THE SECOND PEAK
Fortunately, the lull runs its course, usually in 10 to 14 days, and as the hens begin to slip away from the gobblers to lay eggs and then leave them altogether to incubate, the gobblers become vocal again. Waking up alone makes a gobbler anxious, and it’ll start gobbling again in an attempt to correct the situation. This widespread tendency marks the second peak of gobbling, the post-breeding time of year that some hunters refer to as the “second season.”

It’s a fine time to hunt: The gobblers are workable, and the pressure is less than was the case early in the season, the less-than-serious having quit and the successful having tagged out. True, fewer gobblers are to be had during this phase than on opening day, but when you find a bird, you’re more likely to have it to yourself, and it’s more apt to be a hook-spurred trophy, the inexperienced 2-year-olds that gobble and respond best having gotten shot in the first week.

On the other hand, those hook-spurred survivors whose hens have left and who are still out there during the second season are nobody’s pushovers. Remember: They’ve survived not only the first half of the current season, but two or more past seasons as well, and while they may do a lot of gobbling, they’re still not likely to throw caution to the wind to come running to your calls. This is the second season, and it calls for second-season tactics.

Conditions in the woods during the second season differ considerably from those met with in the first. The gobblers may have quit talking, but the leaves didn’t suspend their growth, and all through the lull things will have been getting greener and greener and thicker and thicker. This dictates a change of camouflage palette from the predominantly gray or brown tones appropriate early on to greener patterns that’ll enable you to blend better with the greening woods.

But camo’s a minor consideration easily dealt with; not so easy to cope with are the sound-muffling properties of the dense new growth. First, a hunter’s thinking about distances needs adjusting. A gobbler in a tree sounds much the same early or late in the season, but once it’s on the ground in the latter phase, the sound of its gobbling will be much more muffled because it has to penetrate all that foliage. It’s very easy to overestimate the distance to a late-season turkey, such that most hunters overrun a gobbler or two before learning to compensate.

Caution is still necessary, and maybe more so than in the early season. Late spring’s thick foliage makes many hunters overconfident, so they crowd turkeys too much and get busted. Don’t let the thick greenery lull you into becoming too bold when you approach a late-season bird.

However, you don’t want to be too timid, either. Even though most hens will have left to begin laying and/or incubating, a few receptive ladies are always going to be around during the second season, some merely running behind schedule, others -- having lost their nests to predation -- attempting to breed again before renesting. Dawdle in your approach and stay too far for too long from a gobbling turkey, and you risk its being lured away by a real hen.