Turkey Hunting 2010--Day 2

The night was anything but restful. Our alarm went off at midnight, I had set it to 4:15 but had turned on both alarms of the two-alarm clock.I noticed lightning of a far-away storm, foreboding the rain forecast for the next day. Indeed, when we struggled groggily out of bed at 4:15, it was raining. By the time we got into the car, rain had turned into a downpour, with occasional lightning. We decided to head for the woods anyway and wait there for a break in the weather. It turns out that the rain had been merely a strong but thankfully short shower. I preceded Jim to my blind, confident in my good rain gear. The morning was war and humid, more so than at any time I can remember. I was more wet from sweat walking the short stretch than from the rain.
I crawled into my blind and awaited day break, worrying about the next shower. But while there were occasional raindrops, there was no further deluge. Between dawn and 8:00 there was a lot of activity nearby, gobbling, calling, none very close. I do think I heard a hen clucking, too. I was unsuccessful calling in any of the toms or jakes, and after a while, everything settled down again. Around 9:30 or so, a movement caught my attention. A hen wandered in from the north, slowly ambling by. She clearly was a  little nervous about the blind, but stopped to pick some seeds or grubs or whatever turkeys eat, barely 25 feet away from where I was sitting, she didn't bring along any suitors and the turkeys remained silent.
However, I had quite a few visitors. The most startling was probably a fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) that suddenly appeared within easy reaching distant on a tree trunk to my immediate left. Like the turkey hen, it intently scrutinized me, apparently knowing that something wasn't quite right, but not concerned enough to run away. A wood pecker, as far as I could tell a yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) came to the tree under which my blind was set up. I caught a glance whenever he flew over to the deer stand just a few steps to my left and tapped his message on the metal rungs of its ladder.
When it started raining again in earnest I decided it was time to leave the woods. When I walked by Jim's location I found him gone already. I turns out that he never even heard a turkey, the frogs in the pond (mostly gray tree frogs, Hyla versicolor) drowned out any other noise in the forest. As an aside, two-three years ago, I was sitting  at W.A. Frost on St. Paul's (if not Minnesota's) finest patio enjoying in good company a nice after-dinner drink. All of a sudden something wet dropped in the middle of my balding head. "This can't be what I think it is" I mused and, against better judgement I reached to remove the offending item. I had barely touched this moist thing when it removed itself, to my shoulder. Definitely not the behavior one would expect from guano or from an overripe fruit of some kind. I was able to twist my head in the direction to take a good peep, and I am pretty sure it was H. versicolor, who, upon seeing my giant face practically nose to nose with him decided to make his next move which  landed him on our table, almost  in my beer.
We left for lunch at the Redwood Cafe. When we exited, black clouds were gathering again and we began fearing for the planned fishing outing. By the time we returned to the Crest Inn, the rain had turned into a torrent and as soon as we were inside, hail was drumming on the roof and against the windows. We decided to delay the fishing and instead took a nap.
When we awoke, it was almost 4:00 PM and we hurried to our favorite trout stream near Caledonia, Crooked Creek. The runoff from the rain had troubled the waters, but Jim was unperturbed. We hit the creek and started casting our flies. Hares ear nymphs were what did it for me, they were not excited, but I was able to catch a few fish.

We stayed until it got too dark to tie on a fly and headed for dinner at the Good Times. We saw Merrill and ___ at the bar and had a beer with them before we headed to our table, right under a gigantic moose head (see picture on the Good Times website). Jim was rather worried that the moose would drool in his food.
We turned in after dinner and thankfully had a uninterrupted and restful night.