A key to getting your gobbler at Bankhead: Get off the roadways and strike out into the back country. Photo courtesy of Mike Marsh.

No matter where you hunt them, eastern wild turkeys are the same bird. They are cagey, wary and sneaky, and they may or may not respond to the best of manmade turkey calls. Unfortunately, the longer the hunting season goes on, the sneakier gobblers get. As hunters learn their habits, the birds are in turn are patterning hunters.

Being a glutton for punishment is a hallmark of spring gobbler hunters, who travel far and wide in their masochistic pursuit of the chance at hearing a gobbler sound off . . . and then hoping the tom will offer a shot. Because I'm guilty of being hopelessly addicted to the blooming of dogwoods and the hooting of barred owls at dawn, part of my sentence in 2006 included hunting at the William B. Bankhead National Forest in northwestern Alabama.

Well into the second day of my hunt, I had been beset by some of the worst luck a hunter can encounter. That included wee-hours thunderstorms complete with golf-ball-sized hail, followed by dawn deluges so saturating there was no choice but to sit them out in the cab of the pickup. Loud noises, especially thunder, can force toms to shock-gobble even during the night. The conditions I was facing probably had the birds cobalt-blue in the face from sounding off, which would go along nicely with their natural war paint of wattle-red and gypsum-white. In turkey hunting parlance, the toms were "gobbled out."

Still, there was nothing else to do but hunt, in spite of the tough conditions. Turkeys also have no choice. They are in the forest all the time. The best philosophy to hunt by is that as long as there is daylight and turkey season is open, you have a chance. I was banking on Bankhead to give me that chance.

Even scouting had been difficult with torrential rains washing away most of the turkey sign. Still, anyone who wants to be successful in springtime Alabama has to play the course as it lies. The tracks I did find were fresh in the soft red clay soil.

Finding a logging road winding away from State Route 33 made passage into the dripping gloom easy once the rain stopped. While much of Bankhead NF is composed of mature timber, it is the places that man's hand has altered that often draw the turkeys. That was obvious along the corridor I followed.

The logging trail, planted partly in wheat and partly in rye and clover, wound for nearly a mile. There were feathers on the ground and hen tracks were left soon after the end of daylight's deluge. If there was a hen around, might there not be a gobbler nearby?

A log deck 30 yards in circumference had once acted as a turnaround for heavy equipment. With clover growing green in the cul-de-sac, it appeared to be the perfect strutting area for a stage-struck gobbler to show off for a hen. To add to its potential, the forest was relatively open for acres in all directions. Selective timber harvest had opened the canopy as well as the forest floor, making perfect habitat for turkeys to collect some sunlight and dry their feathers after enduring the chilly overnight rain.