Truth be told, you feel a little sorry for the turkey asleep in the tree. You roosted him last night, then returned quietly before dawn. A couple of soft yelps near fly-down time and it'll be over.

This turkey hunting, you find yourself thinking drowsily, is too easy; the hard part is getting up early enough.

Come sunrise, the tom flies down and walks away, 180 degrees in the wrong direction. As your sure thing wanders into the distance, gobbling his fool head off, a new thought bubbles slowly to the top of your sleep-starved brain: Now what?

You could go home and go back to bed, but if you do, you might miss the best hunting of the day. Some experts believe it's easier to call in turkeys after nine or ten o'clock in the morning than it is at first light. The tom gobbling on the roost often knows where he's going to meet hens after he flies down. If you're not waiting along his route, he won't come to your calls, although he may answer them enthusiastically. Sometimes gobbling means "Come with me" not "Where are you?".

Around tenish, however, gobblers find themselves at loose ends as the hens drift away to sit on their nests. Most other hunters have gone home by then, too, leaving you alone in a timber full of lonely toms. There is only one catch: turkeys don't gobble as much later in the day as they do early in the morning.

Some hunters cover lots of ground after dawn, pausing briefly every one or two hundred yards and call and listen, hoping eventually to hear a response. You can never tell what will startle a turkey into gobbling: last spring I heard another hunter shoot a tom, and the report drew an immediate gobble from a second bird. There are many, many good reasons not to roam the woods shooting into the air, and, thankfully, a variety of other noises can provoke shock gobbles. Owl, crow, hawk, pileated woodpecker, gobbler, and wood duck calls all work sometimes. So does cutting, a staccato series of clucks with some yelps tossed in.

If you use hen calls as locators, realize that the turkey who answers may already be looking for you. Set up quickly if he gobbles close by. On the other hand, if he's answered, say, an owl hooter, you have some time to find a good spot before you start trying to call him in.

Two more points: a variation on the "walk and squawk" tactic is to follow the same route out of the woods that you took coming in, hoping to run into turkeys who might have been attracted by your earlier calls. Second, wear some blaze orange if you make any turkey noises at all (not just gobbles) while walking through crowded woods.

The other approach to after-dawn hunting is to sit patiently, making soft, reassuring calls in an area where you think there are turkeys. You use quiet clucks and purrs, and try to convey contentment. Dr. Terry Little, an upland wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, has shot fully one-third of his spring turkeys after 10:00 a.m. Little uses both methods as conditions warrant.

"Early in the morning, after fly-down and until nine or ten o'clock," he says, "I'll cover quite a bit of ground, cutting and trying to stir up a response. On cloudy, overcast days turkeys will gobble all day, and then I think moving around can work very well.

"Over the years, though, I've found sitting still is more effective, especially when the turkeys aren't gobbling too much," says Little, "I know that neither eastern nor western birds move very far during the course of the day so I'll set up near roosts or fresh sign. I'll owl-hoot before I move into an area, then find a place to sit and call for two or three hours. A bird may not answer your calls right away, and if you're sitting still you might hear a gobble you wouldn't notice if you called and moved on. I've waited up to two hours before I've heard a gobble, and some turkeys come in without making any sound at all."

Finally, Dr. Little has some advice all of us would do well to heed: "What I do on those long spring days is relax and enjoy nature, watch birds, and take my turkey hunting as it comes." My sentiments exactly; just being in the turkey woods is its own reward, and if you stay out long enough something good is bound to happen. I shot my own largest tom at 12:30 in the afternoon. How? I tripped over him, of course, while looking for mushrooms.

Sidebar: Death in the Afternoon?

An informal check of the regulations shows over 25 states permit hunting after the traditional noon closing. Twenty percent of all spring turkeys in Iowa one season were tagged after 12:00, a statistic made more impressive when you remember that very few people actually hunt after noon. Tactics for afternoon hunts are no different that those you'd use in late morning. The hard part is keeping your concentration level high when you don't hear much gobbling. Keep telling yourself that the turkeys are still out there and eventually a bird will come in. Need proof? Terry Little reports calling up a tom in full strut at 7:00 p.m., and last spring I worked a bird who wisely waited until three minutes after the close of legal shooting hours at sunset to step into range.