During the last 45 minutes or so before dawn, birds on the roost are very likely to yelp, cluck and gobble with abandon. One tom after another will chime in, as if answering a roll call. The nimrod that sleeps through this ritual forfeits a perfect chance to become acquainted with the local turkey population. In addition, just before sunup, many if not most hens and toms will fly down and begin walking toward their favorite feeding grounds and strutting zones.

You may or may not have a shooting opportunity every time, but if you are in the woods at fly-down time, you can often hear where the birds alight and tell what direction they take from there. That knowledge will come in very handy on subsequent mornings.

How early is early enough? I like to be in position when I can barely make out the individual treetops. That's about an hour before sunrise.

Of course, after a long string of early wake-ups, I'm the first to admit that late-morning hunts have their pluses, too.

LEAVING TOO SOON
The pillow-punchers who reluctantly roll out of bed in the morning do have an advantage over hunters who call it quits after a 9 a.m. coffee break. Namely, they're wide-awake and on the job when so-called "henned-up" toms are apt to cut loose and fly solo.

Matt, a friend of mine, went by the book when he hunted a heavily wooded hillside one mid-May morning. He got into position well before sunrise, made a few soft tree yelps in the dim light and then kept quiet until the roosted longbeards that thundered back at him were on the ground. Unfortunately, those toms had shared the tree limbs with several winsome hens, and Matt could not pry them loose with his most artful calling. After the birds went off in the opposite direction, he spent several fruitless hours trying to ambush them along a power line corridor that he knew to be a favorite strutting ground. By 10 o'clock, he was so tired and discouraged that he slung his shotgun over his shoulder and began walking back to his car at a casual pace.

Not far from where he had begun calling at dawn, Matt rounded a curve in a snowmobile trail and almost walked smack into a big gobbler. By the time he unhinged the sling from his shoulder, the bird had sprinted well out of range.

Contrast that sad story with one of my own, which began with a disappointing dearth of treetop talk before sunup and ended with a fat tom on the ground at 11:55 a.m. It took more willpower than I can usually muster to stay in the woods for more than an hour on that hot, mosquito-infested late-May morning, but the extra effort paid off.

By 10 a.m., the gobblers that were in the company of unbred hens at first light had either made a conquest or been turned down flat. Either way, they were in a randy mood.