There was nothing to see around here anymore except wet, driving, blinding snow slicing down out of a swirling, gray northwest sky.

The van was not going anywhere on this muddy rut, wandering through the emptiness of a far southeastern Montana. The front tires, even with chains, spun uselessly in a mud-gumbo that used to be red-brown dirt and dust in yesterday's clear sky and mid-80s sunshine. Momentum exhausted, the rig slid back down the slight hill a few feet before coming to a greasy stop just barely on the road, for the moment.

Off the road meant that my friend and I would be seriously stuck and facing a world-class towing bill, that is, if we managed to walk out to any place with walls, electricity, and warmth. On the Custer National Forest map the distance looked to be five or six miles, but the information was last checked a decade ago, so who knows? The very small town of Ashland along the Tongue River was out there about 30 miles, which was probably out of our league in the snow that was covering the ground at a steady clip of a couple of inches an hour. I climbed back into the damp warmth of the van.

FOR A SPRING TURKEY HUNT, this one was proving eventful. Up until last September there was no way I was going to hunt turkeys during the first warm days of the trout fishing season (one of my admitted shortcomings). This all changed when my companion, Steve, began regaling me with tales of his adventures around here the previous spring.

"You had to be there John (I'd heard this one before and it usually meant trouble of some sort)," said Steve with a wicked grin that was a little bit famous in certain parts of the state. "I was sitting down in this big clump of bushes and turkeys were gobbling everywhere. I'd call and two of them answered and they kept getting closer." I could tell by the shine in his eyes that he knew I was hooked.

"I didn't move and these guys kept coming in on each side of me. Their heads were stretching up and looking around and I'd hear 'Gobble. Gobble. Gobble.' It was great. I had to shoot out of self-defense. They were in love. What could I do?" All this was told during a long trudge through the heat and dust of the badlands an hour east of the Little Bighorn where Custer lost a fight over a century ago. At the time we were hunting sharptails and had not seen any, but would near evening. When you've been walking this long, next to a cold beer, any tale of believable madness is a welcomed escape from the drudgery that is often part of bird hunting.

"So, John. Do you want to go next year?" Steve was really grinning now and I said "Yes." I knew better. This was the guy who'd managed to coerce me into hunting sapphires and garnets along the Missouri River, moss agates on a partially submerged gravel bar in the middle of the Yellowstone River during spring runoff, brown trout on the Madison one dead-of-winter October day, and northern pike where our guides managed to get all three of their trucks stuck in the Flathead River.

I knew Steve was right about the turkeys. Several flocks of over 20 birds each had silently drifted off into the Ponderosa pine forest as we drove along gravel roads to and from our day's sharptail hunting. He even assured me that since few hunted the region, the birds were not exceptionally spooky, and I would not have to go "full-bore camo."

We headed away under dark clouds and a touch of cold rain. The highway stretching east at Crow Agency was a good road with no sign of humans after a few miles. We passed an obelisk marking the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. There were plenty of antelope and a vagrant raven or two, but that was it except for brief bursts of life in towns like Busby and Lame Deer.

STEVE NAVIGATED ADROITLY to last year's campsite upon a bench in the middle of a grove of very old Ponderosa. Rugged, fantastic, eroded bluffs, ridges, and deep coulees sailed away with the clearing sky in all directions. You know you're isolated when everything is so damn quiet there is a roaring in your ears until they adjust to the silence.

This really was nice country and we'd spotted a small flock of turkeys feeding in a field. The birds raced along a barbed-wire fence and then up a ridge with unreal speed when they spotted us rounding a bend several hundred yards away. These guys would be tough to corner, especially on their home turf. I figured if the eight birds in the group averaged 15 pounds each, we'd just observed over 100 pounds of turkeys. My imagination had a twisted field day with visions of a somber scene played at home with my wife and kids.

"Mom, what happened to Dad?" they would ask.

"Your father was killed when a herd of turkeys stampeded. He couldn't get out of the way fast enough and they ran over him."

Reality rarely plays a significant role in my outdoor experiences.

