They Gobble Like Hen to Bag a Tom : Turkey hunting: A come-hither squawk, a husky purr and camouflage clothing are among sights and sounds of a 15-year spring tradition in New England.

Ron Aldrich was getting romantic outside the Drewsville General Store, a few paces from the gas pumps.

It would have been enough to make a male turkey quiver, except the only one nearby was lying on the porch and full of birdshot.

Aldrich warmed up with a gobble, followed by a come-hither squawk, then a husky purr. A customer filling up at the pumps gave only a glance.

It was turkey-hunting season in New Hampshire and patrons of the general store have become accustomed to the sights and sounds of this 15-year spring tradition.

Hunters in camouflage come to the store in Drewsville, a village of Walpole, to swap stories, laze on the porch and compare the size of their birds. The storefront, with its requisite Worms and Crawlers sign and bulletin board of local goings-on, is where they lean their guns and pose for pictures.

“It’s your typical good-old-boy general store,” said Phil Shaw, vice president of the National Wild Turkey Federation’s state chapter. “You haven’t made it until you’ve had your picture taken there with a turkey.”

Turkey hunters admit to being more eccentric than other hunters. They hunt alone for the most part and, like fishermen, don’t like to reveal their hunting spots.

“They really get into it,” said Ted Walski, turkey hunt coordinator for the Fish and Game Department. “It’s probably the hardest thing to hunt.”

Eastern wild turkeys and their indigenous relatives across the country are thoroughbreds compared with the dimwitted domestically raised variety served at Thanksgiving. Domestic turkeys are descendants of turkeys taken to Europe from the Southwest by Spanish explorers and returned to America by settlers.

Wild turkeys have keen eyesight and hearing, can fly up to a mile if pressed but prefer to skirt through the underbrush when pursued.

Hunters must hide motionless and lure birds closer by replicating female mating calls.

“It’s a one-on-one competition and most of the time you lose,” Shaw said.

It took Aldrich two hours to bring his bird to within 30 yards. As the turkey neared and gobbled to show its interest, Aldrich teased him by changing his calls to a more excited tone.

“He was really getting excited,” Aldrich said. “You can’t sneak up on one of these fellas. They’ve got to be romanced.”

Aldrich’s arsenal of calling devices includes wooden boxes that fit into the palm of a hand and emit a gobbling sound when rubbed.

The hunting season, which runs through May and was re-established in 1980, marks a return to an old tradition.

Turkeys were plentiful in southern New Hampshire in the 1600s; flocks of 30 to 100 were common. Settlers relied on their meat and eggs before crops were harvested. They used their wings as brooms, tails as fans and feathers to stuff beds.

By the 1800s, however, the destruction of woodlands and over-hunting wiped them out in New England. By the early 1900s, wild turkeys were exterminated from most of the country and survived only in the Southeast and mountainous areas of Pennsylvania. New Hampshire’s last wild turkey was spotted in 1854 in Weare, about 10 miles from Concord.

After an earlier unsuccessful effort at re-establishing turkeys in the state, 25 were trapped in 1975 in southwestern New York along the Pennsylvania border, the only area in the Northeast where turkeys remained. They were released in western New Hampshire along the Connecticut River around Walpole.

As the population grew, birds were trapped and moved to other areas of the state. New Hampshire now has 5,000 birds, Vermont up to 15,000 and Maine, 3,000.

Preliminary figures from this year’s season in New Hampshire showed the best hunt ever. About 520 turkeys were taken, up from the previous high of 344 in 1994.

Tom Myers, district wildlife biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the state is near its carrying capacity for turkeys and there probably are more now than during the Colonial era.

Turkeys thrive along the Connecticut River between Vermont and New Hampshire because of an abundance of wild food and a high density of dairy farms, where they find corn waste and other feed that sustains them during winter.

Turkeys, which hatch a dozen or more chicks, have spread to every state except Alaska, where winters are too cold. Most states, including ones where turkeys did not exist originally, have hunts. New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont have their hunting season in May.

Aside from man, harsh winters and predators that eat chicks and eggs are turkeys’ primary enemies. Some are killed by owls while roosting at night in trees.

Owls swoop down on the sleeping turkeys with their talons and rip into their heads, Walski said. The owls, which weigh several pounds, often eat just the heads and necks.

Aldrich had different plans for his bird.

“I cook them slow. They’re real lean and tender,” he said. “Sometimes I put a little bacon on them; with the fat, it keeps them from getting dry.”