Hen-crazed gobblers turn hunt into spot-and-stalk adventure

May 15-The gobbles instantly announced, even to my impaired hearing, that I could make this work.

After fumbling through the normal-first-day-gear fiasco and filling a mug full of Navy-strength coffee, I drove the 12 or so minutes from my cabin to a landowner I know in Stevens County.

Having checked that I could shoot at about 6 a.m. for the opening Saturday of the season, I arrived at about 5:30 with the hopes of locating a gobbler to prosecute.

Several sounded off as I exited my pickup.

I double-time marched my way to the sound in the gathering light and located the birds roosted in a tree line above a sloping field. I nestled underneath a red fir, got out my call and gave a series of lonely yelps.

The gobblers responded as I hoped they would, high in the trees, so I took the moment to slip my hands into camouflage gloves.

I looked up to see a gobbler, already on the ground, staring directly at me at 92 yards. (I had my range finder and had marked the bush next to him a few seconds prior to the stare down).

The forest then erupted into a cacophony of wing beats as several birds left their elevated perches in the conifers and bombed down into the grass next to the original gobbler.

He responded with a feather-clad show.

But something was off. He turned and confirmed what my eyes thought they saw: The gobbler only had half a tail. Exactly one half of his tail fan was missing.

We shall call him Half Squat.

The hens pecked and milled around, in and out of sight, near Half Squat as two other longbeards approached with tail fans that displayed full plumage.

I offered a few more yelps, which occasionally got a response, but the gobblers' attention clearly remained on their close-quarter girlfriends.

Half Squat then led the parade onto a logging road to my left and promptly popped his head up at 44 yards. I had my shotgun trained on him, but I waited.

After all, the entire feathered procession was headed my way.

And then, it wasn't.

The two fully plumed strutting toms followed the hens just out of range into a grassy field soaked with dew. Half Squat brought up the rear as the sure-thing-opening-day-turkey hunt walked right out of my life.

I watched through a stand of alder trees as the turkeys skirted my location and generally walked right back to the pickup I hastily had parked some 90 minutes before.

It was time to, as my hunting accomplice, Timbo Slice, would say, "Make it happen."

Spot and stalk

Spot-and-stalk hunting normally is an exercise reserved for the fall, when mule deer and elk provide the ultimate adrenaline rush for a hunter who must remain unseen while using available winds to sneak close enough for a shot.

Turkeys can't smell you, or at least I don't think they can. Regardless, their eyes pick out the slightest movements and often discover immobile hunters despite their overpriced camo clothing.

Spotting and stalking a gobbler is not easy. But boy, is it fun.

I used available trees, bushes and topography to slowly slip through the timber. I then discovered an ascending logging road that skirted the edge of field that contained the turkeys.

It was perfect.

I was able, mostly under cover, to race ahead of the turkeys, which were feeding below me. They filtered in and out of the trees immediately down a steep slope from my location.

As Half Squat strutted his stuff to nothing but a barbed wire fence about 150 yards away, one of the full-tailed gobblers eased his strutting self into the hens below me.

I crawled, inch-by-inch, toward the lip of the embankment.

I could start to see the cream-colored tips of his tail fan. My semi-trusty 12 -gauge raised into position, and ... my shirt pocket started buzzing.

It was Timbo Slice calling to see how my hunt was going.

Timbo arrives

"I am not taking the blame for ruining your hunt," Timbo Slice would later proclaim.

I could write about how after the call, I stood up and allowed the little boy in me to force a shot at a gobbler that had already walked out of range, but that's pretty boring.

I decided to back out, wade my defeated and deflated self through the still milling flock of hens that surrounded my truck, and try again with Timbo the next morning.

Besides, I knew what the turkeys were going to do.

Timbo, whose real name is Timothy Note, had to get up at about 3 a.m. and drive from Spokane to meet me at my gate so that he could partake in this adventure.

We got to the farm and hit a call. The gobblers blazoned a response from the same tree line as the day before.

Go time had arrived.

Meanwhile, Timbo took one look at his cell phone, said, "I won't need that," and left it in the truck.

We hoofed it towards the flock and found two different bushes that provided excellent coverage of the misty field the flock had used to elude me the day before.

We waited near the field as the gobblers flew down from their roosting trees about 150 yards away.

