By Michael Pearce

The law is pretty plain – spring turkey hunters can only shoot “a bearded bird.”

Rules of hunter safety are pretty plain – “always be sure of your target.”

Still, a Minnesota man somehow mistook his hunting partner for a turkey at the Milford Wildlife Area Friday morning and shot him – TWICE!

Terrance Spaeth told law enforcement officials he mistook Brian Hansen for a wild turkey because he was wearing camo. He shot him once, mistook his writhing buddy for a flopping turkey so he fired again.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Hunter mistakes friend for turkey, shoots him — twice! | Michael Pearce’s Kansas Outdoors | Wichita Eagle Blogs.

By Tony Hansen

So you think you’ve got turkey hunting mastered.

You’ve tagged out every season for as long as you can remember and you’ve got a stack of beards and spurs to prove it.

Sure, turkeys are a challenge but you’ve grown a bit bored with the same old, same old season. Well here’s something to try: Put away the shotgun and try bowhunting them.

Bowhunting turkeys has grown in popularity to the degree that it’s almost hard to find a TV program anymore that shows killing turkeys the old-fashioned way – with a bang. Seems most celebrity hunters are now employing archery gear to tag longbeards. And it certainly does look fun.

I spent one season chasing longbeards with a bow – and one was enough. In my opinion, turkeys were meant to be shot in the face with pellets fired from a shotgun. But maybe that’s just me. If you’re looking to add a twist to your turkey season here’s a primer to get you started in bowhunting them.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via A different way of hunting turkeys | Battle Creek Enquirer | battlecreekenquirer.com.

Author John Phillips shows a nice Alabama gobbler. Phillips has just released an e-book, "PhD Gobblers", on advanced turkey hunting tips.

By Frank Sargeant, Huntsville Times

We’re getting to the time in the turkey season when more is less. The surviving gobblers have heard pretty much every symphony the assembled majesty of thousands of hunters have played for them, and are starting to turn up their noses at the whole thing.

But John Phillips of Birmingham, one of America’s best-known outdoors writers, says it’s still easy to bag a bird if you take a few tips from the nation’s top callers and hunters.

In a new $3 e-book called “PhD Gobblers”, Phillips reviews tips assembled from many of the best of the best over his 40-year career of traveling the country with the top pros. Some of his suggestions are highly-applicable to hunters on both public and private lands of North Alabama.

“The first tip several of the pros gave me when I was researching this book was to stay longer, call less,” says Phillips. “By mid-season, the turkeys are call-shy in a lot of places, so it’s a matter of putting in time in the woods, listening and looking but not doing a lot of calling–if you call much to hard-hunted birds, you might get them to gobble but you’ll rarely get them to come in.”

Phillips sights Ben Rogers Lee, one of the first national calling champions who went on to win the title five times.

“Ben always said you have to decide whether you want to hear turkeys or kill turkeys,” says Phillips. “For smart birds, he suggested hunting them as if you were hunting deer; you scout a lot, look for tracks, feathers, dusting areas, and learn the bird’s daily patterns, where it goes after coming from the roost, where it goes when the day heats up, where it goes prior to flying up in the evening–and then put yourself in position on one of those locations and wait.”  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via A PhD in turkey hunting? New e-book offers advanced tips. | al.com.

Paul Brown

Spring’s early arrival makes spotting prey more difficult

By  Dave Golowenski

Good neighbor Jim wasn’t exactly complaining the other day as much as just saying that the gobbler season in Ohio arrives too late for optimum hunting.

This after the guy next door said he’d seen a wild turkey in full fan that very morning in March.

“Yeah, the gobblers are out there strutting,” said Jim, who was standing outside in shirtsleeves, though April was a day away.

Asparagus was shooting up from a row nearby, and a couple of peach trees had bloomed and faded, hopefully pollinated by whatever bees survive pesticidal assault. Nature was tossing freakishly warm, but temperature had little bearing on Jim’s point.

“By the time the season starts, the hens are already on their nests,” he said.

Jim’s suggestion was clear: Callers mimicking hot hens in order to drive amorous turkeys in their direction are about as likely to get the desired results in late April and May as do young men honking their horns in an emptying parking lot at closing time.

Hunter experience notwithstanding, the biologists at the Ohio Division of Wildlife believe they have this figured out.

