After Saturday’s opener, the play was drawn up for me: Get back to the deep fields, where we struck them up, by shooting light; Set up a decoy and get comfortable, unless/ until something gobbles. There was a lot of sign in and between the fields, and we had found multiple turkeys in the area; Even if they weren’t gobbling, they would probably be by the field sometime in the morning.
I followed the itinerary from opening day: Got up at 1. Gone by 1:30. Arrived just after 4 and set out immediately. By shooting light I was approaching the first field, but instead of walking into it to look around, I pressed on to the central field where Corey got his bird. “What are the chances he shot the only tom in town?” I reassured myself.
As I crossed the “tranquil pines-” a stretch of the path where a pine thicket shields the weather- I heard a tom gobble not far off the trail. This almost bothered me as I was close to the field and it was throwing a wrench in my plan. I wasn’t sure how I would set up there, or whether I could pull the bird through the cover outside the pines, but was I really going to bail on a gobbling bird?
I gave a short yelp call, and got no response. The field I planned on starting from was only a couple hundred or so yards away, so I decided to press on. As I approached the spot where Corey tagged out last time, I crept ever slowly until I could peer into the clearing. At the back, about 150 yards away, I saw the large silhouette of a lone bird.
I dropped down, crawled back and set up under a tree before crawling out to place the hen decoy I brought. In hindsight I was a little conservative with its placement, and I could have put the decoy out farther to be more easily visible, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem. After crawling back to the tree and catching my breath, I began to call.
Almost immediately, the tom at the back of the field started gobbling. Before long, another tom was gobbling from the direction of the first bird I heard. It may or may not have been the same one, but that didn’t matter- the tom in this field was responding eagerly and before long it was clear that he was making his way towards me.
I saw a slight movement as his red and white head crested the final rise at about 50 yards. Though it was tough to make out clearly through the brush, I could soon see his strutting body atop the knoll. At that point he saw the hen decoy and dropped out of strut. This made me nervous, because it seemed like he was still about 45 yards away and fairly obscured by the brush right in front of me. Given his change in stance I was worried he was getting ready to boogie, but within a moment he puffed back out and took a couple steps.
Now I was anxious to make it happen. I thought “this is what turkey chokes are for,” as I squeezed the trigger. In that instant I rose as the blast dispersed the brush in front of me, shucking the shotgun, ready for a follow up, but it wasn’t necessary. The bird flopped several times as I ran over to grab it, though it was immediately clear that he wasn’t going anywhere.
I got to the field around sunrise, caught my breath, started calling, killed the bird and was taking pics within fifteen minutes. After five years of chasing those big birds, on the Eastern shore of Maryland; in Western Maryland; in South-Central PA, in Northeastern PA, I finally put my hands on my very first Eastern turkey.
It isn’t the prettiest fan or picture, but getting this big bird was a dream come true. In another ten minutes I was back on the 5+ mile hike out. It was a victory march.