Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Swimming gobbler surely a Kodak moment
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Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Tall tales are part of fishing, but you have to give Ronnie Lee and Emerson Payne credit for the whopper they came back with after an October trip to Kerr Reservoir.
The men were fishing for bass near the Ivy Hill recreation area when they saw something swimming across the lake. It didn't look like a duck or goose.
"The silhouette looked like a loon," Payne said. "But I'd never seen a loon down there.
"Then the closer we got, we could see it was a turkey."
The men said the hen eventually made it to shore and walked up into the woods.
Norfolk Southern retirees who fish together every chance they get, Lee and Payne were still contemplating the sight when they spotted another swimming turkey, this one a gobbler.
It too, eventually made it to shore.
"It shook off like a dog and walked up in the woods just like the hen," said Lee, a 54-year-old from Roanoke.
When the men told their story to friends they got the kind of skeptical looks you might expect.
"People thought I was crazy," Lee said. "They were asking if I was drunk."
Payne, who is 59 and lives in Boones Mill, got the same treatment.
"Once word got around, people thought we were making it up," he said, pretty much summing up the reaction I had when Lee called me with the story.
Then, with a satisfied grin, Emerson added the key phrase.
"Until we got the pictures developed."
Pictures?
What a novel idea. Photographic proof is usually missing when someone sees - or thinks they see - something unusual in the wild.
A photo would have been missing in this case if the men had seen only one turkey. But when they saw the gobbler they had the presence of mind to reach for a disposable camera, a piece of gear they carry along on all their fishing trips.
Using their bass boat's trolling motor the men headed for the swimming gobbler. It wasn't difficult to catch up.
"They're slow swimmers," Lee said.
That's because they're not supposed to swim.
"I've never heard of a turkey swimming," said Bob Duncan, Wildlife Division chief for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "But I wouldn't put anything past a wild turkey.
"They are amazing animals."
Turkeys aren't amazing swimmers simply because they aren't designed to swim, lacking key components such as webbed feat.
How they got in the water is another mystery. The lake was not quite a mile wide at the spot, the men said. Turkeys can easily fly that distance.
When the men pulled alongside the gobbler Payne snapped several shots. The pictures clearly show the gobbler, right down to its submerged beard.
"I wish I could have gotten closer," Payne said. "But I didn't want to spook him."
No worries. The pictures are plenty good enough to prove that this is one of those tall tales that really happened.
Virginians fall short in BASS open
Berths in the Bassmaster Classic tournament have been hard to come by recently for Virginia fishermen. Not a single Virginian qualified for the 2004 Classic.
Four Virginians were hoping to change that this past week on the Ouachita River in Louisiana at the Bassmaster Open series championship, the top five finishers of which were to earn a spot on the 2005 Classic.
All four came up short.
Rick Morris of Lenexa was the top Virginian, finishing 11th in the 78-angler field. Next came Chris Daves of Hopewell in 28th and John Crews of Salem in 33rd.
Woo Daves of Spring Grove, the 2000 Classic champion and father of Chris Daves, was 44th.
Roughly four dozen Classic spots remain up for grabs through other qualifying tournament trails.
Sherwood forming archery league
Sherwood Archers will hold an organizational meeting Sunday for its winter indoor shooting leagues, which are open to the public.
The meeting will be at 3 p.m. at the club, which is on Timberview Road near Hanging Rock in Roanoke County.
For more information, call Jimmy or Bertha Brugh at 254-2490.
