Pennsylvania Game News - May 2012 - 27

I arrived in camp and spent the rest of the day getting my clothes and gear ready, gathering firewood and formulating a plan for the next morning. I knew that the birds wouldn’t be in the same spots as in the fall. During spring, turkeys have a tendency to spread out. Groups disperse, which meant that those gobblers could be anywhere. My first morning I decided to walk several of the many trails that wound through the woods. The trails closely followed the ridges, which allowed me to listen for gobblers on the mountainsides below and across the valleys. I walked slowly, stopping to make a few soft yelps to see if anything would respond. Nothing did. I heard only one distant gobbler. Before I knew it, the cool morning had given way to a hot afternoon, and I worked up a good sweat hiking back to camp. I didn’t mind. It felt good to be outside, to shake off the cobwebs. It was a good reintroduction to turkey hunting — what fun would it have been to just go out there and bag a gobbler on the first morning. I cooked lunch on a propane camp stove and ate it while gazing across a huge valley. It occurred to me that I hadn’t thought too much about anything but turkeys all day, and that was good. On the second day the birds were talkative and I could hear several gobblers. Again I walked the trails, this time trying to gauge where the birds were roosting and devising a game plan. A problem with mountain country is that it’s vast. Sound carries a long way. It can be difficult to judge the location of a gobbler. One that sounds close could be half a mile away, and one that sounds way off could be just over the hillside. But after two days I’d pinpointed quite a few birds. Now I could start going after them, and that’s when things started to get interesting. On day three, just before noon, I
MAY 2012

settled into my last spot of the day, a low gap on the ridge. The day before I’d heard a gobbler far out the ridge and over the hillside, and even though I knew he was near, I was still shocked when he responded immediately to my first call. It caught me by such surprise that I could barely produce a sound and my hands were trembling. I gathered my composure, cut loose with a few yelps, and the gobbler responded emphatically. A few seconds later I called again. The bird sounded closer. A lot closer. He was coming fast. I wasn’t sure of my position, though. I realized that I couldn’t see far because of the cover. The bird was over a hump, and to get to me it would have to cross over fallen trees. I was sure the gobbler would hang up because of the trees. With the gobbler on its way, I decided I needed to be on the other side of the deadfall. I made it into position only seconds before the bird appeared about a hundred yards away, in a grassy opening, running straight toward me. His head was extended, gobbling as he ran, his long rope of a beard swinging like a pendulum. At 40 yards out he slowed to a walk and fanned out in full strut. It was magnificent. I couldn’t believe I’d missed this the past 12 years. I admired the bird but realized I was in an awkward spot. When I moved, the bird had appeared so quickly that I hadn’t had time to get my gun up on my knee and into a shooting position. As a result, my gun was lying across my lap and my slate call was in my hand. I thought I could make the adjustment faster than the gobbler could react. I was wrong. I dropped
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Pennsylvania Game News - May 2012

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