PODCAST: The Mistaken Gobbler

We had a hard rain and thunder on Friday night. However, it was still in the low Sixties when I got up. I had to wear a short-sleeved shirt out to the Honey Hole and still managed to work up a decent sweat. I rounded the last curve in the track– had the gate to the field in sight.

“Gobble!”

There was a gobbler that seemed perhaps 60 yards away, perhaps only 40 yards away from the Honey Hole itself. I was shielded by a large cedar. I decided to set up the umbrella mic in the middle of the road. I could withdraw and watch from a safe distance. There was a fallen tree at Hammond North that would provide me a view of the whole thing.

The gobbler promptly flopped down. He must have been on a fairly low limb, but it wasn’t much of pitch at all– more of a plop. By then, I had figured him closer to one of my older blind, Halfway. It is by an old oak halfway between The Honey Hole and my luxury deer blind at Midway. By this time, I had a comfortable seat at Hammond North. When we got the place, the largest oak had fallen and was leaning against the adjoining trees. After 15 years, it finally fell over in 2014, and we have used it as a handy ground blind ever since. It afforded me a view of the corner of the pasture where the gate had been and not much else.

Over the next quarter-hour or so, the gobbler got himself all worked up. I think he had hens egging him on from Left Leg Creek. However, his fixation was down in the corner, where I had been. He slowly made his way there, and then through the old gate and onto the road. A few steps more, brought him within sight of the umbrella mic, stuck in the ground on its stand. In the podcast, you will hear spitting and drumming as he draws closer. He waddled up to the mic, and for the briefest of moments, he stood there wondering what to do. All of a sudden he realized he was in way over his head. Romance turned to uneasiness and he trotted off. You can hear an undignified squeak out him as he made the decision to leave.

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