“I’m beginning to believe you,” my guide said as the volume of gunfire in the distance suggested a replay of the battle of Gettysburg. “I just don’t understand it…this is one of the best blinds on the lake,” he muttered no one in particular.

Our location was Turtle Creek reservoir near Sullivan, Indiana. The activity was a morning of teal and goose hunting last weekend held in conjunction with the fall meeting of the Hoosier Outdoor Writers association.

The group met at the Hoosier Environmental Center on the grounds of the Merom electrical generation station, owned by Hoosier Energy Rural Electrical Cooperative.  Turtle Creek reservoir supplies cooling water for the generation plant and also provides incredible opportunities for fisherman and waterfowl hunters.

Duck and goose hunting is fairly equipment intensive and preparation is essential. Thus, when I arrived on Friday evening at my motel in tiny Carlisle, I was concerned about a lack of certain items on my part. Several things such as camouflage clothing and the required steel shot cartridges were still sitting patiently on my kitchen table at home where they had been forgotten until I was just south of Terre Haute.

Most important was the assortment of licenses and stamps required to hunt.  Ethics aside, an outdoor writers meeting with several Indiana Department of Natural Resources employees in attendance would not be the place to cut corners in the licensing department. Therefore, after inquiries were made during the ham-and-beans welcome dinner, I headed off to the nearest Super Giant Discount Retailer store.  There, the sporting goods clerk gladly rang up my mounting purchases and added them to an already-overburdened credit card.  Satisfied that I was now fully equipped, I made the 10-mile drive back to the motel.

Waterfowl guns must be modified, or “plugged”, to only hold three shells while hunting.  As my gun normally holds five cartridges and the plug device was sitting at home with the shells, I was forced to conduct a bit of impromptu motel gunsmithing trying such items as a carpenters pencil and a lemon-scented toilet paper roller that were purchased at the discount store. Once separated, the bull end of the paper roller worked perfectly without modification and as an added bonus, my gun now has a fresh citrus scent.  For those skeptics in the crowd, this bit of trivia is absolutely true.

With everything laid out in preparation for the morning, I took out my state and federal duck stamps to call 1-800-WETLAND and obtain the required Harvest Information Program (HIP) number to write on the hunting license. It was then, 10 minutes before the discount store closed, when I realized that for the first time in many years, for some unremembered reason, I had purchased only a fishing license instead of a combination hunting/fishing ticket earlier in the year.  Suffice it to say that the rest of the evening involved a broken speed limit and a series of bent-knee pleadings to the store manager who was attempting to go home for the night.

Well before dawn the next morning, we met at the Environmental Center where the writers were paired up and we met our guides.  As me talked, my assigned partner Will Keaton mentioned that he had forgotten a few items. When I told about the previous evening, his reply was “Oh, you’re the guy everybody is talking about”. We didn’t speak during the rest of the boat ride to the blind.

Our guides Mike and Eric were enthusiastic about blind. Located at the tip of a small island that juts into the middle of the main lake, it was a natural rest stop for waterfowl moving up and down the reservoir. Mike had gone out the previous evening and placed goose and teal decoys in the shallow water around the island and everything looked promising. When I mentioned my usual disputes with Lady Luck, the group all laughed as if I were making some kind of joke.

No one was laughing later as we cruised back to the dock.  Only one flight of teal had come inbound to our blocks and it had spotted something suspicious and rocketed away at several hundred miles per hour. Will did manage to fire a single warning shot over their flanks while I sat snugly in a briar patch watching a nifty collection of large spiders crawl across my body and was thus unable to take a shot.

Of course, the rest of the group had a fine day and brought home many of the diminutive blue-winged teal.  Mike and Eric were gracious about our defeat and we all made plans to hunt together again sometime, though Eric was overcome with a coughing fit when I asked for his telephone number. I never did get his number, though I’m sure this was simply an oversight on his part.

IF YOU GO- Turtle Creek reservoir is located Southwest of Sullivan Indiana off of U.S 41.  Follow U.S. 41 south of town and follow the signs west to the boat ramp.  The lake offers both boat and shore fishing, but boats are limited to 10 horsepower. Boats with larger engines must keep the motor tilted out of the water and use a kicker or trolling motor.  The bass limit is one fish over 20 inches per day.

There are 32 waterfowl blinds assigned each morning by random drawing. Some blinds are accessible by foot, but most require a boat. Most of the lake is closed to fishing until noon during waterfowl hunts.

Turtle Creek Reservoir access site

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