A spring hunter's greatest lament is a lack of gobbling. No gobbling whatsoever that is! Zilch, nada. You certainly don't expect that when hunting on some of the finest Jackson County turkey turf the Mountain State has to offer. To add insult to injury, the generous landowner's wife saw a duo of strutting big boys around several hens just the previous afternoon!

Yet, there I was with no siren call of the gobbling kind that you get up early and make long drives for. Even if you don't bag a bird, you should at least hear and work one. All that was going through my mind, along with the extra burden of having never hunted a morning in this particular place without at least hearing a gobbler.

When all was said and done, no, I didn't bag a Jackson County bird that morning. But after many miles of ridgetop looking, listening and periodic calling, I finally did get a response to some desperation kee-kee run calls very late in the morning and at the last likely stop for the day.

I had flubbed on a gobbler at the very same gas-line right-of-way a few years earlier. This one was yet another blundered opportunity that left me rattled to the bone. To make a long story short, a hen answered my calls and nervously came in. She kind of made out my amply camouflaged form and setup but wasn't exactly sure. Still never a gobble, though several adult hens and two gobblers emerged onto the right-of-way, displayed, strutted and gingerly follow their hens around as if they had rings in their noses, never breaking full fan.

As the few adult hens and two gobblers made their way in the opposite direction, some yelps and clucks brought them back my way but just out of shooting range. The jenny would then lead them away in the opposite direction. That tattletale of a jenny bolstered a back and forth tug of war that lasted a good half hour. She was simply trying to keep her more preoccupied brethren out of harm's way. (Continued)

My next two hunts, however, were to be gobblers of a different story. This time they would result in the season limit of two boss gobblers at my home county of Logan. They were with little or no competition from other hunters, late in the season, late in the morning and while covering lots of country on foot.

On foot being code for not on an ATV. The time spans between first hearing these boss birds gobble and bagging them were short, sweet and the stuff spring hunters' dreams are made of.

The point here is simply that there's still some mighty fine spring gobbler hunting to be had in the Mountain State. If even an aging outdoor writer can get one, then so to could you.

Though the years of record-breaking harvests circa the 1980s and 1990s are over, there may be an occasion or two when all the stars line up for new records. However, surpassing the 2001 high water mark of just shy of 18,000 spring gobblers bagged is just not in the near-term cards.