WAY too early . . .

But worth getting up!

The just-past-full moon peeked in my window, demanding that I wake up.

AT 4 a.m.??!!

Well, sure, if I wanted to be in the woods before first light. Isn’t that what the “experts” say about turkey hunting?

I slipped into the portable canvas blind just before 5 – surprised at how loud the zipper on the door sounded in the darkness.

My portable turkey blind faces turkey decoys positioned on a woods trail.

Only the slightest hint of dawn crept over the east ridge – but the pheasants already had started to crow in the distance, signaling to the world that the day had begun.

Traffic noise from the county pavement drifted over the hills in the calm, cool pre-dawn.

I took a deep breath, then huffed out my best 8-hoot imitation of a barred owl:
“Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-youall?”

Is this the barred owl whose hoots trigger turkey gobbling?

“Gobble-obble-obble” came the retort from far up the river valley.

Maybe the old tom was laughing to himself at my comical attempt to fool . . . nobody!

Thankfully, a robin began its much more musical “cheerily cheer-up cheerio” song – which he continued incessantly.

A curious robin stopped singing just long enough to investigate the turkey blind intruding on their woods.

My ears perked up further to a subtle rustling of leaves, followed by a wheez-snort-stomp.

A white-tailed deer thereby alerted its kin and other woodland critters that there was an intruder in their midst. How dare I bring my human stench into their realm!

I fumbled for my phone and turned on the “Merlin” app, which the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology claims can recognize many bird songs. Merlin did not react to the far-away gobbling I heard – but Merlin insisted that there were Carolina wrens, cowbirds, Nashville warblers and other songsters nearby. Do I trust computer technology more than my aging hearing? Perhaps!

I savored the dawn concert, although lamenting the fact that the music from the turkey section remained too far away. Then, while squinting through the first rays of sunlight, I spied a slight movement. Turkey?

No, I’d just been nailed by a sharp-eyed buck deer, who from 100 yards away had detected the presence of a human behind the tiny slit in the otherwise opaque blind. We stared at each other for 15 minutes. I waited, camera ready, for the buck to turn his head to better show off the velvet nubbins on his head that by fall could be a trophy rack. He waited, warily, poised to bound away at the first sign of danger.

A suspicious buck deer detected the presence of a human in HIS woods.

Eventually, we both tired of the stand-off. The deer wandered down the hill and I lowered my camera.

Lulled by the bird songs - melodious rose-breasted grosbeak, CHEER-CHEER cardinal, repetitive brown thrasher, bouncing-ball field sparrow, honking Canada goose, gentle coo of the mourning dove - I finally noticed another movement on the forest floor. A gray squirrel rummaged in the greening vegetation, scurried part-way up a tree trunk, then scurried down for more rummaging. What had they found for breakfast? Last year’s hickory nut? A tender new May apple root?

A gray squirrel nibbles their breakfast.

With the sun fully risen and the breeze picking up – and my backside tired of sitting on my plastic bucket – I decided it was time to head inside for my own breakfast.

A good hunt!

How do you measure success? Moon setting as the sun rises? Sharing the woodland with other beings? Cheerful avian concert? May flowers? Solitude?

Sweet William, or phlox, is just one of a carpet of wildflowers that decorate the forest during the April-May turkey season.

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