An orange dawn crept in over the faraway Belchertown hills, first a faint hue then a bright sliver that, within a half-hour of peeking over the horizon, burst into a blinding orange sphere. Quarter past 7 on a Whately hardwood ridge.

An old idyllic haunt of mine reaching back to my untethered teens, a friend and I had made an exciting discovery there the previous day. Unlike other oak stands we had visited, where only empty caps and wormy, rotten nuts remained, there were meaty acorns everywhere, many more than the resident creatures could ever eat by springtime. And, as the saying goes: Find the feed and you’ll find the deer.

Find the feed we had.

So there we sat on opposite ends of the mature oak grove, maybe 150 yards apart, muzzleloaders primed; he posting a run through the knobby bowls of a five-acre plateau, I watching another trail leading from the fields below to a dense mountain-laurel bedding area canopied by large ridge-top oaks. Between the feed and the deer sign we had discovered, our confidence was as high as it had been since gun season opened.

An avid wingshooter like me always enters deer season handicapped, starting blindly instead of scouting vigorously before the season to increase the probability of early success. It’s a fact of life that won’t change anytime soon. My way: Start focusing on deer during shotgun season and hope you “get into ’em” before muzzleloader ends. Seldom easy, we usually end up with at least a little venison in the freezer; that and many nirvanic trips through the woods, big and small, reading sign and using identifiable landmarks and landscapes to show the way.

Forever a spiritual bonus in the Whately woods for me is my understanding that the stone walls and cart roads were built, the decaying orchards planted by ancestors, which is as close to religion as I dare venture. But indeed I do feel a rooted spiritual attachment to those woods and walls of the hardy Protestant yeomen pulsing through my arteries.

Our plan was to get into our stands early, before first light, and wait for the deer to approach their beds. The previous year, with fresh snow on the ground and no acorns, we had found more than 20 beds on this southern exposure, one more reason for optimism. Isn’t it logical to conclude that if deer bed there when the feed is elsewhere, they’ll surely curl up when surrounded by nourishing, meaty acorns? We thought so. That’s why we were there.

Being more familiar with these woods than my friend, I pointed him toward my closest stand before daylight as we parted ways 50 or 60 yards up an old skidder road. The road would loop me behind him, between two shallow ridges and close to the corner of a stonewall I was aiming for. The run I wanted to post angles up a steep sidehill, past the stonewall corner and follows the wall pointing north to the laurels. I have seen many deer use it over the years; some bucks, many does, dawn and dusk.

Soon after we split, walking softly through damp hardwood leaves, mostly oak, and sparse infant laurel, the tranquility was broken when a turkey burst loudly from his hardwood roost above me. Then four more explosive departures in the quiet gray morning light. Flushed from predawn perches in still air, Turkeys create a startling ruckus, so I knew my buddy had heard and probably seen them fly overhead. I stopped to let the woods relax, listening for heavy movement, then proceeded toward my stonewall, wanting to arrive quickly and quietly as possible before kicking out a spot and blending into the terrain. If nothing came through by 9 or 10, we’d be out of there. But we both liked our chances, always a plus in this game.

As I sat motionless against a massive hemlock rooted along the wall some 20 feet east of the corner, I fine-tuned my senses, looking and especially listening for movement. The key is to see them before they see you. Good ears help.

The first interesting sound that caught my attention was an early-morning squirrel rustling the leaves below, then another fattened gray made a commotion downhill and to my right. At about 8, I was surprised to hear turkey talk behind me, from the general vicinity I had flushed the five big birds, presumably toms, an hour-and-a-half earlier. Had they been hens, I thought after the five tree-top flushes, there would have been many more in their segregated winter flock. It made sense I was listening to those same birds feeding through the oaks from which I had flushed them, but what I heard sounded more like hens and poults, with soft yelps — shuck-suck, shuck-shuck-shuck  — sharp clucks and soothing purrs.

Was it possible I was listening to gobblers? If so, I was hearing my first gobbler yelps, of which I had only heard, never witnessed. My question was soon answered when one of the birds interrupted the soft flock talk with a guttural gobble. Must have heard something it didn’t like.

Within a half-hour or so, five longbeards were no more than 20 yards behind me, feeding on acorns — walking, scratching, chatting, full-alert, beards dragging as they dropped their heads to dig and feed. Turkeys swallow acorns whole, and it has been said you can hear their gizzards grinding them if you’re close enough. I was close, heard nothing.

Theirs was an interesting routine. One would walk as the others stood motionless, eight eyes scanning the landscape for danger. Then another would walk backed up by six eyes, two more in front, heads motionless, alert. They continued to look out for each other as they fed. Never once did all five drop their guards in unison to feed. When a loud crashing noise emanating from the small settlement a half-mile below startled them, one stretched its neck forward and scolded whoever was responsible with a throaty gobble, quite a sight to see.

The big redheads stayed with me at least a half-hour, several times venturing to within spitting distance on the opposite side of the thigh-high wall, before disappearing down the hill to my left. Once they were out of sight and earshot, I rose from my cushy hot seat, clipped the sling back onto my gun and moved several blow-downs in front of my stand for future concealment, maybe even during spring turkey season. Then I strapped my belt and hot seat to my waist underneath my coat, buckled my fanny pack around the outside, slung my rifle over my left shoulder and walked toward my friend’s stand, examining deer sign along the way. Bits and pieces of crunched acorns were scattered everywhere on the forest floor, left behind by foraging deer.

I ascended a small, hardscrabble knob and broke through a cluster of infant hemlocks into the open hardwoods directly across a shallow hollow from my friend. He spotted me, stood and gathered his gear as I approached. When I reached him we walked out together assessing deer sign under a brilliant morning sun. We were surrounded by it. To be sure, deer were not far away. And although we had seen not so much as the flick of a flag, we were both content.

The longbeard flock had made our day and taught us something. The lesson was to hang in there after inadvertently flushing a gobbler from its gray spring roost. In the past when that’s occurred, I’ve always vacated the area to work another bird. In the future I just may sit quietly for an hour or so to settle the bird down, then try to call him. He may come.

Had we not traveled to those Whately woods on that brisk, still December morning, we would not have whittled away this membrane of turkey-hunting wisdom. So, it had been a good day.

Fruitless, yet fulfilling.