Hunts
Of Interest | Locally we have always described our turkey hunting as just that, turkey hunting. It was the advent of the traveling turkey hunter years ago that would inquire if our turkey hunting was for wild turkey. That question we did not have an answer for as we did not understand the question. What we learned from that experience is many hunters do not have within their own home state sufficient turkey populations to support the resident hunter base. These same states recognizing the economic value of turkey hunting started bringing in transplanted flocks to develop local populations. These transplanted flocks were typically viewed as less wild and more domestic in terms of hunt quality. This same turkey propagation efforts typically employed feeders as well bring man influenced turkey behavior. All of this combined into a mind set that the real turkey hunter should hunt naturally propagated or wild turkeys as a value measure of his own turkey hunting skill. That was then and now the thought process is evolved to that of adding more spring turkey hunting time for those that simply enjoy turkey hunting. In the case of Mid-America Hunting Association spring and fall turkey hunting all our turkeys are wild birds by any definitional twist that could be developed. We further do not post feeder as there is no need to. All of our turkey hunting is within the 45 to 55% agricultural land use region where food is plentiful, our winters mild and the flocks experience strong regeneration in excess of hunter pressure each breeding season. This allows us to have a larger percentage of mature birds that gain the turkey hunter the added incentive to hunt to harvest heavier bodied turkey, longer h=beards, multiple beards and so on. |
