By Mark Taylor

Archives Reprint

    Have you ever tried to buy camouflage maternity clothes?

    Don't bother.

    "I'm sure there are some out there, but they're probably expensive," my friend Amy McGuire told me early Saturday morning.

    That's why Amy, who's expecting her first child in late May, was wearing her husband's stretchy camo sweatpants as she waddled - er, walked slowly - into the Franklin County woods in the pre-dawn darkness on the opening day of Virginia's spring turkey season.

    Don't worry. She got her doctor's OK.

    "The nurse said she'd never been asked that question before," Amy said of the response she got. "The doctor said it would be fine as long as I held the gun the way I'm supposed to.

    "I brought along an extra jacket to cover my belly so the noise wouldn't startle her."

    "Her" being soon-to-arrive Rachel Abigail "Abby" McGuire.

    This is a woman who didn't start hunting turkeys until a few years ago. Obviously, her husband's obsession is rubbing off on her. Amy, 32, and Freddy, 31, have been married eight years.

    There are lots of fanatical spring gobbler hunters, but few are more passionate than Freddy McGuire.

    He starts his season long before opening day, getting up daily before dawn to scout his hunting areas.

    Then he hunts just about every day of the season. If he doesn't take vacation, he adjusts his work schedule - as a computer network specialist - so he can start later in the morning.

    Sometimes that means he's often not headed home from work until about the time turkeys are heading to roost. He'll make a few stops on the way to his home in Goodview, locate a gobbler or two, then be back to hunt the next morning to hunt them.

    The funny thing is Freddy will probably get more sleep after the baby is born than he will over the next five weeks.

    How many new dads can say that?

    The payoff for sleep deprivation is lots of nice gobblers, as well as a coveted spot on the pro staff for Primos Hunting Calls.

    Unlike during my dozen or so previous hunts with Freddy, I was shooting something a little different on Saturday - a video camera. He wanted to get some footage of Amy and I was happy to help.

    The plan was pretty simple. If he could roost a turkey in an area that was easy for Amy to reach, she and I would sit in a blind together while Freddy hunted elsewhere. If he couldn't find easy-to-reach turkeys, Freddy and I would chase them on our own.

    He called late Friday night.

    "We've got turkeys," he said.

    He'd seen them using a certain field recently and Friday evening found that at least two gobblers had roosted in a nearby hollow.

    While Freddy headed up the mountain, Amy and I squeezed into a pop-up blind in the cold darkness.

    At 6:12 we heard our first gobble, ringing out from a ridge on an adjoining property.

    A few birds on that ridge made noise for 20 minutes, but shut up when they hit the ground.

    Behind us we heard a few more hen yelps as a few birds hit the ground probably 100 yards away. We figured those hens had to have at least one gobbler with them.

    We were watching intently for those birds when a shot echoed from a nearby ridge.

    "That's Freddy!" Amy hissed, smiling.

    Her two-way radio buzzed.

    "Got one on the ground," Freddy said.

    The 2-year-old gobbler weighed 18 pounds, with a 9-inch beard and 1-inch spurs.

    "Now it's our turn," Amy said into the handset.

    Sure enough, just a few minutes later Amy spotted a lone hen entering the field. The bird haltingly crossed in front of us, perplexed that our hen decoy didn't respond to her plaintive yelps.

    "Some more turkeys are coming in the field by the corner," said Amy as the hen moved away.

    I zoomed in on the birds - six hens and a big gobbler in full strut.

    It seemed likely the hens would feed their way along the tree line right to us, the gobbler in tow.

    Everything seemed perfect for Amy to get the gobbler, and for me to get some great footage.

    The turkeys didn't move much over the next 20 minutes but we weren't too worried. We got worried when a few hens, instead of heading our way, started filtering back into the woods. The gobbler stayed so Amy started making a few subtle yelps on her glass call.

    It didn't work. The gobbler, too, slipped away.

    We held tight, hoping the gang would head our way through the woods.

    It didn't.

    We connected with Freddy. He and Amy posed for pictures with the turkey.

    "Abby's first turkey," Amy said.

    That may be stretching it, but you better believe she'll get her first before the season is over.

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