05/03/2008
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Staff photo by Travis Barrettfrom the Kennebec Journal
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But then her father found a way.
"He promised me a house in Greenville if I went hunting with him for an hour," the 11-year-old fifth-grader from Canaan said.
Andrea made the hour count. Not only did she shoot the second turkey of her young hunting career, but at nearly 24 1/2 pounds, she shot the fourth-heaviest turkey on record in Maine. The bird is recognized as a trophy-sized turkey by both the Maine Antler and Skull Trophy Club (MASTC) and the Maine chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation's Longbeard Society.
"I knew there were a couple of big toms out there, but obviously I had no idea it was that big," said Richard Gurney, Andrea's father and hunting partner.
"We went out back there and I told her we were going after 'Grandpa,' " Richard said. "I always tease her about the bird we call 'Grandpa' -- we say that he's so old he's got a white head and beard. She had a chance to shoot two other small jakes out there, but she said she wanted Grandpa."
Seated at the kitchen table in her father's house, Andrea starts giggling with excitement, listening as he recounts the story.
"I'd tried to get him last year, but he was the trickiest one to get," Andrea said of her intended target. "I noticed that it was the same one again from the year before, and I was so excited. I just wanted to get him so badly."
CRAWL SPACE
Though her father begged and pleaded, Andrea Gurney was having none of the hunting thing last Saturday morning -- despite her plans to, like her father, one day become a registered Maine guide.
But with some prodding, Richard finally got his daughter to give him an hour. No calling, no blind in the woods, they set out to stalk a small group of turkeys shortly after 9:30 a.m.
"We knew exactly where they were going to be, so we headed out to the woods and tried to head them off," Richard said. "I think we did about 45 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of actual hunting. Once we got to within about 75 yards of the birds, then we got on our stomachs.
"We stopped, we crawled, we waited and we crawled some more. Whenever I went, Andrea did the same thing."
There were two other males with the big tom Andrea took aim at. The were gobbling at one another, presumably arguing over some hens who had emerged in the woods behind where the Gurneys had settled in. Once they heard the little squawking battles going on around them, they hunkered down.
"I told her, 'Don't even breathe,'" Richard said. "I just told her to concentrate on that big one."
The young girl tried, though she admitted afterward that it had not been easy to stay focused.
"I always get nervous when I get ready to shoot," Andrea said, noting that for good luck she turns her baseball cap backwards when she's hunting. "I couldn't even turn my head to look at (the hens), but I could hear them running away from us in the woods. (The toms) must have though that we were gone, and that was when they popped out right in front of us."
When they did, Andrea took aim -- but even after firing off the shot, she wasn't done as her excitement took off.
"She shoots the bird, the bird falls down," Richard said, "and then she throws her gun down and starts chasing the two other toms. I was like, 'Honey, get back here!' "
Off the charts
When Andrea came back to the turkey she'd killed, she found that the real adventure was just beginning. At 24 pounds, 6 ounces, she couldn't swing the bird over her shoulder and carry it out of the woods herself.
She needed Dad's help.
"It's not a big turkey," Andrea said. "It's a jumbo one."
Turkey experts agree.
"That's one of the most impressive birds you'll ever see, especially for a youngster like that," said local taxidermist Dave Cote of Waterville, an official MASTC scorer who mounts roughly 25 turkeys annually and prepared the state record turkey in 2006. "It's the biggest one I've seen this year of the five I've taken in so far. With the tough winter we had, it seems every bird I'm getting in -- even ones with 10-inch beards -- are only weighing in at about 16 pounds."
Officially, Andrea's turkey was given an overall score of 64.125 -- a system that accounts for weight, beard length and spur length. In addition to the 24-pound, 6-ounce weight, Andrea's bird had a 9 1/2-inch beard and one spur that measured out at 1 1/2 inches.
The other would have been just as long, but part of it was shot off, leaving it less than one inch long. Still, needing only to score 62 or better to make MASTC for a traditional turkey, it easily qualified for the club and was the 27th-best overall turkey in the MASTC annals.
It's easily the state record-holder for the MASTC youth category.
Though the turkey wasn't the state's heaviest (as Richard Gurney drove for nearly four hours trying to find someone with a state-certified scale, he estimated the turkey may have lost as much as a pound and a half in water weight), Andrea can find solace in the fact that no bird in Maine has ever reached the 25-pound plateau.
Jeffrey Clifford of Edgecomb's 24-pound, 14-ounce turkey, shot in May of 2006, stands as the heaviest in Maine's relatively short turkey hunting history. The state only started issuing more than 500 turkey permits to hunters in 1995. Larry Thurston of Oxford holds the state record turkey with an overall score of 75.562, but even that bird weighed less than Andrea's, tipping the scales at 23 pounds, 15 ounces.
Family Tradition
Tucked away on the bottom shelf of Richard Gurney's refrigerator was a black plastic trash bag. Inside, the 18-pound jake he refused to show visitors for having been upstaged by his daughter.
"Hey, Dad, it's OK," Andrea says sarcastically. "Maybe next time..."
Richard laughs.
"She's excited," he said. "I tell her that she'll be traveling around to shows, taking the bird with her and eating dinners with all these big-time hunters all year. But all she cares about is that she's going to get patches for her vest.
"She's tickled pink, but she doesn't even really know how big this is. I think I was more excited about it than she was. I have two older boys, and neither one of them ever really took to hunting. But she's hunting and fishing with me -- she hasn't gone. It ended up being the little girl that followed Daddy, and we have a lot of fun."
Fun, at least for now. There's still that discussion about the house in Greenville.
"I'm not going hunting again if you don't keep that promise," she reminds her father.
A likely story.
Travis Barrett -- 621-5648
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
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