THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604010008
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT
STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WAKEFIELD LENGTH: Long : 220 lines
Buncha turkeys.
There they stood, rubber turkeys on metal stakes, like country cousins of the pink-flamingo lawn ornament.
Gathered around them were a few women, their turkey-feather earrings coordinated with camouflage pants and shoulder bags.
``I do chicken calls pretty well, but that won't help me this weekend,'' said Dawne Alexander of Mathews.
Nope. These women had come to talk turkey.
They had paid $150 apiece to be part of the inaugural class in a new state program designed to lure more women into outdoor sports. The turkey-hunting workshop, held over the weekend at the Airfield Conference Center, was the first of several sessions designed to teach women such skills as outdoor cooking, boat launching, deer-hunting and backpacking. The sessions will eventually fit with the national ``Becoming an Outdoors Woman'' program begun in 1991 by the University of Wisconsin.
It being spring, and spring - to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries - meaning turkey season, it seemed natural to launch the Virginia program with that topic.
Alexander demonstrated her chicken cluck, then a rooster crow. None of the rubber turkeys responded.
Well, it was early Saturday, and she still had two days to practice.
The class of 32 included a couple of husbands, long-time hunters who wanted their wives to join them in their hobby.
``Married nine months ago and he hunts all the time,'' said Penny Ryan of Richmond, tossing her head toward her husband. ``If I ever wanted to see him, I need to learn how to hunt.''
Ryan planned to bow hunt, and she planned to hunt turkeys, she said, because she wouldn't point the bow at an animal she wouldn't eat.
The national program has drawn the ire of animal rights activists, such as the anti-hunting Fund for Animals. But that did not dissuade the women at Wakefield.
They listened attentively to lectures on turkey biology, learning the life habits of an animal considered hard to hunt because of its wariness and keen vision. ``You have to understand the animal, where it lives, how it lives, to hunt it,'' explained Anne Skalski, education coordinator for the game department.
Then they listened seriously as instructor Jay Jeffreys showed them how to tell a first-year bird from an older one - among other things, the white bars on the younger bird's feathers are incomplete - and how to tell a gobbler's footprint from a hen's - the gobbler's track is larger.
The weekend was full of classes from morning through evening, with topics ranging from basic identification to target practice to evening hikes in search of real turkey roosts.
``We wanted a beginner to walk into our workshop and walk out with the skills that would enable them to go out into the woods,'' Skalski said during an interview. Workshops planned for later this year will be more generalized, offering women short sessions in four subjects per weekend, from backing up a boat trailer to cooking with a Dutch oven, from reading a compass to canoeing.
More than 30 states have launched programs, based on the Wisconsin model, to expose women to outdoor activities that have been mostly pursued by men. Response from women has been phenomenal, said program founder Christine Thomas in a telephone interview.
``We thought our first workshop was a one-shot deal, just a lark, just a fun outreach thing to do,'' she said. ``We just didn't envision that this might happen.''
Virginia will officially join the national program later this month, once its instructors are certified. But the game department saw no reason to miss spring turkey season, so it set up the first workshop on its own.
Eastern Virginia is one of the best habitats for wild turkeys, with its hardwood forests and open agricultural lands. The game department estimates that 59,000 hunters went after turkey in 1993, and the economic return to the state bettered $9 million.
``How does the wild turkey compare to the turkey you buy at the supermarket, the frozen ones?'' asked one woman.
``The wild turkey,'' Jeffreys replied, ``is alive in the woods.''
But the women were not in the woods yet. First came a lesson in turkey calling.
Wild turkeys cluck, yelp, purr or gobble. It is possible to imitate those calls by scraping a chalked piece of wood across a box, by scraping a piece of slate or by blowing through a mouthpiece called a diaphragm. Possible, but not easy.
Variations of ``cluck, cluck, cluck'' filled the room, punctuated by squeals the equal of fingernails on a chalkboard as the women tried their hands at box callers.
Then came the diaphragm, a semi-circle of rubber with latex reeds. Put it on the roof of your mouth, said instructor Jeff Curtis, and grunt. Most of the diaphragms shot out with the first grunt. It does, Curtis acknowledged, take a while to get over the gag reflex.
But ``talking turkey'' is essential to success, because a hunter must often sit still against a tree for hours, clucking and purring to lure an amorous gobbler his - or her - way.
The room filled with the sound of oboes warming up in a henhouse.
``Ih ickles ma ung,'' complained Sara Riggs of Norfolk, a nurse at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
``Ih duh ickle,'' Curtis agreed.
He cocked his head up and, like a ventriloquist, produced a clear turkey cluck without moving his mouth. Around the room, women were swallowing and gulping and working their throats and puffing their cheeks.
``My husband will be so thrilled that I actually tried it,'' Riggs said, removing the diaphragm from her tongue with a red-nailed hand. ``This is our 26th anniversary weekend. He's trying to broaden my horizons in turkey hunting.''
Riggs is no novice to shooting or to turkey hunting. But she has never combined the two. As a marksman, she said proudly, she has brought home two frozen turkeys and a ham from target shoots. And in the woods, Riggs added, she once lured 15 turkeys her way with a hand-held call.
