Well, it happened. Just like it does to all wild turkey hunters held captive by the addictive pursuit, my brain suddenly abandoned rational thought in favor of daydreaming most of the time this week about episodes with gobblers; in this current case, my season with Gabriel.

I once was selling my books at a booth I rented at Mississippi’s Wildlife Extravaganza in Jackson when a middle aged lady dressed in camouflage walked up and wanted to talk about turkey hunting.

Obviously suffering from advanced gobbler subjugation, she told me her stories and upon finally drifting away she sighed, “Well, it’s just seven months until turkey season opens.” I offer her visit as proof that I am not alone in my thoughts of spring when I should be planning food plots.

Gabriel lived deep in the hardwoods of Green Ridge State Forest in far western Maryland, some 122 miles from my apartment in suburban Washington, D.C. Not long after midnight on each day I hunted him, I left Washington on the Capitol Beltway where there were six traffic lanes going each direction. I had only Saturdays to hunt with a rare vacation day thrown in, and only morning hunts were legal in Maryland and no Sunday hunting was allowed. So I drove 244 miles to hunt six hours.

With no scouting time before the season opener, I took a guess and simply hiked to the middle of the forest, to get away from those who hunted near the forest roads. The first morning, two toms were answering another hunter, who took one of the birds with an echoing shot that got the day started. Strangely, the other bird resumed gobbling shortly. I recall thinking the survivor was brave to fire back with “in your face” gobbles following the demise of his partner. I would later name him Gabby.

Subsequent hunts found him on the same ridge each morning, gobbling himself silly. But he was unwilling to come to my calls. Eventually, hunters from the roads would hear him and walk into our battle grounds and call to him. One mid-morning I and some of these hunters had gone to his gobbles and we now had him surrounded. He soon tired of our insincere pleadings and simply slipped right through an opening in our tight circle, all the while showing his disdain by gobbling insults at us as he walked on out of hearing.

I soon learned that his strutting zone was the crest of the south ridge. Too, I learned that he now lived alone. I never saw or heard a hen near him. His was a “voice crying in the wilderness.” I reckoned that he and his deceased buddy had been whipped by younger, stronger toms and banished from their flocks to live in exile in the remote ridges.

One morning I beat him to South Ridge and called him in. He walked past me at 25 yards but the light screen of brush made me hold my shot for fear of wounding him.

I got a good look at him and learned more. He walked with a distinct limp to the point of appearing to struggle. And quite oddly when he came to a downed log, instead of walking around it, he struggled up onto the log and stepped off it to the other side! Was he blind in one eye or perhaps near sighted or…I was puzzled to the point of grasping for a reason for this weird habit.

I had just read an article by Shirley Grenoble in which she described getting up to move on a hung up tom. Each time she took a step in the noisy leaves, the bird would gobble. He mistook her steps for the “hen” she had represented. She stayed put and scratched leaves with her hand, eventually calling the gobbler to gun with her scratching.

On my next morning hunting Gabriel, I got on the ridge the other side of his roost tree, and at flydown I did no calling. Instead, I scratched leaves in a cadence of a slowly feeding hen. I purred lightly just as content feeding hens do.

Gabriel walked up from his roost straight to my waiting 12 gauge. To come straight, he encountered a large blowdown. He walked through thick limbs, crawled over the log, out through thicker limbs and emerged in easy range.

This story is found in more detail in Barham’s last book, “Spring Beckonings.” It is adapted from his 2003 article in Turkey Call Magazine that won third place in competition by the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association in the “Best Magazine Article” category – which awards the best outdoor article of the year in some 15 states as judged by impartial judges, usually university professors. Limited space here dictated some omissions, including a very powerful spiritual ending.

Call Otha Barham, 601-482-4440 for copies of “Spring Beckonings” containing this story and 37 more.