Before the Gobble, a Morning in the Blind

It’s hard to run in rain boots. That’s what I’m thinking as my girlfriend, Natalie, and I jog up a long hill at the edge of a field in the dark. We’re a little bit late. Our turkey hunting blind is at the top of this hill, in a small patch of woods that sits between two fields. The birds we’re after are likely roosting in the trees next to our spot. It’s still dark, but if we don’t get there before the sun comes up, they’ll see us walking in, and our hunt is over. 

This is typical of a turkey hunt. Old timers say that you should go into the woods when it’s too dark to see your boots. The season in New York runs for the month of May, and if you know anything about this time of year, the sun rises very early. For Natalie and I, that meant waking up at 3:45, making coffee, getting on our hunting gear, driving 30 minutes to an old farm in Salt Point, and hustling up the big hill to our blind before 5:30. Now, in the gloomy, foggy light, I’m just starting to see my toes as we unzip the blind door and get settled inside.

You’ve probably seen wild turkeys from the side of the road while driving around the Hudson Valley, or out the back window of your house. And they’re great to observe this way. But to truly understand what would possess Natalie and me to go through all this just to get a shot at one, has little to do with the actual shooting. Wild turkeys put on a display every spring, during their mating season, that is truly something to behold.

The birds become highly vocal, with toms gobbling their heads off from high roosting trees and on the ground. It’s a sound that is both goofy and awe-inspiring. It’s why hunters call them “gobblers,” but the birds don’t stop there. To further convince female hens of their potency, they’ll puff out all of their feathers, instantly doubling in girth, as if they’d been inflated by an air compressor. You’ll see the bird dance and strut in full regalia, moving his feet carefully, floating across the ground.

If you’re camouflaged in a blind and calling to the birds, you have a front row seat. It’s one of the most thrilling hunts in North America because of all of this action, and you don’t need to be a hunter to appreciate it.

The Pine Plains area is well-suited to wild turkeys. It has plenty of open fields and woods for toms to strut their stuff, and brushy field edges for hens to nest in cover. At one point, wild turkey numbers were extremely low, and the bird was near extinction.

Through the efforts of hunters, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and organizations like the National Wild Turkey Federation, birds were reintroduced to their native ranges and beyond. In New York, where populations were virtually nonexistent by the late 1950s, conservationists captured and relocated wild turkeys from neighboring states. They took to the habitat so well that birds from New York were eventually used to populate other Northeastern states.

New York is now home to a stable number of wild turkeys, as is much of the Tri-State region. In the early 2000s, turkey numbers in New York peaked at 250,000 to 300,000 — there is usually a boom in population after reintroduction for a variety of species. Today, there is a sustainable level of around 180,000 birds.

It’s been wet this May, which has put a damper on things; not in terms of population but in terms of turkey activity. The cold and rain always put the turkey woods on pause. The birds aren’t as proud to strut and gobble, and therefore much harder to locate. The only option a hunter has then is to sit and call and wait, imitating the sound of a hen to entice the males to come closer. It’s exactly what Natalie and I are doing as the day grows lighter, little by little.

Watching the woods wake up is one of my favorite things about hunting any species. It takes a place you think you know everything about and shows it to you from a new perspective. If you hold still long enough, the branches and bushes come alive, with birds, bugs, and small mammals starting their morning routines. We catch sight of a red-tailed hawk, skimming the ground for prey within steps of our blind, then a doe poking her head up from the edge of a downhill slope to check us out. It’s all so peaceful that it starts to lull us back to sleep. But before I can doze off, I hear something I’ve been waiting for all morning.

It isn’t a gobble, but it is a turkey — a hen yelping from a tree branch right overhead. It tells me that we were sneaky enough before not to spook her. And her calling could bring more birds, as it’s much better than mine. At once, she careens off her tree roost and onto the ground in front of us. It happens in a flash and looks like someone dropping a bucket of black paint from a tall building, but when she lands, it’s as graceful as a falling maple leaf touching down on a farm pond.

We hold stone still, watching the bird that’s watching us. She circles, pecking at the ground while clucking and purring. She’s less than 10 yards from the edge of the blind. A hunter is only allowed to shoot two male turkeys per season, and the females need to be left alone to ensure a stable population year after year. It’s nice to know there are birds in the woods, though, and her hanging around us couldn’t hurt our efforts to bag a gobbler. She pecks around for about five minutes, but it feels like forever. Then she moves on.

“I feel like I just saw a celebrity,” Natalie whispers. It’s the first turkey she’s ever seen while hunting, and the first she’s seen this close. She’s also been listening to me practice my calling all winter and talk nonstop about turkeys around the house, so this was a bit of a loaded moment.

It’s hard to say if we’ll see any more birds today. The farm we’re hunting should be full of them, but there’s no telling if they’ll walk by our gun barrels. Still, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a spring morning than waiting, watching, and listening to the woods for a gobble. 

Spring turkey season in New York runs from May 1 to May 31. For regulations, safety tips, and licensing information, visit the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation at dec.ny.gov.