``It's a wonderful feeling. It's more exciting to me to call them in and see them coming to you than to shoot them,'' she said.
Her sentiment would have made conference organizers proud. Part of the program was a nature-appreciation slide show by Mike Roberts of Lynchburg, who hasn't shot a turkey for six years except with a camera.
``I don't want you to think that killing a wild turkey is the best part of spring gobbler season,'' he said, flashing pictures of wildflowers and snow-banked streams. ``There's so much more to the outdoors than just picking up that rifle or picking up that shotgun and shooting something. If you concentrate on that gun, you're not reading the whole book. You're reading only a paragraph.''
Roberts, who runs a nature adventure program for youth, urged the women ``as ladies and mothers'' to teach their children an ethical appreciation of the outdoors.
``When you start to appreciate the insects, the flowers, the butterflies, the trees, you'll enjoy spring gobbler season even more.''
Spring gobbler season runs April 13 to May 18 in Virginia. Only bearded turkeys are legal, meaning usually males, although some hens may also have ``beards'' - wiry-looking feathers dangling from their breasts - and thus be legal spring targets.
But just seeing a turkey in the woods is not good enough reason to fire a gun. Thus the women trekked into the woods to try their hands at ethical judgment calls.
Decoys and animal silhouettes had been scattered around, and instructor John Dodson stopped at each one. ``Shoot or don't shoot?'' he asked, pausing near a ``squirrel.''
``I don't want to shoot squirrels,'' Alexander objected.
``If you were hunting squirrels, would this be a safe shot?'' Dodson persisted. Behind him, two women were having trouble spotting the target.
``I wouldn't find anything to shoot,'' one whispered. ``They're gonna have to start painting these animals orange.''
The group paused at what appeared to be the perfect turkey target: a gobbler on the ground in front of a thicket. Clear shot, short distance. There were murmurs of approval. Suddenly, a camouflaged instructor stood up in the thicket. No one had seen her.
``Always know what you're shooting at and what's beyond,'' Dodson said. ``You're better off never shooting at anything than shooting your friend.''
A pheasant silhouette was on the ground. Legal shot, Dodson said, but unethical to kill a natural flyer when it's walking.
Before you raise a gun, he said, ask yourself first, ``Is it legal? Is it safe? Is it ethical?''
Saturday afternoon brought the rubber turkeys into play. Four instructors vanished into the woods, each with a rubber bird. The class was to apply its new-found knowledge of calling and turkey smarts to lure the instructors out. The teachers carried their own turkey calls, so as to properly reply to the clucks, purrs and yelps of the class.
For a while, the class clucked, and an instructor, somewhere in the distance, gobbled back. He's with several hens, Curtis said, listening closely for the giveaway sounds of feeding birds. Then the ``gobbler'' quit calling back.
``What's happened?'' Curtis asked his students.
``He's having sex,'' one replied.
``To put it rather bluntly,'' Curtis said, laughing. The class clucked some more, and the ``gobbler'' moved closer.
``Although he's got some hens with him, like most men, he's greedy. He wants some more,'' Curtis said. ``Keep up the soft, gossipy conversation with the hens. We're just letting him come to us, letting his curiosity and greed get the best of him.''
``Is that like the advice we got as teenagers on how to attract a guy?'' Alexander asked.
An hour later, the instructor with the rubber gobbler finally let herself be lured back to the class. Time for the shooting range.
The range is hot!'' shouted an instructor. Stand back. Ear protection on. Don't get in front of those shotguns.
POW. Shotgun pellets met pink balloon target. POW. A black balloon bit the dust. POW.
``That was cool. I wanna do that again,'' said one participant.
``Annie Oakley!'' called a spectator.
``They don't bleed, do they?'' the shooter said ruefully, looking over her shoulder at the blasted targets.
``Go ahead and shoot two or those balloons and one of those orange clays,'' the instructor said to Chris Waldrop of Verona. Waldrop, an older woman with gray-streaked hair and a child-abuse prevention sweatshirt, blew away each target.
But not so every shooter. ``How'd ya do?'' a spectator called to one woman. ``Don't even ask,'' she said despondently.
Sara Riggs stepped up with her shotgun, sat on the ground and put her back against the tree, ready to fire one round at a bullseye target with a turkey head outlined on it. Her husband craned his neck to watch.
BLAM.
``I've never sat against a tree to shoot,'' Riggs said, getting up. She came back from the range with her target in hand. Her husband examined the pellet holes with a critical eye. Several were scattered across the outlined head.
He smiled at his wife. ``Good shot,'' he said. ``Got him.'' MEMO: For information about the ``Outdoors Woman'' program in Virginia, call
(804) 367-6778.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos by VICKI CRONIS
The Virginian-Pilot
Sandy Wallace, of Leesburg, one of 32 students at the Department of
Game and Inland Fisheries' course, scans the woods during a mock
hunt.
RIGHT: Student hunters rest after "shooting" a rubber turkey during
the weekend workshop.
BELOW LEFT: Instructor Jay Jeffreys lectures the class on turkey
biology.
VICKI CRONIS
The Virginian-Pilot
Dawne Alexander, of Mathews, checks a shotgun that the students
carried during a session on safety.
by CNB