The High Road

[Tommy Strutsalot]

The PA season starts on the closest Saturday to May 1st and runs through the last legal day of May (no Sunday hunting) with a 2-bird limit.  While I hunt locally as often as I can before work, the area of the state where I reside is at the convergence of the two lowest producing wildlife management units in the whole state as far as turkey harvest is concerned.  I'm blessed with some small blocks of decent private access which at least keeps me in the game locally – but my friends and I are always chomping at the bit to spend 4-5 days in camp, about 2.5 hours northwest of where we live.  Our camp and the surrounding area provide beautiful scenery, a denser turkey population, but most importantly, little to no accountability to anyone but ourselves.

I hunted locally for the first 10 or so days of the season straight – during which I was persistently harassed by more than one cell of jakes.  I was beginning to grow weary of that arrangement, which coincided nicely with our plan to arrive in camp on the evening of May 10th to hunt the rest of the week. On the evening of May 9th, I packed my truck and planned to pull a fast one on the boys by conducting what we call a "kamikaze mission" – where one emerges from the comfort of their home and into the night around 1:30 AM to shoot up to camp and get in the woods before the first gobble.  Sadly, topping off the long series of early wakeups with such a mission proved too much for this shell of a man that I've become, and I woke up at 5:00 AM.  I felt the need to immediately compensate for my poor performance, so I urgently weighed the options of rushing to get in the woods locally or sacrificing several hours of hunting in exchange for transit, leaving the last few hours of hunting time to try and locate a bird up north.  I drank a cup of coffee and settled on the latter.

I arrived at the bottom of the logging road at about 9:30 AM on the 10th, and quietly worked my way up the ridge to a familiar area where I've found birds roaming in the late morning on several occasions.  Given the 12:00 PM cutoff, I decided to split the remaining time into two hardwood sets bordering some pasture and farm fields.  After an uneventful first set, I began to make good on the second half of my plan.  I would typically use the "high road" - the highest of a series of switchbacks- that runs along the edge of the ridge to traverse between the two sets, but in the recent past I've began to question the prudence of that.  The road is a far quieter route, but I have bumped more birds while moving through there than I care to admit.  Without the cover of darkness, I decided to take the long way around and leave the block of hardwoods undisturbed.

By the time I reached my second set, I had about an hour left to play.  I was gently clucking and purring on my slate when I was interrupted by an inquisitive yelp directly behind me and several degrees to my right.  There stood two longbeards, pausing briefly before continuing to tailgate a hen, who steadily increased her distance from me in the direction of the road that I worked to avoid. I briefly cursed myself as I would've been well-situated had I been set up on that road, but I suppose it also exposed the risk.   I let them work off for about 10 minutes before slowly moving in their direction.  I gave an excited series of yelps and cuts, unsuccessfully trying to elicit a gobble or garner the attention of the longbeards.  As the clock approached 12, I decided to throw in the towel and again avoid the road (and turkeys) by moving straight down the face of the ridge to my truck.   At about 12:15 as I was changing at my truck, one of the longbeards fired up on that top road and gobbled his fool head off for the better part of an hour.  He worked the road from one end to the other, gobbling every 30 or so yards.  While it was hard to ignore that I  almost definitely talked myself out of a dead bird, I also felt good about the intel I had just secured.

On the morning of 11th, my tank was on "E" but I was the first one to leave the cabin as I wanted to get up on that road with enough time to move purposefully and let the woods settle before light.  As the spring woods started to come alive, a resounding gobble came from about 120 yards directly in front of me, about halfway down the ridge.  Given our respective positions, I figure that the bird was about eye level with me in the tree.  I let him gobble twice more and waited to see if any other birds would advertise their location.  Soon, another bird gobbled about 200 yards directly to my right, and on my level.  I responded promptly with some light clucks and purrs and received direct verbal affirmation from both birds.  I then sat my slate call about 3 feet off to my left, something I do when I want to convince myself not to call again at that moment.   As the birds began to leave the roost, the closer bird seemed as if he'd been tied to the base of that tree, as he would gobble but would not budge an inch (or more likely he had me pinned).  The second and more distant bird was less vocal after hitting the ground, but after a short time, I began to hear a hen yelping with increasing volume and intensity, followed by a gobble at the end of each cadence.  She was getting closer as well.  I had cleared the area around the full circumference of the tree, so I was able to quietly shift my position to the right for a view and viable shooting lanes in the direction covering both potential opportunities.  Within seconds, the hen appeared in full sprint down the road in my direction, leaving any bird previously in tow in the dust.  She jumped off the road, up into the woods, and ran directly at me.  Right when I thought she was going to run me over, she stopped dead in her tracks less than 10 yards in front of me and looked me directly in the eyes.
I knew that the entire game would likely be won or lost in the next several seconds.  Following a brief standoff, she instantly changed her mood, and began to calmly scratch and feed directly past and then behind me.  I don't know how long it had been since I blinked, but the woods were beginning to blur like a crappy water painting.  Finally, I saw the crest of a full tailfan slowly waddling down the road. Soon the fan folded backward and disappeared as the longbeard along with two jakes emerged into full view on the road at a distance of about 50 yards.  The birds had come to a point where they would either continue down the logging road or jump up into the woods following the path of the hen.  With my bet on the latter, I positioned my gun barrel to an opening that would offer a shot in the range of about 30 yards should they stay true to her route.  After some further display and a final gobble, we consummated our arrangement at 5:56 AM on a beautiful PA mountain top.

