Gobbler season is just an excuse.
Sure, when I hit the woods in the spring one of my goals is to bag a nice longbeard. But really, I’m out there to witness the woods wake up.
Many hunters admit that just being in the woods is like being in a different world. Your mind frees itself of the typical stresses of everyday life, your focus narrows and your appreciation for the natural world grows.
These elements are heightened in the early-morning springtime woods.
On Friday morning I ventured to a hollow in Dorrance Township that I hadn’t visited in years. It’s a beautiful place, one that has yielded great results when I set traps and hunted turkeys there years ago. A steep hillside of white pine and oaks looms over one side of the hollow. The Wapwallopen Creek flows through the middle, and farm fields – some still planted and some overgrown, surround the rest of the hollow.
I followed an old logging road along the top of the hillside in the predawn darkness before turning down to the hollow. As darkness began to yield to the gray light of dawn, I found a wide, old oak tree about halfway down. The base of the thick trunk offered a good seat and an even better view of the hollow below.
It was time to watch and listen to the woods waking up around me.
As the dull morning light began to sweep over the horizon, a variety of songbirds began to sing and call as if on cue. It’s a harmony that is loudest in the morning, and it’s one that gives life to the woods.
I sorted through this background of vocal bird sounds hoping to hear the authoritative call of a gobbler.
While I waited, I spied the form of a deer making its way up the hillside toward me. The light was still dim, but as the unsuspecting doe drew closer, I could see her sides were swollen. No doubt she would soon be ready to have her fawns and she found the hollow to be a suitable place.
The doe came within 30 yards of me and then meandered away along the hillside. Every now and then she would raise her head and shoot me a glance, but she really didn’t seem to notice, or care, that I was in her woods.
As I watched the doe and listened to the songbirds, the stresses of daily life melted away. I wasn’t worried about rising gas prices, terrorism, taxes, politics and all those other issues that seem to surround us all too frequently. No. On this morning, it was just me and the hollow.
After the doe wandered off, a turkey decided to tell the world he was awake. A shrill gobble boomed from the hollow below, not too far from the stream. All at once, the chorus of vocal songbirds stopped, for a moment, as if to pay their respect to the king of the spring woods.
I let the turkey gobble one more time before I replied with a few yelps from a slate call. A few minutes later he replied, and we called back and forth three more times before the gobbler became quiet.
So did I. He knew where I was, and hopefully the bird was curious enough to seek me out.
I waited for 45 minutes, but the gobbler never appeared and never called again. There must be hens nearby, I figured, giving the gobbler no reason to leave the hollow.
It was now after 7 a.m. The doe was gone, the gobbler was quiet and the birds’ singing was sporadic.
It was time to leave and get back to the real world. The “daily grind.” The obligations.
Fortunately, I know the hollow awaits whenever I need to clear my mind and see the world wake up in a different way.
Previously published in the Times Leader, May 20, 2007.
