As I’ve been out and about this last week I’ve noticed that a lot of wild fruit trees are beginning to blossom and the woods are showing signs of color. That means that Spring is officially right around the corner and along with it comes the Spring Gobbler Season. Now, that is something well worth getting excited about!
March 10, is the opening day of Youth Spring Gobbler Season, which means that only youth hunters, accompanied by a licensed adult can take to the woods in hopes of harvesting a bearded turkey. It’s a weekend I can’t wait to arrive so that I can accompany my granddaughters out to the woods. At eight years old, Paige has one gobbler already under her belt, but wants another badly. She’s felt that rush of adrenaline from the excitement of the harvest and the spectacle of the show of that strutting and drumming gobbler working into the decoys.
For my Payton, who is nine, she’s yet to take her first turkey, but is practicing her calling and is ready to go to the range and begin familiarizing herself with a youth model 20-gauge shotgun. She wants to be ready for when the big day arrives. I’ll do most of the calling, but her hen yelps are really coming along and she will definitely be calling as well.
Before anybody does any calling, we first have to find out where the birds are. I spent a lot of time this weekend on various parcels of public land searching for the birds and listening for gobbling. Now, the sign is prevalent in most places I scouted and I know that there is a really good population of birds this year. But, they are not yet gobbling and that is a very good thing.
As the Spring hunting season commences, the turkeys will go through three periods of peak gobbling activity. Hopefully the first peak of the gobbling activity will coincide with the youth opener, giving the kids a real treat in the woods with all the gobbling toms and yelping and cackling hens. For now, though I need to continue following the flocks and reading their tracks to identify which flocks have old dominant toms tagging along. I drive and walk through the hunting areas with a good pair of binoculars, hoping to spot the turkeys on field edges or clear cuts so that I might get an idea of the trophy potential of the resident toms. My granddaughters are not especially hung up on trophy potential and will happily squeeze the trigger on a jake, but I prefer to take a bird near the end of its life cycle as opposed to youngster, not yet reaching its full potential. Besides, why leave the old guys in the field to feed a coyote, they need to come home and feed my family. I’ll tell you a bit more next week about the calls I will be using, but If any of you have questions or comment, please feel free to reach out to me at toby@hernandosun.com. God bless and good hunting!