Pennsylvania Game News - April 2017 - 8

a good day.
One gobble, two, then a third rolled up
from the hollow below us.
Behind us, I heard the muted tree-talk
of hens softly answering the gobblers. We
must have walked past them coming in.
Then, sounds from what we thought
was a gobbler flying down from its roost
emanated from the hollow below. It
sounded like he landed about 100 yards
to our right. Sounds of two more birds
flying down followed from the same area.
Once on the ground, the gobblers
resumed announcing their presence to
the hens, and by listening carefully to the
locations of each of the new gobbles, it
became clear the three birds had joined
each other and were working their way
toward the bottom of the bench near Clear
Run, which would bring them onto an old
skid road below us.
The hens, still behind us, began working our way. In response, we quietly
moved farther back from the skid road
and set up behind a large rock.
The excited gobblers answered the
eager calls of the hens with double and
triple gobbles as the birds closed on one
another.
Two jakes, strutting back and forth
at the base of the trail, were the first to
appear.
Then, a third bird's booming gobble
echoed in the hollow, and the hens started
calling excitedly.
When this old boy stepped onto the
skid road, the jakes immediately stopped
strutting and gave him a wide berth. The
hens, now halfway over the bench's edge,
drew the jakes' attention and they started
toward them, stopping every few feet to
strut, putting on a grand show.
Apparently unconcerned about the
8

jakes' antics, the old gobbler remained
near the road, leisurely pacing back and
forth in full strut.
He was huge - 20 pounds or better, I
guessed.
He also had an unusually thick beard
that was so long it dragged on the ground.
The big gobbler made no move toward
the hens, at least not until the younger
birds drew closer to them.
Then he released a booming gobble
and charged toward them. When he
reached them, he stopped, ruffled his
feathers and began a fighting purr that
sounded like a low rumbling growl.
The two jakes retreated, leaving the
gobbler with the hens, and the group then
fed away from us.
We left, too.
Walking back to camp, Rick joked
that the old gobbler's thick, heavy beard
reminded him of a 1950s pompadour
hairdo.
If that distinctive beard had been on
that gobbler's head, Rick reasoned, he
would have looked just like Elvis - especially given the way he had paraded in
front of the hens.
From that moment on, we were hunting a gobbler named Elvis!
Since we hadn't alarmed the birds, and
food in the area was plentiful, we figured
they'd roost in the same area that night.
We rose early the next morning and
were seated under a star-filled sky a full
hour before dawn.
This time, I positioned Rick near a
boulder, up from the skid road where we
had seen Elvis enter yesterday.
I stationed at the top of the skid road
and picked a spot that would hide me from
approaching birds as I made calls for the
both of us.
Pennsylvania Game News - April 2017

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