My uncle from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was in town to accompany my dad and I for some spring gobbler hunting the first two days of the season. I made the trip from Blacksburg to Roanoke after a late night working and arrived at my dads house at 3 am opening morning. After two hours sleep we headed off to the beautiful hills of Bent Mountain.

The morning dawned overcast and damp, however the rain had stopped. At first light a gobbler sounded off on the far hillside across Bottom Creek. We quickly moved towards him and proceeded to hunt a group of 6 jakes and two longbeards for most of the morning. They fed in the field, the longbeards approaching to within 100 yards, then turned and vanished into the far woods line. A lone Jake with an almost invisible beard showed right in front of my dad and I, but he looked too much like a hen so we held our fire.

Later the first morning as we prospected up an old woods road a gobbler gave us one courtesy gobble then got lock jaw. My dad and I set up with my uncle behind us. Within 5 minutes I saw the longbeard moving up a ravine about 45 yards in front of me. As I readied my shot the turkey became alarmed and began to run. At my shot he lost a few breast feathers and was gone up the hill. I was startled to see my uncle standing right behind me. Unfortunately he had moved up too soon to commence our prospecting and had spooked a real nice bird. I still thought I had been able to steady my aim, but the bird seemed to only take a few superficial pellets. I was using my uncles gun, which shot 3" 12 ga #5's through a super tight Hastings tube. This gun had taken longbeards at 60 and 53 yards the last two years for my uncle, so I was kind of baffled that the bird didn't drop.

We came back on Monday morning, the second day of the season and set up in a bottleneck opening between two clearings. We had watched the two longbeards and the six jakes move through this area at first light on opening day. Well the turkey threw us a curveball, as I understand they usually do. Four jakes appeared below us, having somehow found a different entry way into the lower field. They fed about 150 yards from our set up, and within 20 minutes started to respond to my uncles calling and headed slowly up the hill towards us. When they got into good range I took the nearest bird and he went down hard. We all held our positions as my uncle began to pour on some real aggressive cutting and clucking, which actually seemed to hold one bird in the area. That lone Jake proceeded to run over to the flapping bird and started to basically attack him. I guess it's that dominance thing with these birds!

Later that morning we located several gobblers which were about 100 yards above us, gobbling like mad. They kept it up for a solid hour, and never would leave their position. My uncle called to them for about 20 minutes, then went into "operation shutdown" and called no more for about 40 minutes. That didn't work either so we relocated around the hill and proceed to spook them as set up on them. It was a memorable two days of hunting, where I got my first spring gobbler, and we worked a total of 16 gobblers without seeing or hearing a hen.