My inaugural turkey-hunting foray began promisingly on October 27 with a tailgate brunch in the Windsor park and ride off Interstate 91. Hartland hunter Brett Ladeau had cooked a spread of wild turkey dishes using harvests from previous outings, including a 12-pound hen he'd shot the day before. From a cooler in his truck bed, the National Wild Turkey Federation's Vermont chapter president served up barbecue-sauced, pulled turkey leg sandwiches and ladled hunks of dark meat with vegetables and broth into mugs decorated with turkey tracks. His bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers stuffed with Creole-spiced nuggets of turkey breast would've made a solid sports-bar menu item. "The bacon doesn't hurt," Brett, 56, quipped. The slow-cooked leg and thigh meat in the soup and sandwich was tender and not stringy, as I'd been warned it could be. Brett's two daughters, who were tasting with me, agreed that both dishes could have used more seasoning. "Salt at every step," Whitney, a line cook, admonished her father teasingly. The 20-year-old was sitting in the parking lot wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe over sweatpants. Her sister, Sydney, 22, was dressed in full camo. Of the four Ladeau kids, Sydney is the only regular hunter. Under her dad's tutelage, she shot her first turkey at age 9. Following in his footsteps, she has also competed successfully in turkey calling contests, during which hunters demonstrate their skills mimicking the birds' vocalizations to draw them closer. Calling is not unique to turkey hunting, but the extent to which hunters engage in back-and-forth "conversation" with the birds makes it an especially interactive experience, the Ladeaus explained. Over the years, I've tagged along on deer, grouse and squirrel hunts, but turkey hunting sounded intriguingly different. I planned the Upper Valley trip with the goal of eavesdropping on a hunter-turkey chat and tasting wild turkey for the first time. I'd been advised to wear head-to-toe camo to fool the sharp-eyed birds and been cautioned that the native eastern wild turkey, while good eating, is not suited to become a Thanksgiving centerpiece roast. Spoiler alert: The eating part went better than the hunting part. The fact that Vermonters can hunt turkeys at all is a conservation success story. By the mid-19th century, the once-plentiful eastern wild turkey had disappeared from Vermont due to deforestation and unregulated hunting. After being reintroduced in the late 1960s, the species rebounded exceptionally well…