By Ron Steffe

In the eastern sky, faint pinks and grays are slowly becoming visible. Moving lightly from the west, the morning air carries the scent of freshly plowed earth, springtime grasses - and cows.

It also carries one other thing: the resounding gobble of a mature wild tom turkey. And at a point a mere 300 yards away from the 2-acre woodlot in which the gobbler is welcoming the morning, a man quietly sits.

Like any hunter anticipating and then hearing the waking call of a courting male, he feels his excitement level going off the scale. But somehow this hunter must curtail that inner energy and funnel it to his turkey-hunting skills.

He knows and understands that he's pursuing a wild turkey amid farmlands, where he has little advantage. He'll have to be apt and clever if he's to have any hope of bagging this tom. He'll have to call him out of the hardwoods, across a large cow pasture and past 30 relaxed dairy cows to his position.

It's not an impossible task.

In the 4-foot depression that the hunter chooses for his point of setup and calling, a steady trickle of water runs through long-dormant spring weeds beginning spurts of growth. Well prepared for these conditions, he sits on a small portable chair that keeps his backside above the water and his body hidden. Having scouted this farm and its turkey population, he knows that the exact place in which he now sits offers the best prospects for trying to entice a gobbler into shooting range.

Photo by Paul Tessier

A short 20 yards from the hunter's place of concealment, two hen decoys are stuck on poles in the ankle-high grass of a green pasture. They spin occasionally in the light wind - all the better for fooling the quarry.

After gobbling three more times, the tom goes silent for 10 minutes. Then, like a magical shadow slipping along the woodlot's edge, a turkey slowly walks out. The hunter's heart speeds, then slows: a hen. She walks into the pasture and begins pecking at the grass. Soon another gobble rings out; then, another shadow, and another turkey - a mature tom in full strut leaving his wooded bedroom for the grassy mead.

Twenty minutes of soft yelping, purring and cutting has brought the hen and tom to within 10 yards of the decoys. Calling in the hen is part of the strategy that the hunter stored on a mental list for his hunt plan. He was of course not certain as his day began that a hen would be involved in this hunt. But he was ready for the possibility.

The hen comes into the open pasture along an old fenceline and walks past the cows to the decoys. The tom follows - also as the hunter had planned, and hoped.

The burst of a 12-gauge Magnum shell ends the gobbler's courtship trot. The hunter carries the monarch, no longer king of this domain, from his farmland home. But, the human victor correctly assumes, another male will take this one's place.

The wild turkey and its ever-expanding range represent one of America's greatest wildlife success stories. Areas of the country that - coinciding closely with the arrival of the first European settlers - saw the loss of the wild turkey now lay claim to the big birds once again. Where suitable habitat exists, the birds have prospered.

Farm country is not excepted from this trend. The wild turkey has spread to the fields and small woodlots we associate with areas of agriculture. At such places, their numbers are on the rise.

The experience of hunting the farm country gobbler is every bit as exciting, and is as exacting, as is hunting toms living in large tracts of forested hills and mountains. In fact, the bagging of a farm-country tom often rises to a level of difficulty somewhat above and beyond that of taking a bird in big woodlands - added challenge that only adds to the reward of filling your tag with a farmland tom.

Be it a spring, stream, water trough, lake or water-filled ditch, all farms have some source of water. And all farms where wild turkeys live provide the food sources that a turkey needs to survive. Otherwise, the birds simply wouldn't be found there.

For actually finding the birds, it's paramount that you scout a farm area just as you would scout the forests for big-woods turkeys. Scouting can be done at any time of year, for turkeys seen in the fall will most likely inhabit the same area come spring. Locating a springtime gobbler requires spending some pre-season evenings listening for gobbles; it may also necessitate putting some miles on your vehicle as you search for birds. And don't forget some time spent knocking on farmhouse doors and asking the residents if they know of any birds on the property. This is also an excellent time to seek permission to hunt, as you're in the process of introducing yourself and making a favorable initial impression, anyway.

Once you locate some toms, you'll be much better off come opening day if you've spent some time watching the birds from a distance. Stay hidden as you look for little habits peculiar to a particular tom. Perhaps he leaves his roosting area late, or goes to water early; maybe he struts the morning away on a certain piece of ground, or feeds in a certain section of a field. Any hint of a pattern that you can discern through such observation will increase your odds of bagging that tom come the time that you actually hunt him.

Don't expect a tom to come running across open land to your first calls - it just doesn't work out that way. Your best chance for success is to scout him and learn his habits and patterns.