The length of daylight choreographs the hormonal calypso that awakens wild turkey lust. Thus, the balminess of March and, perhaps, of April isn’t likely to throw Ohio’s 200,000 or so gobblers and hens off their dance steps. The premature sprouting of trees and undergrowth, though, can make hunter and hunted less likely to find each other.

The hunt begins on April 23 and runs through May 20, with the youth season scheduled for April 21-22.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Turkey hunting could be dicey this year | The Columbus Dispatch.

By D’Arcy Egan The Plain Dealer

Richard Combs has written the book on wild turkey hunting. The Cincinnati sportsman and author knows the primary tactic for bagging a big gobbler. It’s not a sweet-sounding turkey call, an expensive shotgun or weeks of scouting.”It’s patience,” said Combs. “Turkey hunting is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer excitement.”Turkey calling has become a sport in itself, he said, and there are lots of Ohio hunters who are quite adroit at luring gobblers in with a variety of calls. Even the simplistic push button-style turkey calls, a $20 investment in the spring hunt, can easily do the job.Combs said when his daughter, Hillary, wanted to tag along for a spring turkey adventure more than a decade ago, he encouraged her. At 8 years of age, the youngster was too young to handle a shotgun, so Combs gave her some quick lessons with a push-button call as he drove to the turkey woods. “I let Hillary do all of the talking with that simple push button call,” said Combs. “She called in two gobblers for me that morning, and I bagged my bird.”  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Patience is main ingredient for spring turkey success, says hunting author Richard Combs | cleveland.com.

By Mike Organ

The harvest for opening weekend of the spring turkey-hunting season in Tennessee was significantly larger than last year.

The spring season opened last Saturday, and by the end of the day Sunday a total of 8,367 birds were killed, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

That was 1,170 more than in 2011.

The Midstate continues to have the most bountiful harvest, with four of the top five counties: Maury (271), Greene (212), Dickson (206), Sumner (201) and Henry (198).  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Turkey hunt numbers see big jump | The Tennessean | tennessean.com.

A gobbler struts his stuff, hoping to impress the hen - one of the splendors of the spring season. / Paul Brown/Special to The Clarion-Ledger

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Kentucky’s spring wild turkey season has been so successful the past 15 years in part because of the timing of opening day.

“I think we’ve accomplished our goal of having a productive season in a relatively short time frame,” said Steven Dobey, wild turkey program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “We’ve hit that window between the onset of breeding and nesting.”

Kentucky’s statewide spring turkey season opens every year on the Saturday closest to April 15 and lasts for 23 days. This year, the season dates are April 14 through May 6, 2012.

The turkey hatch peaks in late May or June, weeks after hunting has concluded.

“Our flock is stable, with a population estimate of about 250,000 birds,” said Dobey. “Geographically, Kentucky is in a great location. We have relatively mild winters, a long growing season and a fairly dry early summer, all of which benefit turkeys.”

The harvest of turkeys during the spring season has grown steadily in the past 15 years, from 13,606 in 1996 to 32,191 in 2011.

“Our stocking efforts have paid off and in the early years we had a conservative harvest strategy that’s really paying dividends now,” said Dobey. “Statewide, our turkey population is in excellent shape.”

Kentucky Fish and Wildlife released 6,760 wild turkeys on 430 sites across the state from 1978 through 1997. Restoration was completed in 1997, when Kentucky’s wild turkey population had increased to around 130,000 birds.

Hunters bagged over 30,000 turkeys for two consecutive years for the first time starting in 2010, when there was a record harvest of 36,097 birds.

Dobey said he believes last year’s spring harvest of 32,191 would have been higher, possibly setting a new record, if the weather had cooperated. “About 58 percent of the harvest occurs during the two-day youth-only season and the first week of our statewide season,” said Dobey.

Weather is the one factor that biologists can’t control. “We keep our fingers crossed every year. If it’s sunny on opening weekend, we’ll have a higher harvest,” said Dobey. “Last season we had heavy rains across most of the state, and the opening weekend harvest dropped 27.1 percent from the previous year.”

This season hunters are likely to encounter fewer juvenile gobblers while afield. The weather had an adverse impact on last year’s reproduction.

The statewide brood survey for 2011 showed a 42 percent decline in the number of hens observed with at least one poult (young turkey). Statewide, the average number of poults per hen dropped to roughly one and a half.

