Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 6 W ith only the faintest bit of light in the east, Javier, my young Mayan guide, lead me down an old logging road where every five minutes we stopped to listen. It's a technique I had used for hunting turkeys back in my home state of Georgia, but Javier and I were deep in the Yucatán rain forest with a high canopy overhead. Howler monkeys were having a shouting contest in uppermost foliage, roaring at each other on both sides of the trail, and numerous bird calls unknown to me emanated from the thick vegetation all around. Suddenly Javier froze in his tracks and pointed off to the right. Grinning, he looked at me and whispered, "Mucho grande." I had last heard those words from a fishing guide at Isla Blanca Lagoon north of Cancún many years ago. My wife, Martha, had just landed a big permit, which along with her bonefish, tarpon, and snook, gave her a grand slam. But this was no fishing trip. Instead, I was hunting one of the most beautiful gamebirds in the world, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata). And Javier had just heard one call on our first morning. W e left the road and pushed through a morass of vines and brush. Javier carried a razor-sharp machete, which he used adroitly in a quick slicing motion that made little noise. I stayed close behind him, with deference to the fast-swinging action of the machete. After ten minutes of cutting through dense foliage, Javier motioned for me to turn off my flashlight. We proceeded in darkness with no chopping, just tiptoeing as quietly as possible. The frequency and pitch of the ocellated's call is outside the range of my much- diminished hearing, so when I did hear it, I knew we were getting close. It's call is not a deep, raspy gobble but a series of high-pitched, melodious chops – more a bird-voiced trill than a deep resonating gobble. Unlike the other wild turkey species (Meleagris gallapavo), the ocellated often refuses to come to a call, so the guides will take the bird from a tree limb whenever possible. Getting under the bird without being seen or heard can be very difficult and reminded me of hunting auerhahn (capercaillie) in Europe. With daylight coming on fast, we had to stalk another 60 yards to reach the bird while darkness still prevailed on the forest floor. Looking up and ahead, I realized that spotting him in the dense canopy would be near impossible. But his gobbles grew very loud as we grew closer, and my adrenalin and hope kicked up a notch. Then, from out of nowhere the unthinkable happened. A group of spider monkeys came swinging through the treetops with one thought in mind: harass the gobbler. Our spirits wilted when, with a loud flapping, the bird left the area. Javier articulated extreme vitriol in Spanish at the mischievous monkeys. Our first morning hunt had ended. Back in camp, Dr. Alan Schlagel, a hunter from another group in camp, had taken a nice gobbler off the limb. He had traveled to the Yucatan with his son, Levi. Seeing his beautiful bird increased my hope heading toward day two. I n 72 years of turkey hunting I've called more than 200 gobblers to the gun. But there was a big omission on my bucket list. The ocellated turkey had been on my mind for a long time, but something always seemed to get in the way. Then at the 2014 Safari Club Convention I passed the booth of Balam Hunting Expeditions, based in southern Mexico. Alfredo Lamadrid, a lawyer in Mexico City, owns the company, which has a 180,000-acre lease in the Yucatán jungle south and east of Campeche. The primary target for most of his hunters is the ocellated turkey, but he also offers excellent hunting for brocket deer, peccary, cougar, and coatimundi. His bird