was with that old .22! Besides, who, with even an ounce of compassion, would shoot elephants, giraffes, lions, or penguins?

The old Plemons Bridge over the Canadian River near Phillips, Texas, with the Phillips Petroleum Plant far away.