It rained constantly as it had rained most of the day before, coming steadily with little wind--a cold rain that would total three inches before it was through. It filled the swampy basins and gradually wetted the back roads that had been dried to sugary sand.

There had been the moment of real discomfort at three that morning--the rain muted but insistent on the heavy roof of the hunting lodge, once a ranch house and seemingly built for all time. There was only a little longer to stay in the warm bed and the wry question--What am I doing here? The same question comes momentarily before taking a night watch on a foreign sea. Then there was the cheerful breakfast and the drive through brimming ruts, the little four-wheel-drive jerking its headlight beams from gleaming palmettos to dripping Spanish moss, to black oak trunks and cypress knees.

When we stopped and the headlights went out it was a long moment before the night sky could be separated from the irregular black bank of treetops. No hint of dawn yet and the guide, Quet (pronounced Queet), had me load my gun, for there would be no clicking or clacking from then on. The beam of his small flashlight was partly covered by his fingers as he handed me a camouflaged aluminum stool and moved away, a bulky simian form in hooded raingear. At first he directed a spear of the flashlight beam near his gleaming rubber boots, giving glimpses of wet grass, sticks, acorns and puddles on the forest floor, but he soon turned it off and I followed the faint outline of his head and shoulders. At a little more than arm's length he blended into the forest night and I found myself almost in a ridiculous lockstep as I crowded closer. He made his way unerringly without stumble or hesitation.

We stopped by an oak trunk and used a shred of the light again while Quet cut half a dozen palmetto fronds to build his sketchy blind. He placed the aluminum stools with care and seated himself a little behind and to my left--guide, coach, and sentinel. The rustlings of preparation stopped and the sounds of rain were plain again. I had yet to kill my first turkey but the setting was familiar.

I had sat in a clump of palmettos through a spring dawn and heard a gobbler from a cypress strand, and another somewhere in the palmettos near me, and I had fearfully used my call--only a few tentative yelps for I knew I was inadequate with it--and then clutched my gun, sweating with nervousness, to await birds that never appeared.

In fall I had sat back to back with a really good caller and heard the yelps of invisible turkeys a scant 30 yards away in thick swamp--but the sounds had faded and we were left listening to busy gray squirrels and flickers. And there were other times.

I thought dully of those other turkey hunts as I stared straight ahead in the pre-dawn rain, a little sleepy, lulled by the steady mutter of the downpour and hypnotized by the vague pattern of light and shadow before me. There was a great swamp there, I knew. I could make out the taller trees and between the swamp and our stand was a lighter area which I knew was a hyacinth-choked stream. We were on what passes for a ridge in Florida, sloping gently up from the stream 50 yards away.

Quet, the guide, had "roosted" the turkeys the evening before, that woodsman's process of sighting and following from feeding area to roost--a combination of watching, trailing, hiding, and listening. His task made harder by the rain, he had seen some birds fly up into the swamp trees although it was more difficult than usual to hear the battering of heavy wings that has given away so many roosting spots.

"I've got some on a limb," Quet had said.

The flock would fly back across the stream for the day's feeding. In the rain it might be nine o'clock, he thought, but he was less sure of the time than the other factors.

"We don't roost too many turkeys in rain like this," he said. "I don't know when they'll come down."

But we were at the logical landing point; of that he was certain.

Dawn began to seep through the swamp before us and the tallest tree over there became a real tree with branches instead of an uncertain outline. It was 50 yards to the creek's edge, I estimated. It was 40 yards to a black log a little to my left--and I went on to other range estimates in case the birds arrived, and I suddenly realized it was light enough to shoot.

It was an old over-under duck gun I held across my lap, the muzzle tipped down a little and just inside our little palmetto fence. The grip was a familiar assurance, the once-crisp checkering rounded with wear and abuse, and I suddenly wondered how it would feel if I needed to shoot quickly with wet hands and a slippery stock. I tightened my fist firmly and felt the scar where the stock had struck a rock years before and I checked the safety to be sure it moved smoothly, but I did not take my eyes off the swamp. We had not moved for more than an hour.

There had been an imaginary bug against my cheek inside my rain hood and a real bug on my upper lip, but I had left them alone. A squirrel came down our big tree and inspected us from five feet away but left without comment.

I did not see the first turkey fly down, hard as I watched, but I heard one land somewhere and I heard the calling as the flock began its day so I knew there were many of them. They can come from the trees swiftly, faster than a quail, and only if you are very near can you hear the hiss of their speed. It is part glide but the great wings often work too and they might go half a mile on the morning fly-down.

I saw several birds in the air, some passing at a distance, black as giant cormorants in the rain, and then some landed at our left somewhere and helped only a little.

Quet leaned near enough to whisper against my ear.

"Don't shoot the first one. There's a big gobbler behind it."

And I saw the smaller turkey walking slowly and alertly on a course that would cross a clearing ahead of us at about 35 yards, its neck and head above a little fringe of weeds, and I felt calm again, almost sure that now I would kill a turkey although I had the ridiculous thought that the old 12-gauge might misfire. It never had.

And that is the part I remember best--the young tom moving gracefully in the rain against his background of hyacinth-filled water and the deep cypress swamp back of that, all framed in wet Spanish moss hanging from the oaks over our heads. A moment later the big gobbler showed head and neck so I brought the muzzle up slowly and killed my first turkey. But until we reached my gobbler in an open grassy area I do not recall ever seeing any part of him except his head and neck where the shot went.