Published: March 15, 2008 09:25 pm         

It seems that April may never arrive

I’ll be up front with you. It’s been driving me crazy waiting for spring gobbler season. I know that those of you who know me are not surprised. I know as well that I am not alone.

It’s driving our dog, Chloe, crazy as well. She comes running, wanting to investigate why strange sounds are coming from my mouth or from the devices in my hands as I practice sounding like a turkey. She likes to put her nose right up to the crow call as I make sounds like a winged rat. Crow calls, you know, can make gobblers gobble. So can train whistles and ambulance sirens. I’m surprised that the research and development people at Primos or Knight & Hale haven’t come up with a mouth call for both of those sounds by now.

Spring gobbler hunting is a dynamic, addictive thing. It doesn’t help that right now, during the cold days that come before spring, the television keeps showing guys whacking big gobblers in fields.

Ever notice that? It’s almost always in fields. The majority of TV shows about hunting deer and hunting turkeys come from the Midwest. For one thing, that part of the country has big bucks and big turkeys. For another thing, that part of the country is pretty much flat. Consequently, the cameraman can see the buck or the longbeard coming for a long distance, which adds to the useable footage that is squeezed in between commercials for broadheads or stuff you can spray on yourself so you don’t smell like yourself.

Personally, I think those of us who hunt these ridges and valleys of Appalachia are quite likely better hunters than any of those Weatherby toting, pipe smoking, lousy joking, loud spoken types that hunt places not many of us can afford.

So, mister TV hunter guy. You killed two giant gobblers on the King Ranch in Texas. Hoooo! Hoooo! Who couldn’t.

Those of us who toil (quite happily, I might add) in the land of small bucks and the rugged hills where turkeys have shorter legs on one side than the other spend our time counting our cartouches and chalking our box calls in February and March. I also was finally smart enough to get a professional cleaning job on my favorite shotgun so now the Beretta 390 — showing some wrinkles from the annual woodland battles — will kachunk, kachunk and load the next shell rather than simply kachu... and leave me wondering if I will be ready for a second shot if needed.

I have also been playing the choke game, trying some different constrictions with different kinds of shot. I took out a small loan and bought a box of 10 HeviShot shells. Whew. At more than $3 a shell, I almost hate shooting them at paper.

I think I actually bought two boxes that day, my first and my last.

The first one I shot at a papyrus gobbler had what could most accurately be called one of the worst patterns I’d ever seen.

Then — as my friend the late Rabbit VanMeter would say — I did a little studying on the subject and found that the HeviShot people said on their Web site that their product works best in chokes as tight as .665. Get any tighter, they wrote, and the pattern gets worse. Well, my new choke is .655.

So, I went to an even looser choke, aHastings at .682 I’ve had for a long time and presto. The HeviShot created a pattern that an ant could not survive... a big ant.

Shoot, the bottom line of the whole thing is to just call the birds in close and it pretty much doesn’t matter what you fire at them.

I’d like to call in a gobbler close enough to grab it. Then the dance would be on, wouldn’t it.

In 2003, I think it was, I worked a gobbler with hens for a couple days. Finally, I got in the right spot on his travel route. Two gobblers and about five hens were working down the hill, but a little to my left. They were on the very edge of range for the shotgun I was using that day.

I clucked and purred and the hens ran to me, but the gobblers held their ground. One of the hens (this is not a lie or even an exaggeration) had her feet no farther than 18 inches from my left boot as she tried to find out from where the calling had come.

Finally I just took a chance and slowly raised the Winchester Model 50. Of course the hens started putting and jumping, but the closest gobbler stood rock still and I was able to get two No. 4 pellets into places that turned the Tom into a dinner guest. I think the scurrying and excitement by the hens sort of hid me from the gobbler or at least distracted him from seeing me move, thus playing a part in his downfall. Had I known the distance, I might not have taken the shot, but it worked out. It was 55 steps from me to the bird, which dropped in place.

I’m not surprised, though. Those old fully choked shotguns with 30-inch barrels were meant to kill squirrels at long ranges and they do a heck of a job.

This past fall I killed my first bow-and-arrow turkey. And get this, the W.Va. bird was my biggest gobbler ever at 22 pounds, 10-inch beard, and dagger spurs of 1.5 and 1.25 inches. In spite of the thrill of being Robin Hood, I think I’m pretty much going to hunt with the shotgun this spring. There’s just something about the sound of the gobble followed by the sound of the 12 gauge that seems to be the perfect melody to me. Play it again, Sam.

The Maryland season opens as always on April 18, This year that happens on a Friday. Maryland’s five-week season is a wonderfully lengthy affair that allows the hunter to experience the still denuded woodlands of mid-April and the fully leafed forest at season’s end. Of course in Garrett County denuded woods take a lot longer to put on their clothes.

I have always had more luck in May than April.

The West Virginia season of four weeks opens very late this year, on April 28.

If you have never hunted spring gobblers, don’t start, because you will never again return to whatever else it was you did at that time of year.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.