Listening TO Only A Few Spring Gobblers

Jakes – shoot or let them walk by

Pick up on a FEW Spring Turkeys and listen closely
photo Dave Richey ©2012

It was a beautiful morning to be alive. I slipped out the door about 6:45 a.m. into 42-degree temperatures, and it felt wonderful.

The sun wasn't up yet but sharp spears of golden light shot upward from the eastern horizon, and my thoughts were on how beautiful the morning was. I stood there, a moment frozen in time, and waited for the sun to start bulging the horizon of the eastern sky.

It seems to start slow, and then the top surface of the ball of fire broke through, and up came the sun, growing more orange and red as it rose. It's a magic that I never tire of watching, and if there is a reason for rising before sun-up, it's to witness the rare beauty of dawn.

Watching a golden sunrise on opening day

I stood, transfixed by its beauty, and asked myself how anything could be any better. And then I learned how.

Off in the distance, so far away it could hardly be heard, came the very soft tree yelp of a hen turkey. She cutt once, just checking on the whereabouts of the other birds, and then a full-throated gobbler chimed in and the sound was loud even from a long distance away.

It's always amazing how loud a gobbler is when he roars as the sun comes up. The volume of sound is impossible to believe unless it is seen and heard up close.

He nailed that gobble with lusty exuberance for the day, and she gave another soft yelp. Big Daddy, still sitting in his roost tree, gobbled and then hit a double-gobble just to show everyone in the nearby trees who the Boss Gobbler in these parts happened to be.

Another Tom gobbled once, and again 10 seconds later, and then the Big Boss Man tuned up the woods again. The hen yelped a little bit more, just enough to keep the gobblers fired up, and then the Toms began gobbling back and forth at each other.

A gobble or double-gobble is pure Michigan excitement

Four individual gobblers were heard, and the fury of this sound was awesome. One or two small jakes tried to gobble but couldn't quite pull it off. Like adolescent boys, their voices were changing but they simply couldn't hit that low bass note and keep it going.

It was one of those days when I wished I could be sitting on the ground in my camo, a shotgun over my knees, and start lighting a real fire in their bellies. I love to listen to that low-pitched humming sound that gobblers make when they are close to a hen.

Many people have heard it, didn't know what it was, but if you are hunting and hear it, don't move because a gobbler is close. The sound doesn't carry far, and two or three years ago I was calling a gobbler for a buddy when I heard it.

"Don't move a muscle," I whispered. "There's a big gobbler behind us and he is very close. Don't move anything. We'll wait him out."

If you hear a gobbler spitting and drumming, sit still and don't move

That bird was within 15 feet of us, and I could hear him pacing back and forth in dry leaves, but he wouldn't circle around. We later learned that he had two big hens with him, and he was trying to lure my two hen decoys to follow along with him.

Unfortunately, I was too far away to hear this sound but I have no doubt that once the hens and gobblers flew down, that it would have been audible if the birds were close.

These birds on this delightful day serenaded the morning for 20 minutes while I stood and listened. And then, as if the switch had been thrown, they shut up and started moving.

I pulled the newspaper from the tube, walked back to the house, and stood on the back deck for another 10 minutes. The birds were indeed on the move, and I heard one gobbler rattle out his love song to the hens as they walked off in the opposite direction.

The turkeys, just like me, appeared happy to see the snow gone off the hillsides. All of winter's snow back in the hollows is gone, but I'll greet the dawn with the birds many times before the hunting season begins.

There's not much need for preseason scouting because I know the pattern of these birds and where they roost. I'll stay far away from them, hope they are not spooked out of the area, and each day they greet my distant presence with a gobble, is another memorable moment in my life.

Calling gobblers is more fun than shooting one

Somehow, I hope that's the way it may turn out but I have some doubts. It's been spring for five weeks, and I doubt many birds will be in the mood this spring. Some hen  birds have been seen on nests, and we're seeing very little gobbler activity if compared to past years.

But when my season open April 30, I'll be out there as usual, to greet the dawn with optimism. And I hope for just one lusty gobbler to call to me and my buddy. One chance may be it for this spring season, and we'll try to make the most of it.

No deer seen on the firearm opener

A buck like the one on the right was my goal today.

Weather-wise, in the northern Lower Peninsula at least, it was a great firearm deer opener. A bit cool, a bit of morning sleet and snow, a fair number of rapid-fire shots that seldom produce, but for me it was nothing special.

I hunted all day, first in a tree stand and then in a one-man pop-up tent, and never saw a deer. People with crop damage permits put the big hurt on some does, and I only heard of one buck being taken from my circle of friends.

Many of us were looking for something a bit larger than a year-and-a-half-old buck. Most favor a buck with substantial bone on their head, and such bucks are in a minority in the counties I hunt -- Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Wexford. Our doe and buck numbers are low in this region, and it shows little chance of getting better.

The northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula has a shortage of deer.

I hunted hard with Old Faithful -- my pre-1964 Winchester Model 70 in .264 Winchester Magnum. It can, and has on countless occasions, delivered an air-mail 140-grain package to a nice buck. That didn’t happen today although 15 more days of firearm season, more bow hunting and a brief muzzleloader season is on tap for next month. There’s still lots of time for a shot.

There are a number of open fields, cut corn fields and the like in my area. My land is mostly heavily wooded, and most of the morning was spent watching a field between two woodlots, and this strategy has paid off in past years but not this time around. The afternoon was spent hunting a high hill overloooking a thick swale and bedding area.

The thick stuff is usually better for a good buck, but today wasn’t the day for any bucks or does me to see. The deer seemed to be on some state land west of us, and that’s where the heaviest pressure was and the most shooting. This flies in the face of the fact that private land has held more deer than public land for two or three decades. So … maybe it’s  the state-land hunter’s turn to see the most deer.

Is a return to limited baiting on tap for next year. It does draw more hunters.

It’s not my style to go looking for something to argue about, but we are entering our third year of a three-year moratorium on baiting, and many people I speak to are adamant in their desire to return to a limited brand of baiting for those who wish to do so. Hunters have switched around from setting for two hours, and then still-hunting in the past decades. Now, most people are setting in coops and elevated blinds, and they don’t move. With no bait and no moving hunters, there isn’t much to keep the deer up and moving about.

Now a one-man pop-up tent doesn’t offer much room, and the funniest thing that happened to me today was a big header. There I was, in my tiny pop-up stand, and I leaned a bit too far to the right to check out  a run-way 40 yards away. I could tell it when I shifted my weight that everything was going down, and the little tent began to lean, and over we went. I cradbled Old Faithful in my arms like a new-born child, and the landing was soft and easy.

I was laughing about it on the short fall to the ground, and the hardest thing about it was extricating my rifle and body from the twisted-up tent. No injuries, no harm to the rifle or tent, and it felt good to chuckle about my own mishap.

But now the hour is getting late, and I’m beginning to nod off at the keyboard, and that’s never a good thing. So, if you’ll excuse me now, it’s time for a bit of shut-eye.

Z-z-z-z-z-z.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors