New regulations require Louisiana hunters to tag their harvested turkey and report it to the LDWF within 72 hours. Photo by Ralph Hensley.

During turkey season's opening morning, bottomland hollows can be "hallowed ground" in southwestern Louisiana's piney woods.

First of all, a bird I once "put to bed" in a bottom gobbled fanatically right before and after he took to the roost. In my mind, I knew it was going to be a difficult next morning, since I figured he had plenty of hens in his harem.

I had heard before -- and the truth was soon confirmed -- that the more a longbeard gobbles on his way to the roost, the less he will gobble coming down the next day.

And sure enough, the next morning resounded with much barred owl hooting and enough crows crying to make you think that there was never a gobbler in the vicinity, or that somehow the birds had moved in the middle of the night.

All I heard that morning was a couple of jakes responding in the vicinity.

But I stayed put until about 9 a.m., making enough purrs, yelps and kee-kee runs to encourage even the two jakes to visit the area.

Unfortunately, I never heard the raucous gobbler fly down that morning.

I decided to search the area and pulled my purple mahogany box out of the vest. I walked far and wide and eventually witnessed a few field birds that I played with for quite a while.

Shackled by a lack of luck that morning, I decided to head back to the pickup and record a "scratch" on that particular opening day.

When I happened back upon the area where the gobbler had roosted the evening before, I decided to play a few raspy yelps on the box just before noon.

Immediately, the bottom echoed with a full gobble in response -- and he was close!

I immediately found the nearest cover and placed a double-reed stack diaphragm in my mouth, letting fly some seductive purrs and clucks.

A gobble cut me off on the second cluck, and the bird was even closer.

My gun went to my shoulder pointing to the area where the bird had just gobbled.

Among the golden tops, I could see a bluish-white head bobbing along quickly and coming in my direction.

As I have witnessed on many such occasions, the big bird fanned out his wings in full strut upon reaching the area. I could hear his spittin' and drummin' reverberating in the bottom.

I purred a little more and the longbeard gobbled thunderously again.

Once he walked well into shotgun range, I emitted a whiney yelp, and his fan folded as his head and neck extended straight up.

I shot and folded the bird, and I was pretty exultant that I was going back to the camp with a gobbler in the back of the pickup. The tom weighed 22 pounds and sported a thick 11-inch beard. His spurs were plenty long enough and curved at just over 1 4/8 inches.

It turned out to be a great opening day for me, one that reinforced the tactic of staying in the woods and playing a good bird hard. After all -- and as many avid turkey hunters will tell you -- a midday encounter with a gobbling bird nearly always ends up with a gobbler in hand.

March is here, and later this month (March 28), the 2009 turkey-hunting season opens statewide in Louisiana.

According to biologist and state turkey study leader Larry Savage with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, as many as 25,000 Louisiana turkey hunters will take to the swamps, piney woods and hardwood forests in search of a few of the state's resident population of Eastern wild turkeys.