Sometimes the spring turkey woods seem incomplete without Johnny Stonebraker hidden there with anticipation intensifying his breathing and heartbeats.

I was on an airplane in the skies over Maryland returning home from a business trip and was seated on a row with three seats. A pleasant young couple sat beside me and I learned they were returning to their home in the western Maryland mountains from an outdoor trip. Johnny Stonebraker’s name I thought appropriate because he was trim and muscular, revealing that he worked out regularly. His wife, Kim, was tall and attractive.

    It didn’t take long to learn that Johnny and I both were interested in turkey hunting. Nor did it take long to learn that he would be entering Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore soon for treatment of leukemia. It would be another in a string of hospitalizations for the progressing disease. Here was a handsome, blond haired man barely into his twenties, newly married and a picture of health who was dying. His rigorous body building program was an effort to give himself every chance to beat his leukemia.

    Johnny had recently bought a new special turkey shotgun. He didn’t know how to hunt turkeys and had never killed one, but he told me he was determined to make a turkey hunt. He said that a gobbler roosted on his father’s place in the mountains but neither of them knew how to use turkey callers. He was excited to learn that I had taken many gobblers and had guided turkey hunters and asked if I would take him on a hunt for the mountain tom. I wasn’t about to refuse.

    When the Maryland season opened, I made the hundred mile drive to his dad’s place. The property was small, having just one hollow that the bird entered to feed beneath giant oaks and to roost. They pointed out the area from which they had heard his morning gobbles. I laid out a plan to circle in the morning, and call from lower in the hollow where he would surely exit the property.

    Johnny Stonebraker and I slipped into the woods before daylight. It was his first, and as fate would dictate, his only hunt for a wild turkey gobbler. We had access to only 20 acres or so in the beautiful mountains of western Maryland near the Appalachian Trail. In the dark, I whispered questions to Johnny about the lay of the land. The ravine lay ahead, invisible in the dark, when I decided to set up, opting to stop short rather than risk getting too close and spooking the big bird. His normal routine was to fly down on the north flat that paralleled the hollow and follow that flat out to the southwest where he could enter the only big woods in the area. We planned to intercept him.

    When the sky brightened, the old boss turkey gobbled. Johnny sat quietly beside me, both of us in full camouflage, as I scratched out some shy tree yelps on my home made walnut box caller. When the bird gobbled again I stayed quiet as we waited for good light and flydown time. We were farther from the tom than I had hoped, and as it got light I noticed we had stopped short of the open woods where the bird would surely travel. I had to make a big decision. We needed to be 60 yards further into the woods, but moving would risk the bird seeing us and the hunt would be over. I decided to stay put and try to call the bird off his likely course.

    Moving only my eyes, I watched Johnny holding his new turkey gun tightly and peering into the gray woods of early dawn, thrilling to the sounds of the gobbler and my quiet yelps. He was experiencing that timeless, magic feeling; anticipation. Intense anticipation.

    Neither of us heard the bird fly down from his roost limb. He was too far. Once the woods were illuminated the gobbling stopped; not unusual after flydown. I called with yelps and purrs intermittently. But the cunning bird never showed or even answered. He had taken his routine course to his harem, ignoring the misplaced hen in a corner of the woods he mistrusted.

    I had hoped my very sick young friend could bag the big bird. It was not to be. After a long wait and pleading calling, we left the woods. I was pleased to see that Johnny understood what a big challenge spring gobblers present their hunters. He was genuinely satisfied with the hunt. His considerable outdoor experience had seen him appreciate the unattainable perhaps as much as a filled tag. He was that kind of sportsman.

    In just a few weeks I was in Johnny’s hospital room at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, talking turkey hunting with him to help take his mind off the sickening effects of chemotherapy. I took him a copy of an Outdoor Life magazine which carried my article about my first gobbler, the story highlighted on the magazine’s cover. Johnny was proud to have the story, for we had formed a bond. I listened to his outdoor stories.

    Within a few months I retired and moved to Mississippi. I called Johnny before I left Maryland and wished him well, though I could tell his leukemia was in the final stages. It was a couple of years before I got up the courage to call and inquire about him, because I didn’t want to hear what I feared was the truth. How does one call to ask if someone has died? What if they have not? So when his father answered the phone I simply asked for Johnny. This provided a more comfortable opportunity for him to tell me Johnny was indeed gone. He had held on only a short time after I moved away. My heart is heavy. But we shared that one good hunt in the mountains together; priceless in so many ways.