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It’s the next-to-last day of 2009 turkey season, and here we sit again.
It’s 93 degrees in the shade, we’re tucked into a small group of bushes at the base of a tree and I’m about as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been. Of all things, there’s absolutely no breeze, and the only noise I hear is the drone of the regiment of mosquitoes encamped on my head net.
Each year, we swear on grandma’s grave we’ll hunt hard early and avoid this scenario, but obviously that didn’t work again this year. Good long-beard gobblers can still be harvested now, but in my mind, there are several good reasons not to wait until this late in the season if at all possible. Here, in no particular order are a few of them and some possible solutions.
As turkey season nears its end, hens begin to nest, leaving the toms to themselves. They often disperse and scatter, and you may find everything from single gobblers to bachelor groups of four or more. When this happens, the fellas’ often change their habits completely, forcing you to relearn their times and travel routes in order to fill your tag. Like I said above, they can still be taken, but finding and calling them is just easier early in the season when they’re still with the hens, plain and simple.
Another reason related to the above bachelor gobblers is the fact that they often become less vocal as the hens start to leave them. Early in the year, a good way to find roosting gobblers is to drive around at dark and blow a crow or an owl call. For some reason gobblers will often gobble at the sound of these calls or other loud noises, giving away their roost location and allowing you to set up nearby the next morning and attempt to call them in as they leave the roost.
This is known as locator calling and is a very effective way to find roosted turkeys. Later in the season, the toms often refuse to answer these locator calls and sometimes don’t even gobble much when being called.
You have to hunt where the turkeys are. Now while that may sound like an oversimplification, let me explain. Every year, we seem to go through this stage where we decide we’ll try to hunt close to home and save driving time and gas. We find birds to hunt alright, but it’s usually one gobbler here, one gobbler there, etc.
It’s the next-to-last day of 2009 turkey season, and here we sit again.
It’s 93 degrees in the shade, we’re tucked into a small group of bushes at the base of a tree and I’m about as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been. Of all things, there’s absolutely no breeze, and the only noise I hear is the drone of the regiment of mosquitoes encamped on my head net.Each year, we swear on grandma’s grave we’ll hunt hard early and avoid this scenario, but obviously that didn’t work again this year. Good long-beard gobblers can still be harvested now, but in my mind, there are several good reasons not to wait until this late in the season if at all possible. Here, in no particular order are a few of them and some possible solutions.As turkey season nears its end, hens begin to nest, leaving the toms to themselves. They often disperse and scatter, and you may find everything from single gobblers to bachelor groups of four or more. When this happens, the fellas’ often change their habits completely, forcing you to relearn their times and travel routes in order to fill your tag. Like I said above, they can still be taken, but finding and calling them is just easier early in the season when they’re still with the hens, plain and simple.Another reason related to the above bachelor gobblers is the fact that they often become less vocal as the hens start to leave them. Early in the year, a good way to find roosting gobblers is to drive around at dark and blow a crow or an owl call. For some reason gobblers will often gobble at the sound of these calls or other loud noises, giving away their roost location and allowing you to set up nearby the next morning and attempt to call them in as they leave the roost.This is known as locator calling and is a very effective way to find roosted turkeys. Later in the season, the toms often refuse to answer these locator calls and sometimes don’t even gobble much when being called.You have to hunt where the turkeys are. Now while that may sound like an oversimplification, let me explain. Every year, we seem to go through this stage where we decide we’ll try to hunt close to home and save driving time and gas. We find birds to hunt alright, but it’s usually one gobbler here, one gobbler there, etc.While some of this problem can be solved by hunting earlier before hens start to nest, it’s still a matter of simple mathematics; the more birds in the area, the more gobblers there are to hunt. In our area, the most turkeys will be found near the river or on the sand hills pastures, so to solve this problem, get permission to hunt some of those spots.The later in the season, the hotter and more uncomfortable the weather gets. This spring was abnormally wet, a situation obviously out of our control, but resulting in fewer days to hunt turkeys.We would have been much more comfortable in our blind even as recently as two weeks ago. Also the earlier in the season, the fewer mosquitoes there are. While on the surface this problem of hunting earlier may seem like the easiest to solve, in actuality it may be the toughest. ... For example, in a wet year like this, mosquitoes may be bad no matter how early you hunt.Also most of us have full time jobs and families, both of which come complete with a list of priorities that often trump hunting. There also are two holidays — Easter and Memorial Day — graduations and graduation parties, proms, plus gardens to plant, lawns to mow, and, well you get the idea. I hope I’ve made a case for early season turkey hunting. I snuck into the woods early this morning before church and heard a gobbler behind me along the river, but obviously locating the “mournful lonely hen” that called to him from my stand was not the priority to him it would have been a few weeks ago. I think I’ll tape this column to the side of my computer and hope after seeing it every day from now till next turkey season, the advice contained therein will take seed. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!Steve Gilliland is a syndicated outdoors columnist, and can be contacted by e-mail at stevegilliland@embarqmail.com.
