Published: April 18, 2009 08:56 pm      

Hooo, doggy! Great shot!

Well, we are into it now, spring gobbler hunting that is. The Maryland season opened yesterday.

The two spring gobblers that stand out in my mind for sheer excitement are my first one, a nasty alpha bird with 1.25-inch spurs from a ridge near McCoole more than a couple decades ago and a more recent bird.

The thing about the second exciting gobbler is that I didn’t shoot it. Somebody else did.

A few years back, on the third day of the five-week season, I was hunting with Mat Schartiger on Dan’s Mountain. I like hunting with Mat because he can hear a lot better than I can, though I have improved one side of my hearing by purchasing a Walker’s Game Ear.

So, we go to a spot I figured would workout, based upon some preseason scouting, but we, make that Mat, hear gobbling in another spot. We closed some ground and set up with Mat as the shooter. Long story short, I saw a couple gobbler heads (looked to be jakes), but Mat couldn’t eyeball them.

That turned out to be a good thing.

Mat soon heard gobbling from a different direction and this serenade was more robust coming, we believed, from an adult bird. We were correct.

With Mat out in front of me about 20 to 30 yards, I began calling. It wasn’t long until the textbook spring gobbler scenario evolved. With hardly any leaves on the trees and brush, we could see the gobbler appear 125 yards or so away. I called lightly and sparingly and the bird gobbled and strutted his way through the open woods until he was close enough for Mat to drop him.

I jumped up and let out a “Hoooo, doggy” shout, surprising myself with my emotion at the incident. It is the one and only time I have called in a gobbler for another hunter and I do believe that if I had to compare the excitement with that of my first-bird experience, it comes out as my favorite gobbler hunt.

In a way, it was if I was watching the hunt on TV, looking over the shooter’s shoulder at the approaching bird, being a part of the experience because of the slate and peg in my hand and waiting for the boom and the fold.

In these mountains, many of us don’t often have the opportunity to call in a gobbler for another hunter. I know that 98 percent of my hunting is a solo effort. Even when hunting with others, we all go off in different directions.

I ask myself frequently, which kind of hunting is my favorite. It is a difficult question to answer, but if pushed about it, I believe I’ll choose what is sometimes referred to as the poor man’s elk hunt, that being the spring gobbler.

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