I continued to chase these magnificent birds with admittedly less vigor after that morning and as the season progressed.  I began to hit the snooze button here and there (with great self-flagellation of course) or make increasingly passive attempts on birds in my local areas.   As the heat ramps up into the mid 90's on this final day of the season, I have prematurely begun to reflect and dream about where next season will take me and how life will change between now and then.  With age it's clear that love, loss, and responsibility begin to play increasingly greater roles, and it's even clearer than ever to me is that we are not guaranteed the next season, next hunt, or even next day.  Whether you filled both tags, one, zero or twenty this season, I hope you all made memories and relationships that you can take with you no matter where you go.




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[OJR]

Excellent! Great story.

[GobbleNut]

Good read! Enjoyed it.  Very well-written story!  Thanks for taking us along on the ride...   

[Turkeybutt]

Great story thank you for sharing.
Congratulations on a fine bird. That snooze button gets pretty easy to hit after you got that first one under your belt doesn't it!

[JeffC]

Congrats on a fine Keystone state Tom, good read and great picture.

[MO_HUNTER]

If you aren't an outdoor writer you sir have missed your calling! Absolutely awesome read.

[Greg Massey]

Good story.. thanks for sharing... some of my best memories are spring turkey hunting ... it's all about chasing and calling gobblers to the gun barrel...

[Tom007]

Nice job....great story...

[joey46]

Nice.  Pa was on my list but Wy won out.  Maybe next year.

[Dtrkyman]

Well done, thanks for the sentence structure and punctuation!

Those things are often lost on these forums and I just simply do not read those posts!  Not that I am going to pass any grammar exams, but I do my best.

[3bailey3]

Great pics and story!

[fishr64]

Great story! Thank you for sharing your season.

[Yoder409]

Very well done !!!!

Story AND picture !!!

[Tommy Strutsalot]

Excellent! Great story.

Thanks, sir!

Good read! Enjoyed it.  Very well-written story!  Thanks for taking us along on the ride...   

Thank you, sir!

Great story thank you for sharing.
Congratulations on a fine bird. That snooze button gets pretty easy to hit after you got that first one under your belt doesn't it!

I'm afraid so!  I'm blaming it on being tired, not satisfied.

Congrats on a fine Keystone state Tom, good read and great picture.

Thank you, sir.   That creek runs right through the backyard at camp, many of great memories culminated with someone behind a bird on that rock!

If you aren't an outdoor writer you sir have missed your calling! Absolutely awesome read.

LOL thank you.  Pretty much the complete opposite - I work for a prosecutor's office!

Good story.. thanks for sharing... some of my best memories are spring turkey hunting ... it's all about chasing and calling gobblers to the gun barrel...

Thank you, better believe it, sir.  In this case, calling the hen is what did the trick.  She became so indignant when I was mimicking her calling cadence overtop of hers.  There's nothing like it. 

Nice job....great story...

Thank you sir!

Nice.  Pa was on my list but Wy won out.  Maybe next year.

You have chosen.... wisely.  PA is a beautiful place to live and hunt but you can sleep at night with the choice you made. Hope you got em!

Well done, thanks for the sentence structure and punctuation!

Those things are often lost on these forums and I just simply do not read those posts!  Not that I am going to pass any grammar exams, but I do my best.

Appreciate the compliment - I try to write like I talk.

Great pics and story!

Thank you sir!

Great story! Thank you for sharing your season.

Thank you!

Very well done !!!!

Story AND picture !!!

Appreciate it!

[28roper]

Lord Longbeard strikes again, red dot be damned!