We were up at dawn and on our way with only the soft crunching of the long pine needles making any sound. Dropping swiftly into a coulee defined by rock and earth of yellow and white, we moved down a dry stream course that was a stairway of smooth, slabbed rock.

The routine was simple. Walk for several minutes. Stop and make a few yelps. Then wait for an answer and when none came, repeat the pattern before moving on.

An hour of this and the morning was growing light, but it was just 7:30 a.m. so we walked on up to the point of a long open bluff that gave way to a view of more bluffs, ravines, and rolling park land. In the distance open-range cattle, black and brown ones, slowly munched away, bellowing periodically with the sound softened by distance.

STEVE SCRATCHED THE CALL and far away a gobbler answered. The sound, one that I had always found laughable in a barnyard, was wild, exciting. There really were huge birds wandering around out here. The turkey called to us again. Elk bugling in the mountains of the Canadian Rockies in autumn was like this. The bird must have been miles away from us, strutting in the trees covering a slope climbing toward a buff-colored bench across the rift-like valley we were scanning.

Several minutes passed with no other noise from the turkey despite some realistic emissions from Steve's call.

We'd lost contact with the guy, who was probably chasing the proverbial bird-in-the-hand instead of our long-distance offering. But that was not the end of this sequence as a large gray-white object flashed through the pines below us, then vanished before reappearing less than 30 feet away.

A coyote as large as a wolf with an immaculate, fluffy coat pulled to a stop and stared at us with black eyes, at first confused at the anomaly. The animal had come to the sound of Steve's calling thinking turkey but had discovered an obviously unfamiliar sight of humans. Motionless, the coyote assessed the situation. We were frozen for what seemed like minutes, but the mood was timeless. Then he was gone. Just silently, totally gone.

"Wow. Did you see that? He thought we were turkeys," said Steve as the grin flashed bright in the cool light. "That was great. Let's go back and have some coffee."

For now the morning was enough and we saw feathers and droppings from the birds as we crossed a small, stagnant pool of water before climbing up to our camp. The sky was clear, and colors, not showing yesterday, lit up the country. Countless shades of green flickered through the wild grasses and in the pines. Blues shimmered above and the rocks and ridges glowed with orange, salmon, and ochre. Even lousy instant coffee tastes great under these conditions.

A BREEZY, TAKE-IT-EASY KIND OF AFTERNOON suggested a siesta until the evening's efforts. Therm-a-Rest fantasies shimmered in the seductive atmosphere.

The decision was made to drive down the dirt lane a mile or so from camp a bit before sunset and go in opposite directions to cover more ground. Unfortunately the evening's efforts duplicated those of the morning. No birds sighted.

While working down another rocky draw I turned up the feathered remains of a turkey that did not escape the hungry attentions of the area's coyote population. While I labored up a timbered ridge and onto still another bench that gave way to still another wide valley, I wondered if all of the birds had been eaten around here. The evening was warm and dead still and the heightened hues of sunset were cloaking the countryside. I could hear cattle but nothing else.

The sky was darkening and the temperature dropping as we walked back to the van. Jackrabbits bounded in and out of our headlights on the way back to camp. Things were not looking good as far as a successful hunt was concerned and Steve concluded that we had "to do more things right." That translated into rising around two hours before dawn in order to hit likely looking turkey turf before first light.

We backed up to our tents, turned off the engine, and I jumped out of the van in search of my cigars and a beer. Something was weird. Focused so hard and long on listening for gobbling, the sounds coming from the pines just behind camp did not register right off.

"Gobble, gobble, gobble," in gay profusion. There must be over a hundred turkeys heading for roost trees within the length of a football field from us. They'd been here all of the time. We'd found a turkey hunter's paradise.

"Steve. Get out of the damn truck. There are turkeys all over the place."

