Well, the spring season is finished, and it’s time to reflect. What a weird year. What a great year. Here are some random observations floating around in my sleep-deprived brain.
See that picture? I snapped it April 9, the evening I arrived in western Oklahoma. Needless to say, we waited a while before heading out to scout.
I managed to avoid my usual catastrophic poison ivy exposure this spring. Maybe I’m getting better at looking for it. Perhaps I’m just more careful nowadays. Or could it be that I didn’t belly-crawl as much this year? Make your own judgments.
For the second time in three seasons, I shot an adult gobbler with no spurs. I took my first slick-legged longbeard during a 2010 Kansas hunt with Tad Brown. No. 2 came April 23 at Tails of the Hunt Outfitters in northwestern Missouri. Ironically, Tails of the Hunt co-owner Aaron Volkmar and I had been talking about spurless gobblers the previous evening. Next year, I’ll try to talk about birds with 2-inch hooks. I’ll let you know how that works.
My final Wisconsin bird, a heavy 2-year-old, had a thin and scraggly — albeit long — beard. In fact, for a while, I thought I’d shot most of the beard off. However, subsequent examination revealed that my 20-yard shot had pretty much center-punched the bird’s neck, nowhere near the beard. I found a few short, white-tipped strands that would indicate a melanin deficiency and beard breakage. And then I found something else — a tiny second beard. It wasn’t the most impressive multi-bearded turkey I’ve ever taken, but as they say in baseball, it looks like a line drive in the box score.
There you go — random, unrelated observations from a spring in the woods. What did everyone out there see this year?
Come on, fall.
I took a beardless wonder in GA several years ago. My first day on the property I saw 7 longbeards in one rafter and hunted the place hard every spring after that (no fall season). But in spite of working birds almost every day I was out there, I had only killed a single jake in 5 years (passed on several other jakes after that). Finally killed a mature bird but it took me a while to decide whether to shoot or not because I couldn’t see a beard. Ulitmately, I let him get close enough that I could just about measure the 1-1/2″ spurs (!) so I knew it was a mature bird. When I examined his breast, there wasn’t even a little button where the beard should have been. Talk about learning to appreciate what a trophy is – it had been a very exciting and challenging hunt, with a real match of wits mano a birdo, and I was thrilled.
As far as this season went, it was pretty typical except there were more mature toms at my home club in FL this year than in the recent past (less hunting on adjacent properties seems to be the reason for that). Yet, as has been true the last 4 years, there were still jakes that sounded like mature birds and were bold enough to set up in their own strut zones (why do you think that would happen year after year?). And no weird stuff happened as has in the past (interference from cattle, coyotes, crazy squirrels, rednecks, funeral mourners, motocross riders). Yeah, just a “normal” season.
MC
Lest you think I’m just a lousy turkey hunter, I have killed birds in numerous states and don’t usually have so much trouble killing turkeys. For some reason, it did take me a few years to figure out the terrain and game routes on that property. And now that I think about it, I did screw the pooch too many times getting caught moving, and did actually miss twice, both times in front of young, pre-gun-carrying nephews tagging along for the fun of it. Ok, maybe I was a lousy turkey hunter.