Hunts
Interests | SecondAfter that first season most self guided turkey hunter learn a collection of farms and roosts in one state then branch out to another. By this means he develops future option of where to turkey hunt with the difference of opening and closing season dates making future vacation trip planning more versatile. The difference between the first season spring turkey hunter and the one with three or more seasons conducting his own do it yourself turkey hunts is that the more seasoned Association turkey hunter will most likely fly out on Friday night after work, secure a rental car, hunt Saturday and Sunday morning and fly back home Sunday afternoon with a tag or two filled. This turkey hunter can be this successful due to the previous spring turkey and typical fall deer seasons having gained knowledge of several roosts and farms. He may not be hunting the same turkey flock from year to year as through the previous years he would have identified new ones adding to his previous flock locations. The first spring season hunter we would suggest a longer trip with the first couple of days far more turkey scouting than turkey hunting. All should have a leisurely approach to the hunt with the confidence the birds are there, the land is there and it is the hunt quality for years to come rather than a race to build ego. Selecting Kansas as the first turkey hunting state of our three would be as acceptable as Missouri leaving open the question does the hunter seek the Eastern Turkey or Rio Grande Turkey. PerformanceIt was not too long ago we hit the wall at the fastest any wild turkey hunter harvested 4 toms during a Kansas and Missouri hunting trip was at 5 days. Now several hunters do each hunting trip and some have made it as quick as 4 toms in four day hunts. And, one hunter to date has harvested 5 toms in one season with the fifth coming from Iowa. Our past to recent observation is that in the 80's before MAHA gained a large number of non-resident hunters the mostly local membership would fill all tags they could buy. The traveling hunter more frequently is satisfied with harvesting one tom and typically spends the remainder of the trip deer scouting rather than turkey hunting. There is not anything wrong with this spring turkey hunting fall deer scouting effort other than our average toms per spring season hunter has dropped to an all time low of 1.1 turkeys. This is in spite of the increasing numbers of turkeys harvest state wide in Kansas, Iowa and especially Missouri, with Missouri having reached a plateau in excess of 50,000 turkeys harvested over several seasons. For those that purely use the ratio of birds harvested to spring season hunters that is not a great ratio compared to our earlier average of 1.4 toms per hunter. When evaluated in terms of deer scouting combination spring turkey hunt most frequently occurring over a three day fly in and rental car weekend that lower ratio is not so off.
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