Opening Day Spring 2015

Opening day, 3:30 AM and I’m tired, unable to sleep since getting up to pee at 1:30. Excited isn’t the half of it. Being nervous about taking the one-mile walk through the woods, alone and at night seems juvenile. Hard to admit it, but at 49 years old there is still a bit of childhood leftover tension about the dark. Not scared, just a bit apprehensive.

There is also the endless thought loop of opening day jitters. Did I choose the rights calls; the best arrow and broadhead combination; did I practice enough and with enough variety to cover the sit-down kneel-down and other oddball shots which might present themselves. My evening has been filled with doubt and trying to convince myself to be confident in the prep work. No amount of self-hypnosis will flush these thoughts from my head and allow sleep to replace the cerebral inertia from the week leading up to opening day.

Before going to bed an effort was made to collect everything needed to start the spring season.  This pile of stuff on the kitchen table flows onto the floor and contains the cornerstone items. Bow and arrow; leafy camo suit; calls; folding chair; dekes; and warm underclothes. The mortar bits allowing the cornerstones to function sit on the kitchen stool: release, chalk, binos, bug dope (ticks are bad this season), license and tags, water, and a snack complete the pile; or so I hope.

There is the intent of leaving the house at 4:00 to be in the setup by 4:30 expecting the gobble show to begin just about 5:15. Stepping out the door at 4:30 makes the walk to the fields more of a slow jog. A light panic sets in as trees in the fields become more defined. Maybe the sun is coming up or maybe my eyes have finally adjusted to the darkness.  Maybe I shouldn’t have had the second cup of tea, Maybe I should have…… the list is long and reciting it helps pass the time.

Last evening while trying, unsuccessfully, to roost a few toms, a small pile of evergreen branches was left to mark 15 yards from the spot to sit in front of the dead hemlock. Set the dekes, open the chair and sit still for a few moments listening to the woods. If the planning is good, my arrival at the setup will coincide with the nighttime creatures going to sleep and the few moments of quiet before the daytime critters awaken for the day.

Time to nock an arrow and set the calls on my leg in preparation for the hunt. The dekes are dark silhouettes against the lighter color of the dead grass laid flat by the winter’s snow. Gobble, gobble, gobble. The silence of the pre dawn is shattered by the tom’s call. The watch requires the backlight to read the time. 4:47, the show has begun a bit early. My heart pounds in my chest as visions of filling my tags before the sun can cast a shadow  race through my head. Reality sets in. There is no way I can shoot at anything for at least thirty minutes. Legal shooting time isn’t the issue. The problem is seeing my target should the eager sounding tom arrive to court the plastic hen.

This is a first for me. Hoping and wishing the gobbling bird to hang out and not come closer. My fingers are itching to run the cedar scratchbox. It’s been eleven months since I last ran a call with intent to entice in a gobbler and it’s a great effort to keep the striker peg and soundboard apart. Some old timer once told me to start calling when I was able to read the time on my watch without using a light. The tom keeps bellowing out one gobble after another and the watch face remains dark. At 5:08 I convince myself the numbers are visible and the first cluck opens the season. Three clucks later the tom gobbles cutting me off. The bird knows where I am and the correct thing to do is stop calling and allow the tom to find me. Not a chance. Calling and interacting with the prey is a big part of the fun and it’d be disappointing for my season to end ten minutes and three clucks after it began. A quiet purr, a few cuts break into a building yelp. My call is again cut off by the tom imagined to be an old bluehead with a ragged beard and spurs almost two inches long. My scratchbox keeps moving filling the morning with enthusiastic yelps.  The return gobble is...a hen yelp? No, lots of hen yelps.

My exuberant calling alerted the local harem to my overtures. They respond en mass trying to keep their sultan from expanding his breeding stock. Now my ire has been raised and there is no way I’ll be outcalled. The scratchbox is exchanged for the shortbox and the race to see who can get the volume to 11 is on. The tom must be excited because the gobbles keep coming and while enthusiastic, the volume can’t drown out the hen yelping match.  To keep pace with the hens and with great hope to exaggerate the size of the invading flock, three different species of wood striker pegs are staked into my left hand. The double sided cedar scratchbox in my right and the scratcher begins dancing from peg to peg to peg. Each species of wood creates a different sound and the chorus of seamless transition from call to call quiets the actual hens. Unfortunately, it also chases off the gobbler or he was carted away all love struck and pie eyed. My version is the bird was hustled away so while I was unable to sink an arrow into its neck, the previous twenty minutes were a lot of fun and I sent those hens packing.

The next move was unintentional but worked very well. There had been one tom responding to my calls so where were the rest of them and the jakes which always seem to lurk along the perimeter of the flock? These lurking k]jakes watching the hens like a teenaged boy gawks at his pretty neighbor. The awkward teen too afraid to say hello when the old man is around, but when he leaves there is an opportunity to woo her.

After my heart rate returned to the pre-yelp contest level I took the applewood scratchbox and let out a few clucks and a purr.  Instant response from at least three gobblers. Ah yes, the lurking teens were making their way towards my setup. My setup which was all wrong for the direction of the approaching birds.

For the life of me, why any effort is spent on the “right” setup is flummoxing. Whatever setup is scouted and determined to be the best is never correct. The lurkers have circled around behind be putting a large and thick stand of hemlock between us. My hope is they spot the dekes and charge past me on the way to the alluring plastic hen 15 yards from my ideal setup.

We call back and forth for the next twenty five minutes the lurkers circumnavigating my spot but never closing the radius. In order for my day to work a bird needs to be dead or chased off by 6:30 in order to make it to work on time. It is now 6:25 and time for the big move. The boxcall paddle is held in place by a rubber band to loosely apply pressure to the box and return it to center on its own. The box is shaken side-to-side causing it to “gobble.” The hope is to pick a fight and draw them in all randy and jacked up looking to steal the new flock of hens. The first gobble sounds a bit quieter. My response is a few yelps on the scratchbox. The response is quieter still. My desperate move produces nothing but a gobble and yelp free wooded area. Two hours ago the fear was tagging out after a few clucks and a purr. Now my dekes are being stuffed into the bag, the chair folded up, the arrows placed back into the quiver and my tail tucked between my legs for the walk of shame back to the house.

There really is no shame; quite the contrary. The morning was a smashing success. The first walk in the dark went well so my confidence is better. The homegrown calls did arouse a few gobblers, and I had the discipline to get to work on time.  There are twenty-nine days left of the spring season to fill my tags. The calling and chasing the birds is really the fun part of spring season and had I tagged out as easily as my imagination had made it my fun would have been cut short. Being an average hunter does have its benefits.