Don’t Trust A Local When Asking For Advice About Turkey Hunting
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
I am all out of excuses unless you can help me come up with something. The honey-do list has been steadily growing with each passing week as winter transitioned to spring, but my calendar has been full to this point. I have a simple rule when it comes to this list – turkey hunting takes priority.
Grass need cutting?
That can wait another week.
Flower beds need mulching?
That can surely wait another week or two.
Cleaning those dirty porch windows – well, you get the idea.
The only thing I didn’t wait on was getting my garden planted. It’s not on my honey-do list as my all-knowing wife is convinced regular farmer’s market hauls would make more sense. Anything beats washing windows, so I made sure to work in time for planting my maters, squash and such at a nice leisurely pace.
Sadly my list of excuses ended Sunday following a trip to Missouri with Del. We spent three days chasing turkeys in the Missouri Ozarks. It was tough with rain each day, but I killed my first Missouri turkey.
Del is my co-worker’s husband and he loves turkey hunting as much as anybody I know. We were hunting on his friend’s property, a beautiful place with river frontage along the Meramec River. The bottomland was lush and flat with cattle grazing alongside the river. Perfect for turkeys, but we didn’t see a bird in the fields all weekend. Instead they were in the thick woods on the steep mountains that surrounded the river bottom.
Del Smith checks out the Meramec River during a turkey hunting trip to the Missouri Ozarks.
During an earlier trip in 2023, we learned that those turkeys must have one long leg and one short leg. That is the only way we figured they walked the sides of the steep mountains. This time when we were able to put our hands on one, we found out different. Turns out their legs are the same length, but the breast is smaller than a Mississippi gobbler. Those Missouri birds were all leg muscle from traversing the steep hills. Trouble is, on a wild turkey the legs are too tough to eat. There is an old saying about cooking them – something about prepping them good and cooking the legs for 90 minutes or so in the oven. Next you throw out the legs and save the juice for seasoning something else.
It was a great trip, we stayed in a camper in the river bottom and cell service was non-existent. There was no road noise, just peace only broken by owls, whip-poor-wills and countless other critters.
The only thing my iPhone was good for was the alarm, making sure we got up at 4:30 each morning. If it wasn’t cloudy, we were out the door around 5:15 as dawn came early. With each day pulling those hills, it got a little harder to roll out of the bed.
We only made one trip to the nearest town, Bourbon, Mo., to pick up a few groceries. We bought steaks, pork chops, smoked sausage and fired the grill up each night. There was one minor problem, we forgot to purchase sides (real men don’t need a grocery list). No big deal as a ribeye and potato chips make a mighty fine meal.
The funniest occurrence during the weekend came during this trip to the grocery store. We spotted a local hunter and asked him for a little advice. We were curious if the hens were already nesting, how the gobblers were acting and other information that turkey hunters appreciate.
This local told us that they had an early spring and the turkeys were winding up their mating season. He told us to only call lightly and sparingly to the gobblers, as they are transitioning to their summer mode when the males regroup and lose interest in the ladies.
By the end of the trip, we decided that everything he told us was a lie. The bird I killed came in after Del was using a mouth call and box call at the same time, mimicking two ladies interested in romancing. The louder he got, the faster the gobblers came gobbling all the way. This was after another bird was fired up earlier in the day, but would not come after Del followed that guy’s advice.
Yep, that fellow at the grocery store got us good, but Del said we should have known better than to listen to him. During the conversation this fellow figured out that the place we were hunting on the bottom end of Possum Hollow Road was the exact same area he hunted.
Del fretted the whole way home, but I told him I probably would have done the same thing. If a fellow from Missouri showed up next to where I hunt in Mississippi and asked for advice I would be tight-lipped.
Del thought we may need to run back up there this weekend and tell that fellow we didn’t appreciate his “advice.”
Me, I have got to get started on that honey-do list.
