Thought I'd share a story I'm working on. Maybe a chapter a week till opening day gets here. Enjoy...

PART I
Chapter 1 The darkness

The earth felt moist underfoot. The spring night had brought temperatures just above freezing, and the dew hung heavy in the air. The frail leaves of last autumn were soft and quiet now, not as they were last deer season. It was from this very spot on the trail that he had spooked a nice buck, walking to stand in the biting cold of darkness.

The waxing moon cast a glimmer of light down upon the forest trail, created by tractors and skidders years ago when granddad had the property logged to pay the taxes. Times had gotten much better financially for the family since then, and logging would never be needed to keep the property, not even in the distant future. The night air surrounded him, and he allowed himself to drift off in thought while trekking the mile plus into the woods, to the little honey hole.

He thought, "Grandpa would be pleased-the old man and I for the past 20 years have hunted turkeys-before he passed on last summer. This will be the first Spring in many years these woods won't hear that sweet poplar boxcall, handcrafted by the old man himself. He had said that one day I would have to call for him-but we both knew he was too good to let me call. I mean after all, I had only won 4 state calling championships and been to Nationals twice. Grandma had insisted I inherit that damn poplar boxcall grandpa…I hope you like where I decided to keep it."

John was the only member of the family that knew of the call's fate. He had thanked grandma, and mentioned to the wife that it was 'too nice, too sentimental' to put into the vest and possibly lose in the woods. In actuality, John had sneaked into the funeral parlor and placed the finest boxcall ever made into the casket with its maker. The boxcall was accompanied with the old turtleshell slate call that John himself had handcrafted for his gramps. John remembered next uttering, "I thought it was fitting that something you loved to play always be with you on your journeys-besides, how else am I going to find you when I get over on that side," to his grandpa, who looked so peaceful yet mischievous in his new 'home'. John had snuck out just before the undertaker came to close the coffin's lid.

Homing in on his surroundings, John stopped short of stepping on a downed birch tree, twisted and tangled from that damned April Nor'easter that had ripped up the coast. Whilst looking down, he noticed that the dew was beginning to cling to his wool, the air pricking his skin like sharp-toothed needles of frost. He meandered further up the trail, his thoughts now lost on getting up the hill and to the fork where he had harvested his first turkey years earlier with grandpa.

Upon reaching the fork, the daunting moonlight started to cast eerie shadows upon the quaint little opening. The once productive apple orchard, overgrown long ago but still producing smaller fruits for the wildlife, appeared almost mystical in the light. The air hung stale, almost beckoning him to sit here on this morning, taunting him to remember this spot was where it all began.

The addiction and fever started right at this very place 20 years earlier. Grandpa had gotten a cramp in his calf and they had to stop at the trail's fork to rest. That was John's first experience in the springtime woods-he had only been camping during the summer, never hunting before-and he had never been in the woods at 4 a.m. in the morning. The solitude and the darkness, he remembered, were different on that first spring morning-maybe it was the excited anxiety, or maybe it was going hunting with grandpa-he hadn't ever been able to decide. He recalled, however, that he had committed the carnal errors of all faults, the ultimate sin to his grandpa...."SNAP" went the evergreen bough, guided by his ineptness of foot. Instantly a barred owl had resounded with deafening fright, spooked by the loud noise, and then…

John quickly came back to reality, looked at his Timex and quickened his pace up the left fork of the trail. Plodding onward, he could feel something knawing within his stomach, something he didn't understand. It was an urge, an instinct maybe, which he hadn't felt in a long time, a very long time.

And then, he did exactly what grandpa had scolded him for 20 years earlier as "SNAP" went the hickory branch that had sagged and quickly splintered under his immense weight-almost twice the size now as that day during his youth. Except on this morning, no owl hoot greeted the shattered branch, but rather a crow directly above his head sounded his dismay to the coming dawn, "caw, caw, caaaaaaaaaaa", the shrill echo resonating throughout the forest.

His stomach dropped, his breath caught in the back of his throat; the memories of past mistakes flooding back with that unexpected wave of anxiety and dread which accompanied all setbacks in life. John froze in his tracks, partly from fear and partly from realizing his haste had encouraged him to commit a mistake; but mainly from the resounding answer of the gobble that greeted the cracking of that brittle branch.

John quickly gathered his thoughts and stealthily stalked back down the trail towards the nearby thick-based oak, the one with the perfect depression his grandpa had said would make the perfect seat and silhouette. Upon reaching the tree, John's memory quickly supplied him with an imprinted image of success; fore it was from this same very tree from which he and grandpa had harvested John's first bird.

He realized that the gobble he had just heard originated from the ridge at the top of the left trail. The area was thick with twisted scotch pines and beech trees, totally unsuitable for roosting, and by chance the same ridge to which he was headed. John realized that he probably would have spooked the majestic king from his perch. Perhaps on this day grandpa was with him, for it was known in these parts that the old man was not only the best turkey hunter in the state, but the luckiest SOB this side of the Mississippi River.

Analyzing the scenario, John surmised the sun would soon cast its first rays of beckoning dawn over the horizon, and he would need to get ready. He realized that merely minutes of darkness were left for him to find his will and his composure, as this hunt was becoming more personal every second.

John visualized this particular bird and discerned, if his assumptions were correct, that this gobbler was special. Grandpa had hunted a wary tom for the past four years to absolutely no avail. Each year, the big gobbler was spooked and flew off the roost on the first morning, of the first day of each season. Grandpa was never able to quite coerce the old bird into gun range, at any point, for the remainder of any season. Grandpa had gone so far as to nickname the bird 'the chosen one', "chosen to be the thorn in my side!" the old man would exclaim on the last day of each of the past four seasons.

John understood that as for luck, this was the one bird in his entire lifetime that Grandpa had not been able to tag. This single fact alone had curled the inside of the old man's gut, just like hot sauce mixed with milk, and ate more of his stomach lining each and every day as the past seasons stretched towards their June end and that bird still gobbled to that poplar boxcall. At the conclusion of last season, Grandpa and John had decided to spend the summer preparing some surprises for this bird.

Visualizing the possible fruition of his grandpa's last labors was eating John alive, not so much having to remember about grandpa and all their 'adventures', but rather waiting for this damned darkness to subside...