Have you looked at the calendar?
Wow! Exactly three weeks from yesterday morning, the Maryland spring gobbler hunt will begin. Exactly four weeks from tomorrow morning, the same thing happens in West Virginia.
Whoooo, whoooo!!
That wasn’t a barred owl you just heard. It was me. I love spring gobbler season.
Here’s something I was pondering recently. Remember back about 15 to 20 years ago, maybe more recently, it was deemed an absolute no-no to hunt with a gobbler decoy. Even using a gobbler call was looked down upon. Both tactics were thought to be unsafe.
Nowadays, when you watch a spring gobbler hunting episode on The Outdoor Channel, you will be hard pressed to find one in which the hunters are not using a gobbler decoy.
Gobbler decoys, or any decoy for that matter, work only when they can be seen by the real gobbler. Those settings, of course, are mostly in fields, or perhaps in woodlands before the leaves pop out.
Using a decoy of any kind can be quite difficult in the up-and-down forest land we have in our neck of the woods. A called gobbler can pop up from behind almost any ridge or bump in the landscape. It’s not as if he is on one side of a field and you know that when he comes he will come in a certain direction, making the placement of a decoy obvious.
Ground blinds are the rage now, aren’t they? They are the rage because they work very well, whether they are permanent or portable.
Ground blinds are great for hunting with another person, especially a young hunter who is still of squirm age. Squirm away in a blind. Go to sleep if you like. The spring gobbler season is the only hunt I know where you can nod off and be awakened by the critter you are intending to kill. Thank you kindly. Where is my tag?
In spite of the efficiency of blinds, I love the one-on-one, me-in-camo-quarry-in-feathers kind of hunt, the style of nimrodding in which you go a little bit to the gobbler and he comes the rest of the way to you. Boom.
There is not a lot of margin for error in such a hunt. I’m thinking that a good gobbler hunter, relying only on his camouflage and his woodsmanship and calling skills, is about as successful as a major league batter who hits .302. The batter, of course, makes more money than the turkey hunter. Turkey hunters, though, don’t have to do post-game interviews. I wonder if steroids would make for a better turkey hunter.
It is almost impossible to buy a simple turkey hunting vest now.
My 20-something-year-old Browning vest finally just wore out.
So I start window shopping, long distance like, and find that there are plenty of vests out there and that most of them have too many bells and whistles.
Can’t be turkey hunters who designed many of them, because they put buckles and doo dads on the part of the strap where the butt of the shotgun goes when you shoot at a gobbler.
Maybe I don’t even need a vest.
We all carry too many hunting knicknacks when we go out anyway.
Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
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