Turkey Hunting- or is it the Boogey Man ?

"The Fab Five"

Rocky Branch Manager Diane Hafford & USA Outback host Denny Snyder

Billy McCoy & Paul Butski

Back- Bob Walker

Indianapolis, Indiana- Today I saw my first robin- certainly a sign of spring and the upcoming turkey season.

The groundhog was wrong- I hope.

It has been quite a few years since I have been spring turkey hunting with my good friend Bob Walker of Walker's Game Ear fame. We have been on many hunts together but there is one particular morning that specifically stands out. While listening for the distant gobble of an ol' long beard, Bob made the following comment. "Turkey hunting is like going after the Boogey Man- you know he's out there - and then he's coming for you."

If you know how to "speak the language"- quoting the tagline from Will Primos.....mimicking those soft clucks and crying purrs made famous by guys like Paul Butski & Billy McCoy, the Rohm brothers, the Kirbys, Knight and Hale, Ray Eye, Donny Shipp and Larry Shockey,Walter Parrott...the list goes on........by learning from these masters of the art of turkey calling- the Boogey Man will certainly come for you to.

This brief lapse in the hunting season is almost over and I get excited thinking about investigating new territory. There is nothing like the Butski/McCoy strategy of run and gun gobbler hunting to get the blood pumping on a cool morning in the Alabama woods or Sullivan county hills of Pennsylvania- or anywhere else for that matter.

Smelling the damp earth beneath your feet as you go stumbling through the dark to reach that highest morning vantage point before day breaks. Hearing the crashing of a whitetail bumped from its bed- listening to the trickling of a spring as it gurgles down the mountain carrying with it sluggish worms to the mouths of hungry trout waiting at the merger of the runoff. Coyotes yip and cry in the distance as they return with their pack to the den.

Adding to this spring sonata are the raspy caw caws of crows chasing an owl who(get it...who..who.....LOL)is returning too late from its nocturnal hunt. It is then that this aerial ruckus is dwarfed in volume with a throaty gobble. A mature tom declares that this portion of the world is his and damn anyone for disturbing his roost. The ol'man gobbler you spooked last spring made it through yet another winter. A group of his bothered ladies join in with their own clucks and tree yelps.

The jakes half-hearted attempts at gobbles are almost comical when the ol' man cuts them off with his bellowing gobble that reverberates the very ground where you stand. The fog starts to lift off the green field at the edge of the woods making way for the rising sun.

This experience happens every spring. My senses are all in over-drive- sensory stimulation in Mother Nature's high definition.

This my friends is the essence of spring turkey hunting. Share this experience with someone close to you so they too can see why we hunters are so passionate about our sport. Trust me on this one- they WILL get it.

Squeezing the trigger is such a small part.

Try to get the Boogey Man and just maybe- he'll come get you.

Denny :)
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