Arkansas Sportsman

Weather hinders turkey hunters

Turkey hunters just finished their worst spring season since 2011.

The season ended Tuesday. As of Monday, hunters checked 7,609 gobblers, including the two-day youth turkey hunting season that was held April 7-8. That's 2,089 fewer gobblers than were checked at the same point in 2017. That's worse than our previous low points in 2012 (8,928 gobblers) and 2013 (9,122 gobblers).

Weather was hostile to turkey hunting success this year. When it wasn't raining and storming, it was very windy, and wind complicates turkey hunting exponentially.

I was fortunate to kill a gobbler on opening day, but I saw only two other birds afterwards. One was a hen that I flushed off a nest in the second week. The other was a bird of unknown sex in a cutover. Judging from the way it flew, it apparently saw me through forest cover as I approached the edge from more than 200 yards away.

I've hunted turkeys in all conditions, but trying to find them in the wind mystifies me.

Rio Grande turkeys, which live in open country, are used to wind. It's a constant part of their environment. In Oklahoma, you're just as likely to find gobblers strutting on hilltops in a near gale as to find them in sheltered wind rows and bottoms.

I've seen easterns -- the kind we have in Arkansas -- strutting in wind so hard that they struggled to stay upright, but not consistently. Frankly, I don't know where eastern birds go when the wind howls. I sought them fruitlessly in cutovers, pine thickets and hardwood streamside management zones. I saw no droppings or tracks in vast swaths of mud.

I've made every kind of sound you can make with every kind of call, and as far as I know, I haven't been within a half mile of tagging my second bird.

A former member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission blamed a cold, rainy, cloudy spring. He does a lot of controlled burning on his place, so you can see 150 yards through the woods.

"That still does not explain not a gobble on our place since last Wednesday," he said.

Leaf-out was late in the far northern part of the state, which resulted in turkeys "busting" hunters before getting into shooting range.

A neighbor, an eternal optimist, said the poor season might be a blessing in disguise because of all gobblers that will carryover to next season.

That's how I see it, too.

When the hunting is slow, thank goodness for smartphones. You can enter keywords like, "hunt turkeys wind" and pull up articles that state the obvious. "Wind makes it difficult for turkeys to hear and directionalize calls ..."

Well, who knew?

Followed, of course, by tips on how to search for turkeys in cutovers, pine thickets and hardwood streamside management zones.

Failing that, we can always text friends and mentors that know a lot more about turkey hunting than I do.

My go-to source in good times and bad is Rev. Mike Stanley of Highland, who taught me the art of the fighting purr.

"Ever used a fighting purr as a locator to shock a gobbler into sounding off?" I asked.

"Absolutely, and sometimes it's all that will work," Stanley replied. "Like rattling, [for whitetails], you need to be ready to set up quickly. Gobblers tend to be like bucks when responding to a simulated fight. They either come racing in looking to rumble or sneak in quietly to look the competition over."

I then asked if he kicks dirt and sticks to simulate a fight the way we often do when rattling.

"Only if I know I've got one or more birds fired up and interested," Stanley replied.

At least I experienced that once this season. I'll have to wait until this time next year to hear it again.

I had considered finishing the season in Oklahoma, but after 15 long days of chasing turkeys in Arkansas, I'm toast.

Black pepper

Many readers noted in Sunday's feature about my latest wild turkey recipe that I seasoned the dish with black powder.

"That explains the explosion of flavor on the tastebuds," one reader quipped.

We meant black pepper, of course.

Sports on 04/26/2018

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