Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305020030
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The really hard part is getting up early enough - say 4 a.m. - to be in a gobbler's woods before daylight, the time any self-respecting hunter will be there.
But once you do, once you are on a night-blackened ridge top, you wonder why you don't make the sacrifice necessary to be there more often, or wonder, even, if it is a sacrifice.
One morning last week, David Pollock and I drove through Craig County and hiked up an old logging road, the blackberry briers digging into our camouflage as we went.
Pollock, a Salem real-estate agent, had the perfect listening post picked out, a shelf located halfway up a ridge where our ears could scan nearly 360 degrees of mountain terrain. We would be in position to move quickly on any tom who decided to announce his availability to hens at daybreak.
Once in place, we had 10 or 15 minutes to spare before any gobbler would stir on its roost. That afforded us time for stargazing and savoring the sounds of the night woods. And thinking, too, like how the sky back in the city has been whitewashed with artificial lights so we become a generation that can find its way around darkened city streets but is lost when it comes to visually finding its way around the sky.
Unmistaken, though, was the morning star, the start of the spring gobbler season, Venus, low and brilliant in the east.
A whippoorwill called nearby. These night birds once were branded as loud mouths. Incessant and insistent, they would keep me awake in the featherbed that threatened to swallow me as a youngster on visits to my grandmother's farm. I don't hear them nearly as often now, and I am poorer for it.
Just before 6 a.m. the black outline of the ridges took on a purple halo. A rooster crowed in a distant farm lot down the valley. Then came the flute-like song of a thrush on the ridge above us.
Pollock cupped his ears. It was time.
"I like walking through the woods and looking at the wild flowers," he had said earlier. "I can make a good day of just that, but I like to hear a gobbler, too."
Ten minutes into the new day a gobbler sounded across the creek valley from us. Or at least I thought it was one. I wasn't certain enough to make any suggestions to Pollock. Then it gobbled again, louder this time, and we both were sure.
Pollock knew where to go, back down the road, across the valley, splashing through the creek, up the side of a ridge, lured by the most enticing sound in nature.
The week before, he had killed a huge 22-pound tom, so he gave me the position of honor this time, in the woods to his front while he called.
The gobbler answered immediately, with urgency in his voice. I was ready, a mask over my face, gloves, camo, only my eyes showing. The old boy was on his way.
I propped my shotgun on my knee, the stock against my shoulder, so I would have to move nothing but my eyeballs, and them sparingly.
Then it happened. My glasses fogged up. I couldn't see to shoot. I had to pull my mask up. The turkey was getting closer. I could hear it in the leaves. I pulled the mask back down and breathed through my mouth.
The gobbler was in sight now. He was puffed up in full strut, making hissing sounds, his great chestnut-colored tail like a giant fan. His wings were down and dragging in the leaves, hiding his legs and giving him a smooth, gliding motion, as if he were a ship sailing on a sea of brown leaves.
I could see the details of his head, white as a golf ball, except blue on the top and red as blood at the neck. His coarse, black beard flared broom-like and had a nice saber curve to it.
I wanted him to come a couple steps closer, but he strutted back and forth at a 90-degree angle. I decided I'd have to take him where he stood. When he moved behind an oak, I eased my eye along the shotgun barrel and was ready. His head popped out from behind the tree like a tin duck in a shooting gallery, and I pulled the trigger.
He was mine.
by CNB