I’ve been seeing a few turkeys in the fields around here but not like I have in past years.
Colt, me and you are cut from the same turkey hunting cloth. 20 years ago, if a gobbler was in a field, you just didn’t kill him unless you got lucky. Now you’ve got blinds, decoys, people crawling behind Tom decoys, TSS that’ll stone kill em at 100 yards, super tight chokes. 98% of these boys ain’t turkey hunting, they’re turkey shooting. When I started out, if you killed a turkey at all you were in the paper, if you killed both of your two, they might as well guard your house like you were the governor, you’re a hero. Today’s turkey hunter has more crutches to kill them than ever before, and more information. Couple that with crazy weather, and urbanization and you’re asking for issues. We as humans, kill more turkey than “nest predators” ever will.
Just like them cutting the fall season limit back by two turkey, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. You want to punish the group that kills 1200 turkeys total (both sexes) in a 6 month period if you count archery season, meanwhile, we kill 35,000 males during a 3 week period in the spring during the breeding season. It’s a head scratcher if you have an ounce of common sense.
Today, if you lean on the crutches of YouTube, decoys, pop up blinds, and TSS shot, you can shorten the learning curve by a decade and have instant success and it’s no longer a huge feat to tag 2 turkeys.
With that being said, I’ll step off of my soap box and continue to hunt them in the mountains with nothing but a couple calls and shoot them 25 yards and in.
3 Likes
When I taught hunter education we taught the five stages of a hunter. It went from shooting stage, to success to methods and such. The bottom line I think that was attempted to be conveyed is that hunting is something within yourself. It’s not a numbers, biggest, first and such. Some people realize it in their thirties. I’ve seen 70 year old men crazy as a bass bug. You don’t have to kill to enjoy hunting. If you don’t enjoy just being out there go back home and play Nintendo.
4 Likes
I was lucky I grew up around cousins and friends who was absolute hogs and daddy never was he loved to hunt and taught me to hunt HARD it was my whole identity, I was taught to hunt harder,go deeper, stay longer and know more about the woods then enybody. For a short time when I got my license numbers and killing was supper important some of it Im proud of and some of it I’m ashamed of but luckly daddy taught me to love the woods first and foremost so it didn’t take me long to shake that junk i was seeing the light in my early 20s and over it by 30.
I hunt for me I challenge COLT I try to outdo myself.
I’m a hunter and a woodsman that all I want…well that and a fat buck to chew on!
Colt
3 Likes
Same here Colt. My mom stayed at home and raised my older brother and me and my dad worked 12 hour nights in a steel cutting plant plus 2 hours drive time there and home and when he got home he farmed/ worked on his 200 acres until around noon( 5 more hours of work) then he’d sleep until about 3 pm and do it all over again. Most of the time 7 days a week. When he hunted, he didn’t have fancy camo, a fancy gun, the latest bow, or anything else to buy success. He used hard work and woodsman ship to fill tags. And he taught me the same way. I’d ask him why he didn’t get a new bow, a new gun, new arrows, trail cameras( when they used film), etc and he’d say “I’ve got a family to take care of and I was killing them just fine before they made that stuff”. I went through the numbers game and by the time I was in my early 20’s I was done with it. Here I am at 28 and I’d rather try and fail to kill one from the ground with a long bow or a 80 year old gun and a Wingbone or trumpet call than nearly guarantee success with a decoys and long range shotguns with optics. I take pride in taking a turkey or deer off land that is accessible to anyone with the bare minimum other than woodmanship and skill. And it’s not a “look at me” thing, I just do it to please myself. The point is, doing it the hard way is what I get the most enjoyment from. I’ve killed a bunch of deer and turkey, more than most twice my age and anymore I get more out of the chase and playing the hand dealt me on any given day than killing one. I go in the woods with the same attitude I do when I start my work day, nobody is going to out work me that day. But on the same foot, I sure do love to eat them or I would just carry a camera!.
1 Like
Yea we still teach that, or rather I still talk about it… I normally teach ethics and I always preach on it… What Ive seen for years is kids that can tell me why grain arrow, works with what grain broadhead to achieve a given fps with whatever poundage but they couldn’t tell me what a red oak or a beach or a elm tree was if their life depended on it… Its great that they are out there but dad sets them in a shooting house behind a 6.5 grendall/AR on a shooting tripod and they start shooting does when they are 6 years old… Ive meet kids who had killed 10 deer by the time they are 11 years old but had never field dressed one… Never hunted a squirrel, etc… I try my best to tell my classes what they are missing out on with small game hunting, trapping, gigging etc… I hope Ive got thru to a few of them
3 Likes
I used to do the same. It hit home to me one night not one kid could identify a muskrat in the whole class.
1 Like
Just read where Missouri turkey population is stabilizing…I’m gonna point out that’s after two years of drought!
Saw several smaller breeding groups and some single toms today,tom gobbling on the ridge behind me this evaning. There definitely busting up know!
But I’ve been in 9 different county’s today
2 Likes