Pennsylvania Game News - October 2009 - 17

decided to try and break the flock. I unloaded my gun and scrambled as fast as I could, yelling as loud as I could. It didn’t work very well. What appeared to be a dozen or more birds flew together across the hollow. I saw only two run up over the knob on the other side of the hollow, and a single bird run uphill and out of sight through the hollow. I figured my best chance to call in a turkey was with these three birds, so I huffed, puffed and sweated back up over the steep knob, and then moved ahead a hundred yards to set up to call. After I’d settled in, wiped drops of sweat from my glasses, replaced my orange hat with a camo cap, and donned a facemask, I started to call. I quickly got into a calling contest with several birds out ahead of me. Despite my best clucks, yelps and kee-kee runs, though, they refused to come my way. A little after 4 o’clock the calling contest ended — I’d lost. Knowing I had a long hike out to the truck, I eased down over the knob so I could hit an old trail at the bottom. About halfway to the trail, I bumped into the birds again. I had my gun slung over my shoulder while descending the steep bank and the birds flew off safely. Once again, I settled in to call, but only one bird responded, far across a deep hollow. As it was nearing 5 o’clock, I knew I needed to get off the rough terrain so that I could get to my truck. I also knew where I wanted to start in the morning. Those turkeys weren’t going to be too far from where I ended the evening. I was up the next morning by 4:30, in time to grab a bite of breakfast before hiking back to the knob where I had last flushed the turkeys. Although I figured most of the birds were together, I was also hoping there would be a lonely single bird that I might be able to call in. I got set up just before daybreak under a big oak, and I sent out my first flurry of soft yelps. No response. I called every five or ten minutes for the OCTOBER 2009 next 45 minutes and finally, around 7 o’clock, the turkeys began to talk. As I had figured, most yelped and keekee’d from out to my right, but a couple birds also yelped softly somewhere to my left. I was hoping these would come to my calling. I thought they were on their way in when another turkey, across a hollow directly in front of me, began to yelp incessantly. It sounded like an old hen, but I knew I couldn’t get to her quickly enough to scare her away, so I began to mimic her yelping. A few minutes later her yelping came from off to my left; she had apparently flown to my side of the hollow. Her incessant yelping excited the birds to my right. They increased their chatter, and I even heard one turkey gobble three or four times, something I have heard only rarely during the fall. After only about five minutes of this, I saw what was probably the incessant hen fly from my left to my right about 50 yards below me, to the knob where the other birds were making all the racket. She yelped her way up the bank, paying no attention to me. That took her only several minutes. When she disappeared up over the edge of that knob, the other turkeys shut up, and I knew I’d been had again. I decided to climb up over the knob and try to bump into the flock again. I never did figure out what happened to the two turkeys that had been calling out to my left. As I got up to put my orange back on, two more turkeys flew out of a couple hemlocks below me, only 30 yards away. They ran uphill to my left and disappeared. I was beginning to believe it was going to be another one of those hard-luck seasons. The knob that I ascended was probably the steepest place on the mountain. It was fit only for a mountain goat, not a

Pennsylvania Game News - October 2009

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