We called and waited. We called and waited. And waited. In the meantime, I kept texting Timbo without receiving a reply.

I then looked over my shoulder and watched an entire flock fly down from a tree under which we earlier had marched past to get to our "ideal" set up.

Of course, the birds flew down to my truck.

When you hunt with Timbo, the time allotted for patience generally gets cut in half, or sometimes two-thirds.

As a result, the spot-and-stalk portion of the hunt began in earnest. It's then that Timbo let me know he left his cell phone in the truck.

We crept to where the turkeys paraded the morning before and spotted two of them walking the road away from our location.

We got above them, hustle-hiked in-and-out of timber and emerged only to find an empty road.

We then explored a timber-lined field where I had seen a gobbler and hens the prior week and found nothing.

However, I did see gobblers doing turkey things on a distant hillside of property for which we did not have permission.

As I tried to figure out what to do, I turned and Timbo was gone.

Since he left his phone at the truck, I could only assume what he did next.

Everyone who goes into the woods needs a friend like Timbo. To say we don't exactly see eye-to-eye about how to go about things, is a massive understatement.

Despite those, um, challenges, when Timbo and I hit the woods together, it almost always ends with a fuller freezer.

So, having been separated from someone who is willing to walk straight up a random mountain to "look" for elk, I assumed he had flatheaded his way across a creek to check on the turkeys I could see on the neighbor's hillside.

After an appropriate and frustrating wait, I eventually retreated back towards the pickup.

On the way back, I heard a shot.

The echoing return of the report made it sound like it came from those aforementioned hillside gobblers that I assumed Timbo had pursued.

Timbo's spot and stalk

After inexplicably losing me, Timbo decided to find sunshine.

"Due to lack of sleep, I was both very tired and cold," Timbo said. "I saw some sun up the gravel road. I decided that I'm going to go sit in the sun because Tom will have to walk by."

On his way, Timbo spotted the turkeys that had flown down near my pickup.

The flock had two strutting gobblers slowly following the hens as they fed up the hill.

He then repeated my tactic from the previous day. Timbo started a forced march up the ascending logging road to try to get ahead of the flock.

"My thought was that if I could get up that overgrown skid road, maybe I could intercept them if they fed out of the field," he said.

He started up the road and ranged the turkeys at 250 yards. But Timbo then ran out of cover.

"It was apparent that the road was going to make me visible to the turkeys," Timbo said. "So, I decided to go overland on the timbered hillside."

While he was working through brush thick enough to force a bear to retreat, he saw a raptor fly over the field. The turkeys bunched up for defense and then began running in a single line to the corner that Timbo was trying to reach.

Timbo then found a game trail through a stand of chest-high ninebark bushes that allowed him to silently approach the edge of the field.

"I heard some putting very close. I saw a couple of hens. And then, I saw the tom at full strut," Timbo said.

The tom was standing in a small depression and Timbo waited for him to turn.

"He disappeared behind a piece of brush. That allowed me to take a big step uphill to get around a piece of brush blocking my view," he said.

The tom emerged at about 25 yards.

"I was ready. He stopped. He raised his head up seeming kind of alert," Timbo said. "I took the shot. Chaos erupted. Turkeys I had not seen, scattered everywhere."

After collecting himself, Timbo gathered his large gobbler and proceeded down the hill.

"Not every turkey is callable," he explained. "If you have two toms with 15 to 17 hens, they are not going to leave those hens to come to your call."

Spotting and stalking sometimes becomes a hunter's only choice in those situations.

"It's exciting," Timbo said. "It becomes a game of cat-and-mouse. They have exceptional eyesight. To sneak one in the brush, as alert as they are, is no small accomplishment."

As Timbo was becoming spot-and-stalk hero, I was aimlessly walking down the road wondering where he had gone.

Of course, I passed the logging road before Timbo came down with his bird.

Still clueless as to Timbo's location, I set up in the now empty field and called for several more minutes.

After giving up, I began walking the short distance back to the pickup. About half the way to my destination, I peered down the road one last time.

I saw what looked like a dude in camouflage splayed out on a sunny embankment. It was Timbo completely asleep.

I barked and Timbo's head popped up. He promptly stood and rolled the massive bird down the hill to the road.

High -fives were exchanged.

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