Turkey Hunts
Hunter Interests
| Safety
The key aspect about our wild turkey hunting that most appreciate is the safety from private land reserved to the individual hunter. Add to that we do not stack hunters up on the same ground from day to day pressuring the same roosts and strutting grounds. And, it gets better. Turkey hunts being what they are, a skill demanding activity, combined with our large acreage allows leases to go un-hunted each spring season as we have more land than hunters to hunt. This is part of the advantage of our economic approach to multiple hunter use lands. A recent further dynamic resulting from our large population of non-resident members is that most of them are happy to harvest one tom per spring season trip and deer scout than to seek to fill all available tags. Just 12 to 15 years ago the converse was true that our then largely resident membership hunted the entire season until all tags were filled. The net effect has been lessening hunter pressure.
Another dynamic of the non-resident turkey hunter influence on Mid-America Hunting Association was the understanding that the turkey hunt advantages we enjoy in the central mid-west are not shared in many other states. One aspect that caught us off guard years ago was the inquiry if our turkeys were wild turkeys. That is when we discovered that we need to define our turkey hunts as wild turkey hunts in terms they are naturally propagated and not transplanted birds along with no baiting for the hunt. And, all of this is made possible by Missouri's exceptional, truly above all other states, turkey population density, state wide OTC turkey tags and the habitat that allows for large and numerous flocks. It is hard not to find a turkey hunting spot, it is only a matter of degrees between good and better turkey habitat. Add to Missouri's large turkey flocks and additional opportunities in Iowa and in Kansas with its Eastern and Rio Grande Turkey regions gives the hunter the opportunity during as little as one trip the chance to hunt up to three states, 5 tags, two species over a 6 weeks spring turkey season. Within our approach to paid private land access the self guided turkey hunter also has the option of being in the field on his schedule during any part of the season and return for multiple hunts as well. This creates distribution of our turkey hunters over a large area and long spring and fall turkey season.
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