It comes out of the dark before you can see the bird, before you can see your own hand — one ringing gobble off the roost, and the whole mountain wakes up.
By Andre3 min read
The first gobble of the year arrives before the light does.
You're sitting against a ponderosa in the cold dark, the woods still black, when it rolls down off the roost — one bird, throwing that ringing, double-syllable gobble across the canyon, and something in your chest answers it before your brain does. Then another tom cuts in from the far ridge, and a third, and the whole mountain is suddenly awake and arguing. After a long Colorado winter, there is no sound that says spring is here like the first gobble of a Merriam's tom.
He's up in the big pines, where the white-tipped mountain turkey roosts every night, and in a few minutes he'll pitch down into a grassy park to strut — tail fanned, wingtips dragging, head flushed red and white and blue, putting on the oldest show in the woods for any hen who'll watch. Your job is to be the hen he can't see, to throw a soft yelp into that gray light and convince a bird with eyes that miss nothing that you're worth crossing the park for.
It doesn't always work — turkeys humble everyone — but when a gobbler hammers back at your call and starts closing the distance, drumming so close you can feel it, you understand why people give up sleep all spring for this. We hunt them on the private-land opener, when the birds are loud and the mountain is greening up.
The elk gave us fall. The gobble gives us spring. I wouldn't trade either.