“Western and central Kentucky appear to have had a little better reproductive success than the rest of the state,” said Dobey. “The birds that nested the earliest were significantly impacted by the heavy rains and flooding.”

Hunters could see fewer older gobblers, too, this coming season. The good news, however, is there will be lots of two-year-old birds which do most of the gobbling.

Kentucky’s turkey flock is arguably the best in the region.

Based on the number of birds taken per square mile, Kentucky has a higher harvest than six of the seven adjoining states — Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri and Illinois. “We’re on par with Tennessee,” said Dobey, “but our season is half as long as Tennessee’s, and our bag limit is half theirs.”

Dobey said Kentucky has about 90,000 turkey hunters.

Of the successful hunters, about 25 percent take the season limit of two birds in the spring. Most of the birds harvested are adults. “Last season 16.7 percent of the birds taken were juveniles (jakes),” said Dobey. “With the impressive statewide flock in Kentucky hunters are able to be selective, and key on older birds.”

A gobbler struts his stuff, hoping to impress the hen - one of the splendors of the spring season. / Paul Brown/Special to The Clarion-Ledger

By Bobby Cleveland

We had put the gobbler to bed, listening to him fly up at sunset on the eve of opening day of turkey season.

We knew the tree, which was exactly the same one he’d been in for a week. We knew his daily routine. We even knew the geography and every obstacle we had to beat.

So when we went to bed that night, we felt pretty good about our chances on opening day.

Of course, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

We never had a chance.

The 15-year-old story of that hunt is an example of why hunters love chasing gobblers so much. We lost, but for Tommy Sutton and Ken Lee, both of Columbia, and me, it was a memory we cherish and will never forget. It’s what I love about turkey hunting.

Every trip is a treasure.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Even when turkeys win, it’s usually a great day | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com.

It’s been said by many a hunter that if a turkey gobbler had the sense of smell that white-tailed deer possess, they’d seldom kill one, if ever. And that’s probably more true than you’d think.

Numerous times I’ve had gobblers circle to try and detect any kind of movement or sound that might give away the presence of a predator. Had those gobblers possessed a keen sense of smell to detect danger, in this case, ME, I’m sure they would never have graced my dining room table.

But, thankfully, gobblers don’t smell very well. Their keen eyesight and ultra-sensitive ears more than make up for it, however. (“Ultra-sensitive ears? Who’s ever seen ears on a turkey? Okay, maybe I should have said “ultra-sensitive hearing…). But I digress.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, and admittedly not doing a very good job of it, is that a couple of the main ingredients to being a successful turkey hunter is that you 1) gotta be still, and 2) you gotta be quiet. Once you’ve pulled the trigger and blasted your bird, neither one matters.

But you can’t be totally still or entirely quiet if you’re not comfortable. That’s why I recommend you buy some type of turkey vest, even if you can’t afford it, that will cushion your back and your rear end. If you squirm while sitting on, say, a rock, the gobbler will spot you.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via COLUMN: A big part of turkey hunting is comfort | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com.

Checkout the Cabela’s Tactical Tat’r KickStand Turkey Vest

by Doug Howlett

Most turkey hunters are slackers when it comes to scouting their hunting land before the season opens.

The prevailing thought is “the birds are either there or they aren’t—but they usually are, so why bother scouting?” A great strategy if you’re hunting one small piece of land, perhaps, but if you have multiple properties or one extremely large tract available, scouting is critical to consistent success. Here’s how to do it…

1) Time Your Scouting

While late-fall and winter observations of turkeys can be beneficial, cold-weather flocks will alter their feeding patterns as turkey season draws near and the warming weather brings newer food sources. By spring, hardwoods will become largely devoid of acorns, so birds will focus more on greening fields and plants in low, watery areas, such as along creeks or swamp edges. To nail down where birds will be, serious scouting doesn’t need to occur any earlier than two to three weeks before opening day. Birds will still typically be flocked up, but their location will remain fairly constant.

2) Snap a Picture

Those same trail cameras you use to identify whitetails before deer season work just as well for pinpointing where turkeys are hanging out. Set them up on food plots and fields and along logging trails and open hardwood ridges to figure out where flocks lounge and feed during the day.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via 6 Tips for Scouting Spring Turkeys | Outdoor Life.