By Gary Miller
Practice, practice, practice; that’s what we’re all doing right now. Go to any establishment that supplies the hunter and you will hear the sounds of those preparing for the upcoming turkey season. It sounds like a flock of hens have just landed inside the store. We’re trying out the box calls, slate calls, mouth calls, push-pull calls and anything else that has just come on the market. But it’s not just in those places. At home, in the car, and wherever we may be, we’re mocking the sounds of the lonesome hen. My wife has threatened to fry me if I don’t give it a break. There are the yelp, cluck, purr, cut, putt, and some other sounds that I have never heard. It’s all part of the plan of attack on opening day and throughout the hunting season. The idea of all this noise pollution is to become something that we are not and to do it so well that it fools even the wisest gobbler.
It seems that we ought to be good at it by now. I mean, most of us are experts at being something that we are not. We live our lives so far away from what we were made for. We have become good at making the sounds of the world around us as if there is no difference between us and all the other creatures. The fact is we are special. God has breathed in us the breath of life. It’s called a soul. It is the eternal part of man that will never die. We are not a body with a soul but a soul with a body. We are called God’s workmanship and we were created for Him. To be anything else is no different than trying to be a hen in the woods. We may have some success but one day the season will be over and we’ll have to give an account of whether we became what we were meant to be. The great thing about being what we were meant to be is that it perfectly fits within our own desires for fulfillment. God’s plan for us is not a foreign substance in our body that seeks to suck away our life; instead it is the catalyst that adds joy to an otherwise joyless existence.
Gary Miller can be reached via e-mail at gary@outdoortruths.org.