OUTDOOR TRUTHS: The other side of the hill – May 8, 2025

By Editor | May 7, 2025 |

By Gary Miller

The motto for many turkey hunters this year is, “So close, and yet so far away.” It really is amazing sometimes how close we can be to a good gobbler and yet be unable to take a shot. More than one person has bemoaned this truth to me. I empathize with them.
Just today, I got as close to a roosted tom as I possibly could without being seen. He flew down and paced the side of the hill just over the crest from where I was set up. He probably got as close as 40 yards, but I could never see him. He was literally, “so close, and yet so far away.” For some of you non-turkey hunters, one of the best setups for ambushing a gobbler is to set up just below the crown of a hill across from the turkey. This hides you from his all-seeing eyes until he comes to the top of the hill. By then, he has sealed his fate, because he’s well within shooting range. The heartache comes when he stays just on the other side, out of sight, waiting for you (the hen) to come to him. If you’ve turkey hunted long enough, you’ve lived this scenario and second guessed yourself each time the plan didn’t work.
But I thought the best plans were supposed to always work. I mean, if it doesn’t work, could it really be the best plan? The truth is, the best plan doesn’t always work out. In the case of my turkey, I knew the plan, but he didn’t. And it’s the same when other plans fail as well. They fail because not everyone knows the plans, or because someone had different plans.
Over the years, I have dreamed of some grand plans. I have pictured the perfect scenario for some of the situations I have been in. And in all those years of making plans, I can’t really ever remember my plans working out just as I had predicted. The outcome may have been just as good, but the path to that outcome was very different from what I thought would happen. The problem is that even though my plans have never worked in exactly the way that I thought they would, I still panic when I see them go awry. For an atheistic world, this may seem like a reasonable reaction, but for those of us who believe in the guiding hand of real God, this is not an option. For it was Jesus who said, “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.” God already sees the other side of our hill.
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■ Gary has written the Outdoor Truths article for 20 years. He has also written four books which include compilations of his articles and a father/son devotional. He also speaks at wild-game dinners and men’s events for churches and associations.