We listened. This was a raucous riot of turkey talk--gobblings, putts, and purrs sailed through the near darkness. Never have I heard such a wild, untamed, chaotic symphony. We could not help but laugh for a long time until I eventually found a brace of beers and got my cigar torched to a glowing, smoking blaze. By now all was silence. The turkeys were in bed in the Ponderosa. Everything was washed in an instrument-panel-green glow. The trees, the van, our tents cast deep shadows.

Looking overhead in the direction of Billings revealed a sky blazing with sheet after sheet and countless waves of northern lights rippling across the sky. The display was of such intensity that I could read "Cuban made" on my cigar's band. And the lights did not let up for over an hour before they suddenly quit, rushing up and away from us over the North Pole, leaving the blazing band of the Milky Way behind.

Just your average night in Montana somewhere.

We crawled into our tents eager for tomorrow.

STEVE WAS UP AND OFF IN THE DARK. I stayed behind to make coffee. The day was cold and you could smell rain in the air. Thirty minutes passed. Then another 15 as the sky showed dawn and the sound of awakening turkeys rose from over the hill.

Kaboom. And then again. Kaboom. The unmistakable sound of heavy-duty 12-gauge turkey loads. Then dead silence for long minutes before I spotted Steve lugging a large bird draped over his shoulders. He'd taken the gobbler with a head shot, and he was shaking with the excitement of the hunt and the shooting.

"They were all over the place. Everywhere. There must have been 80 or 100 just beyond that ridge strutting in a parklike area. I mean, I could have shot dozens of turkeys out there. They were everywhere."

The rain was with us now and very cold as Steve field dressed the bird and we broke camp amid cries of "Retreat." The weather had turned ugly with a vengeance as it will do in spring out here. We did not have time to enjoy anything. Packing up was wet, numbing business and the sound of the heater going full-tilt in the van was the carrot that kept us moving.

As soon as we hit the dirt "road" we knew we were in big trouble. The van wanted to lurch and slide into the nearest ditch. The rain-now-raging-snowstorm had turned the top inch or so of dirt into treacherous, slippery paste. We made one slight rise but were almost dead in the water when I hopped out and pushed, gaining another quarter mile before the van began to spin its wheels.

I was soaked and covered with mud and Steve was soon in the same shape as we sloshed around putting on chains, which moved us a little nearer, the top of the hill before the whole mess slogged to a halt on the edge of the road.

"Let's give it one more try. Are you up to pushing?"

"You just get that sucker moving. I'll push 'til Hell freezes over," which apparently was not that far away.

Steve gunned the engine. I shoved. The chains dug through the mud. The van started to move. The rubbery smell of well-done clutch filled the air. The van moved faster and I was now running to keep up as we neared the top of the rise. The passenger door swung open and I heard "Jump in. I can't stop," and I did, banging my knee-cap and forehead on assorted metal parts in the process.

THIS WAS BIG-TIME SNOW. We'd either hit the "main" gravel road a few miles ahead or roll into a ditch trying. Neither of us wanted to face an extended walk in this stuff.

The van slid and swerved back and forth as Steve madly swung the wheel while goosing the accelerator and touching the brakes at appropriate junctures in our pretty much out of control tour through the sage brush prairie.

In what seemed like two years, but took less than 15 minutes, we cruised through the slush to a stop sign that heralded (and there should have been blaring trumpets and well-dressed public officials for this one) a return to a halfway-decent road.

"Ashland's in the bag," was the cry. The chains made travel through the half-foot of wet snow relatively easy. A sign, dripping the wet stuff, declared "Ashland--8 miles."

Rounding a swinging curve in the wide road now running through thick forest, that small town and cozy bar looked mighty nice in my mind's eye. I'd love to talk catfish with the boys in there. But hold on a second...

"Whoa there, John. Look at all those turkeys standing in the road," and the grin was back in full force, its glare blowing away my Ashland dreamscape.

Unzipping my gun case, I grabbed the beat-up Savage three-inch magnum 20-gauge and a handful of copper-plated fours, dropped down out of the van, and set out through the snow in a futile effort to come to grips with the flock of turkeys that were fast disappearing somewhere in the frenzy of the blinding snowflakes.

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