Long Hollow Gobbler artwork by dana bellis t’s alReady a good day of turkey hunting when I can walk into the woods before dawn by the full moon’s light, my own lunar shadow striding alongside. When that shadow probes a hidden hollow on the west flank of the laurel Ridge, just being there will reward the hike. Wild trout were the catalyst for that early May trek. I’d probed up the same “long Hollow” a few weeks earlier to fish for native brook trout. the fishing was steady but the turkey sign was startling, especially on the heels of the winter of 2010. something like 22 feet of snow smothered the ridge that season. With a MAY 2011 By Ben Moyer I 5-foot snowpack into the third week of March, many locals predicted the turkeys would never see spring. In recent seasons I had settled into the habit of hunting gobblers in the woodlots and pastures of Greene County. In that tamer landscape the birds’ movements are often predictable and their habitual roosts approachable by some fencerow or field. But the abundant scratchings and sign along the little mountain trout stream, left there by birds of unimaginable endurance, moved me to hunt again on the Ridge. 3