Have you checked your “hour meter” lately? Perhaps (like me) it’s time to evaluate how you are spending your gift of time.

The first gobble came in what I have always referred to as the “graylight” period of morning. It’s the time before dawn when you can just begin to make out the outline of trees against the coming sunrise.

To say that the gobble came early would be an understatement, and as I stood next to Dan we both looked at each other and smiled. It’s the way a good turkey hunt is supposed to start.

For the next hour, we were treated to a veritable “gobble-rama” drifting down from the longbeard’s roost in the pines. It had been a long time since I had heard a turkey gobble as loud or as often, and it certainly surpassed anything that I had experienced this season.

Based on the monarch of the morning’s position just inside the wood line adjacent to the field edge, our setup seemed perfect. However, as the old saying goes, “Roosted ain’t roasted,” and at flydown time he chose to follow the hen that he could see rather than the one calling to him across the way.

The courtesy gobble that he gave me as he left helped my feelings a bit and bolstered my hope that he might return later in the morning to check on the new hen in town. Alas, it was not to be, and around eleven we made our way out of the woods sans turkey.

Dan had flown in Wednesday evening for a short visit home and, as I mentioned last week, his timing was perfect as his older sister had left earlier that day for her new home in Virginia Beach. These two sad parents were glad to have him home from Wyoming, if only for a few days.

He would spend the rest of the day relaxing and visiting with family and I had a hot date with a zero-turn lawnmower. I had delayed mowing as long as I could and it was past time to tame the jungle of grass, a project that I didn’t relish. In my defense, spring seemed to come early this year and, more importantly, it was turkey season.

As I reached to turn the key to start the mower and set about reclaiming our lawn from the early season weeds and grass, I happened to notice the hour meter. It read 369 hours.

Over the next few hours of mowing, I thought a lot about that reading and about my morning with Dan. Since I have been the only operator for this particular machine, the rough math told me that I had spent a total of 22,140 minutes cutting grass on it at the farm so far.

In comparison, Dan and I had spent a grand total of roughly 330 minutes in the turkey woods that morning. Now, let me say that I’m an English guy. Math has never been my strong suit, and if any of those calculations are off, don’t fault me too much.

I’m also not going to attempt to calculate how many hours (or minutes) I have spent in the woods in pursuit of the wild turkey. At one point during the Saturday mow-a-thon, I found myself actually thinking how thankful I was that I didn’t come equipped with an hour meter, especially when it comes to hunting, fishing and the outdoors.

So what’s the point of this rambling? The simple truth is that we all actually do come outfitted with an hour meter. However, unlike my trusty zero-turn or the farm’s John Deere tractor, our “hour meter” is not displayed and its total is unknown to us.

The fact that we don’t know how many minutes and hours we are allotted should inspire us to make the most of each day, yet how often is that not the case? How often do we start the week on Monday wishing for Friday?

It’s funny what you think about when you’re mowing. I’ve often heard friends describe their time on the mower or the tractor as therapy, and I guess that’s what my session turned into on Saturday. Although I will say that I much prefer the therapy of backpacking along the Appalachian Trail or fly fishing the waters of any mountain stream.

Aside from not leaving with a gobbler over our shoulders, my time in the woods with Dan on Saturday morning was perfect, and it was a wonderful reminder of the fact that, while time is a commodity, it is also a gift. As I have gotten older I have come to realize the value of that gift. It is, I believe, one of the greatest gifts we are given, and it is the greatest that we can give to others.

Until next time, here’s to checking our “hour meters,” here’s to the gift of time, and here’s to making the most of each minute that we are given.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.