People who know stuff tell us that the Appalachian Mountains are 1.2 billion years old. And here I am all fidgety waiting six weeks for spring gobbler season to open. Fidgety is as fidgety does, I guess.
I don’t have the patience of a tectonic plate. But, to be fair to me, anything geological has a greater life expectancy than anything human. Tectonic plates have more time to wait for things and they are very good at it.
When you are eager for something to happen, waiting a week takes a month or longer even. Waiting for things such the Pittsburgh Pirates winning a World Series or Pennsylvania hunters being legally afield on Sundays takes more time than a Gregorian calendar provides.
But, you have to … wait, that is … for spring gobbler season to open. If you don’t wait you become a poacher and there are people who have job requirements to deal with those situations. They could drive blindfolded to the hoosegow and district court.
Fortunately, because time passes more quickly as a hunter’s years add up, waiting becomes easier … not easy, just easier.
There are things you can do to help pass the time as you wait for the first day of the season. My personal checklist includes:
• Clean your shotgun seven times.
• Count your shotgun shells, preferably at least five times.
• Buy more shotgun shells, no matter how many you already have.
• Pattern your shotgun and your favorite shell/choke combo even though you have shot that same load and harvested gobblers with it for a couple of decades or longer.
• Grab your smartphone and open your map app so you can stare at your hunting area long enough to need eye drops.
• Text with other gobbler addicts and repeat the things you have told them about turkey hunting many times before. They will do the same.
• Check your wallet or wherever you keep your hunting license to make sure it hasn’t gotten up and walked away.
• Take an inventory of your camouflage clothing (Note: this can consume a good bit of time as you wait for the season to open).
• Open your hunting/fishing scrapbook to look at grip-and-grin photographs from past years. Depending upon your age, you may think that gobblers have gotten heavier over the years, but there is likely more to it than that.
When you are a dedicated, ambitious, persistent, never-say-die, Looney Tunes hunter of the thunder chicken, there are various forms of waiting.
There is the season wait (see above). There is the wait as you hope a bearded bird will roar back at you after you have scratched a stick across a piece of slate or glass. Then there is the wait that comes after the gallinaceous vocalization you have sought and received.
Where exactly did that gobble come from? How far was it? Will the turkey come in or hang up? That’s when you realize you will have to wait to see if any of those questions are answered.
I wonder if a longbeard has ever shock gobbled to the movement of a tectonic plate. I think I heard one do that one time, but I suppose it is the sort of thing I’ll never know for sure.