Now, when I step out onto the porch to check the thermometer, I listen for it as the light reaches several hundred candlepower: A gobble, which makes spring official.
He is at the head of the small hollow, two-thirds up the side of the ridge, probably in the branches of some beech. His neck will go out, the gobble will roll out and down like heavy air in a thunderstorm, heavy with electricity. All this time the calendar has been telling us spring is coming but we were skeptics. Now we know.
Come spring, and a man forgives winter for everything it has ever done to him. Water seeps from the pores of the hills, running over slate rock, then limestone, searching for a way back to the sea. The March woods, bare vertical trunks holding up a naked branches interfacing the sky, make a Parthenon of sorts. Can’t see it now in the weak dawn but there is the spray of purple and white, redbuds and dogwoods, on the side of the hill. The east-facing slopes have a five-day shadow. Spring peepers sing on the warm evenings, a flycatcher is building a nest in the barn.
Last year, I did not kill a turkey. I hunted but only halfheartedly, since the consensus was that the numbers were down. Too many coyotes? Too many rattlers eating eggs? Bobcats? Cold, wet spring two, three years ago? Were the numbers artificially inflated before this, and we are only now realizing a sustainable population? Was it some avian pathogen distributed onto the crop fields by the chicken farmers? Nobody knew, but everyone had a theory or else they weren’t much of a hunter.
I remember ten years ago walking into this selfsame hollow and having five different gobblers to choose among. Now, ankle-deep in this absence, it’s hard not to feel a sense of loss when there is only one or none.
Last year we had a gobbler—the only one I saw—roosting immediately next to the house and he would come down and strut in the front yard, but only on Sundays or when I was at work. Why didn’t you poke a gun out the window and pluck him? They asked. The ox is in the well.
I couldn’t do it. If I am going to take a turkey, I will meet him on his own terms. And, I thought, if numbers are down, that is one more on the loose for next year. Listen to him gobble! Isn’t it nice. The “esthetic harvest,” as Aldo Leopold would call it, was great last year, and I saved a shotgun shell.
This year, there are more gobbles. I walk into the hollow and hear three, so we can spare one. The legal limit is two, but all things are lawful but not all expedient.
The morning is soft, a diaphanous mist rising off cool grass. The featureless din of spring bird song. There is a gobble which is not featureless but exclamatory and concise, close to the property line but on my side. It is already legal light with twenty minutes to sunrise, but the hollow is in shadow and I parallel the ridge halfway up its side on an old logging road. I sneak close enough to hear him strutting on the roost and stop, sit against a small white ash, pull up a face mask. He is probably with hens and the odds of calling him down here are slim, but what’s to lose? These farm turkeys are a chary lot and can be unreasonable. I wait. He gobbles.
I yelp softly but he does not reply. Three minutes, and I yelp again, louder. Nothing. I wait five minutes, then yelp softly, building to a crescendo, ending in a cut. He likes it and gobbles.
Good boy. I yelp again and he speaks again. There’s a qualitative difference between a gobbler far away and one close. An elk-hunter will know what I mean. An elk bugle far off sounds like mere squeaking door, but close there is a guttural, grunting, groaning edge to it. A far-off turkey is a windchime, but close they have a heavy, meaty sound, as though the whole body was involved in making the gobble.
I yelp, then slap my hat against my leg and cackle as I fly down. I am on terra firma now, and I turn my head away from the gobbler, partitioning my mouth off with my hand, and yelp. I am walking away from the gobbler. Twice I do this. He gobbles regardless.
Five minutes later, there is a whoosh of wings. I can see him, if I impose memory upon him. He will pitch forward off the limb and flare his stubby wings, coming down steep and hard onto the forest floor, pulling up with ceremony. The leaves will blow away from his propwash and he will stand bolt upright, scanning for danger for the first minute.
So he too is down. Does he expect me to come over? Fat chance, my boy. If you want this hen, you will have to come over. I know it goes against turkey culture for the gobbler to do the pursuing, but these are the rules today.
He gobbles, I do not reply. He is strutting, I can hear him, more distant now. I yelp softly. He replies and I smile.
I wait for many minutes, and kee-kee run. So, so contented over here without you, I tell him. You don’t have any girlfriends over there and here I am, content. I was excited about it all earlier, but now I’m just picking through the leaves. Beautiful day. Lots of earthworms around right now. A beetle. Breakfast.
He wants. A twig snaps and he is coming, slowly; one step, go into half strut. Stretches out neck, scanning for me. He is looking past me, out the hollow, and I luxuriate in my deceit. What? He says. She was just right here.
It is agonizing. Two slow steps, inflate. Scan. One step. Where I sit against the ash it falls away steeply to a creek, then a five-foot bank, then the shallower pitch up the other side where the turkey is strutting the day away. Too far. I make a deal with myself: If he steps into that opening where the two gullies meet, he is close enough and I will shoot. Otherwise, he is a free bird. I will meet him on his terms and then let the fates decide my shot.
He gobbles now, bold. I close my eyes and listen at him.
I am leaning to one side, straining to shoot off my right shoulder at a target far to the right, in all the wrong position. The blood veins in my legs are pinched and my leg is tingling. He pivots mid-strut, perpendicular to me. Oh well. But he is turning again, coming straight toward me, inching along in his vanity. He steps into his fatal opening. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we will have fresh grilled turkey for lunch.
The sun is up now, and I feel the honest heft of the bird as I carry him out the wooded hollow. The spurs dig into my little finger while we walk out. The sun is over the trees and coming into the woods in patches, white on the pale green, springing foliage. I am a rich man, with my name on all these poplars, beeches, oaks, cedars reaching for the light. A rich man is he who owns a tree. A richer man is one who feels alive again the capacity for awe. I am Croesus.
I look over my shoulder into the depths of the hollow and my esthetic harvest is severely diminished by someone’s helium balloon, now deflated and lying in my woods. Someone loosed it and smiled with their lover as it disappeared into the sky, and now I must do the frowning for them. This one is bright red and says “Happy Valentine’s Day” on it. I hope their love life fared better than the balloon. How many of these have I gathered over the years? Ten is no stretch. I have gathered more of these than I have gathered shed antlers, a bad ratio indeed.
This will be the only turkey for the year, and it is enough. I break out of the woods and to the right, at the back of the field and out of sight, another gobble comes to me.