"You wore green so you could hide."

Mrs. Crane may have been a monkey woman, wearing green so she could hide from Carl Spangler in Caddyshack, but this past weekend we wore green so we could hide, too. In a never-ending quest to perpetuate every stereotype the Left and Right Coasts have about those who live in Flyover Country, we embraced our first turkey hunt of the season last Saturday. Too bad the turkeys didn't embrace us.

It was windy. Too damn windy to do much of anything. Sure, we set up and yelped, purred, clucked and gobbled our way through breakfast anyway, but we weren't surprised that we didn't flip the safety off once. In wind like that, the birds get skittish; they have a hard time detecting predator movement in high winds (trees, brush and other forms of cover move too much) and feel safer sitting still. Combine that lack of movement with an overpowering case of turkey lockjaw and you can see why we called it a day by lunchtime. We heard a few random gobbles in the adjoining pasture, but we're pretty sure our box call sounded just like a box call and they ignored us.

Guess that's why it's called "hunting" and not "shooting".

Next time we're sticking to our slates. There's still plenty of season left, so we'll keep you updated on just how stupid those birds make us look in the coming month.