Pennsylvania Game News - May 2009 - 5

ready to answer the tom’s gobbles when another gobbler cut loose about 80 or 90 yards behind me. The first turkey didn’t gobble again; it was apparent that the second gobbler was the king of the hill. I swiveled around and rearranged my calls so that I could get to them easily. As dawn progressed, I began to answer the gobbler with my best yelps and clucks. I thought things were going well when, suddenly, I heard yelping coming from down over the steep bank. It was a real hen. Moments later, a different sounding series of yelps came from below me: another hen was between the gobbler and me. I decided to try to outyelp the hens. Every time the gobbler hollered, I yelped back loud and long. A little after 6 o’clock I saw the two hens fly down. They quickly climbed the bank and appeared in an open spot about 40 yards away. After a brief stop for a glance in my direction, they vanished behind a thicket of multiflora rose. At the same time, the gobbler appeared and strutted my way. With his tail spread and his wings dragging, he looked huge. When he arrived in the opening where the pair of hens had paused, he halted, then pirouetted and faced away from me. I knew that he, too, was going to disappear behind the wall of multiflora rose. When I was just beginning to hunt gobblers, more than 25 years ago, the old-timers advised me to never shoot at a tom in strut. The killing zone is too small. So, I had never tried to make such a shot. One the other hand, on TV shows, I’ve seen plenty of strutting gobblers cleanly killed. My shotgun shoots 3½-inch 12-gauge shells, so I decided to take the shot if he turned back around. At the shot, the tom rose into the air at the edge of the bank and flew off unscathed. Cursing myself, I stepped off the distance, about 40 yards, and there wasn’t even a feather where the big tom MAY 2009 had been standing. The veteran hunters had been right. Who knows how far the strutting TV birds are from the hunters when they shoot? I was properly chagrined and vowed never to try to shoot a gobbler in strut again. It was only the second time I had missed a spring gobbler, and I was disgusted. If I had been patient and called well, perhaps I could have called the turkeys out from behind the screen of multiflora rose. It was only 6:15, so I thought I’d try to hunt up another turkey. Still disgusted with myself, I began to hike on out the ridge, stopping to call every so often, and a little before 8:00 I heard a faint gobble out ahead of me. The gobbling was coming from a large field, and when I got there I could see several big toms strutting for a bevy of hens. I halted and set up under a tree. During the next hour and a half, we had a calling contest. Although the gobblers often responded to my best yelps and clucks, not even one of them was leaving a good thing to come and investigate. Finally, at 9:30, I quit calling and contented myself to watch and listen to the birds. I was also plotting a strategy to send one of these gobblers to his doom the next morning. A little before 10 o’clock I headed back to my pickup. The path I’d chosen took me past where I had missed the gobbler at daybreak, and as I went through the area, I heard faint gobbling from high on the bank. I eased out along the base of the bank to a place where there was a grassy opening in front of me. I hunkered down at the base of a tree, pulled on my facemask, and popped in my favorite diaphragm call. Maybe, I thought, I can call the gobbler into the open spot. 5

Pennsylvania Game News - May 2009

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