I was up at 3:15, dressed in linen hunting shirt, linsey-woolsey hunting frock over that, kneebreeches and woolen stockings, woolen leggings and moccasins. A handwoven woolen sash around the waist and a grey felt slouch hat on my head. Tomahawk in the sash against my lower back and a belt knife on the left side. I scooped up the .62 flintlock smoothbore charged with a ounce and an eighth of #5 shot and 75 grains of FFg Dupont powder with one hand and the horn and shot pouch with the other.
At 3:35 I was silently slipping into the woods. Moccasined feet coming down on the balls of my feet and rolling softly to quiet my steps as I moved like a shadow amongst fellow shadows. Once I stopped when a muley doe snorted her disapproval. I asked her forgiveness and told her she was not who I was looking for. She turned and faded deeper into the jackpines, heavy with a pair of fawns in her belly.
The deer trail I stole along is one I have covered hundreds of times, most often in the dark like this. I know it's twists and turns by heart. At the top of the ridge I paused sucking great gulps of wind hoping to calm the trip-hammer in my chest. More empty vows to be in better shape next spring were bitten off before they slipped out my lips uselessly. When I could breath again quietly I slipped from one tree to another with as little motion as possible until I was a mere 50 yds from a roost site.
The birds were lit by the approaching dawn, skylit and silhouetted, allowing me to count them and guess which was hen and which was gobbler. Soft tree yelps from one to another, a turkey's sleepy "G'morning' flockmates". One after another woke and stretched wings and legs, preparing for a morning fly-down. I primed the pan of my flintlock as seruptitously as possible, having forgotten that necessary chore. No alarm putts, the forest floor was still too shadowed for them to see me clearly enough. Just another shadow amongst fellow shadows.
By legal shooting time they were in a dither up in that roost. Yelping and putting hens punctuated by one really strident gobbler, noisy as all hell, and me as happy as I could get. I gave off a few yelps myself on a cane yelper made by Eric Krewson. Eventually one hen couldn't wait to get to the strutting grounds. Two or three more hens pitched down and I was envisioning a very happy ending very soon.
The gobbler was turning around and around on his branch, trying to decide on the best way to launch when a loud crack of a breaking branch stopped everything. The hen's heads came up in unison, we all stopped breathing. All was silent. Iroquois? French Canadian raiding party? Or just a doe not careful where she stepped. The boss hen gave a few alarm putts, her girlfriends picked up the alarm and they all faded back into the jackpines. The remaining hens, two jakes and the gobbler flushed from the treetops and headed across the valley to the next ridgeline. I willed myself to hold even closer to the mature pine at my back.
Another crack, quieter, followed by silence. The air was split by a very poor imitation of a crow. Hostiles! In my woods, hostiles! A good morning in the woods just got more serious. Life and death serious. If there were here, they were carrying and were loaded.
I judged them to be about 80 yds away. I rolled away from the tree and belly crawled over the edge of the ridgeline and hot-footed it to the bottom of the ravine. I quickly doubled back around below and behind the intruder or intruders.
Half an hour of slipping from tree to tree heading back out of the woods and I was sure I had not been seen nor followed. At the edge of the treeline I paused. A pickup with loud pipes came careening down the asphalt and I was remorselessly jolted back to the 21st Century.
