Spring turkey season a wild one

The 2022 spring turkey hunting season was a memorable but odd one for me and my family, and apparently it was a successful one for the state as a whole.

On June 10, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources put out a press release that announced “preliminary totals show Wisconsin turkey hunters registered 39,007 birds during the 2022 spring turkey hunting season, a 5% increase from the 37,266 birds registered in the spring 2021 season.”

While the youth season (April 16-17) saw nearly a 25% decrease in birds harvested, with some winter-like weather serving as a reason why, the weather steadily improved as the six one-week time periods carried on.

My first time period was the third week, but I planned on making the trip up to Chippewa County to tag along with my brother Sawyer, who was able to obtain a harvest authorization for the first period for our family land.

My trip was planned for Friday, but those plans were dashed when my brother tagged a tom during an afternoon hunt on the first day of the season. It wasn’t the typical turkey hunt, with no gobbling and on an overcast day right before rain came through, but Sawyer was more than thrilled to harvest his first-ever bird.

After having his season end after just a couple hours, Sawyer was eager to get back in the woods again shortly after, so he decided to come visit me and tag along as I hunted in Shawano County and attempted to tag another public land gobbler.

We drove to what I consider my No. 1 spot before daylight, only to have a vehicle already in the parking lot. We made our way to option two and made our way back to the heart of the chunk of land.

For some backstory, I had some turkey encounters at this place two springs ago, but struggled to even hear one there in 2021. So going into the hunt that day, I wasn’t exactly optimistic, especially because I had been battling an illness and couldn’t do my usual scouting.

To my surprise, there were some gobbles as we walked in. After hearing a hen close by, we briefly set up off the main trail going through the woods.

After about 15 minutes and hearing no more gobbles, we decided to make a loop around the public land to try and see if there were any other gobblers nearby.

After striking out on that plan, we started walking down the main trail that goes through the woods — toward the direction of the gobbles early on.

We both hit our slate calls at the same time and were cutoff by a gobble. We quickly made a setup and began using mouth calls to try and lure the birds in.

It took maybe three minutes for me to catch movement in the woods ahead of us, and a minute or so later, a whole flock of turkeys was walking right down the path toward us.

Knowing how difficult public land hunting can be, I picked out the first bearded bird I could find and settled in for a shot. After yelping to get the tom to break strut, I successfully took him down at just under 30 yards!

And just like that, my first turkey season was over. Again, it wasn’t the picture-perfect hunt, with the birds barely making a peep on their way in, but it worked in our favor again.

My brother’s day turned out to just be getting started. After taking some great photos of me and the tom and helping me get it taken care of, he made the trek back to Chippewa County, where my dad Paul also had the third season.

Sawyer convinced my dad to go hunting in the middle of the day, and they were out for a matter of minutes before taking down another gobbler. So that made it three toms on our first days of hunting, something that likely won’t ever happen again.

At this point, my imagination was running wild on just how great the turkey season could be. I still had five tags left — the final three seasons on public land and two tags for our private land. My goal coming into the season was to get two turkeys for the first time ever, but it quickly changed to trying to get six birds.

As the sport often does, the final three weeks of the season humbled me in a big way. I wasn’t able to locate a hard-gobbling bird on public land until the last day I could hunt this spring, and the lone chance I had on our family land I blew after missing a giant strutter at over 35 yards.

Looking back on the season now, it definitely didn’t go as planned, but it was by far the most productive our family has ever been in a single spring. The hunts that were successful lasted a matter of minutes, while the ones that ended eating tag soup were the ones with better action and ones I’ll recall easier in the years to come.

Just when you think you have turkeys figured out, you have a season like my family and I did. I’m thankful we were able to contribute to the 39,007 birds harvested and am already counting down the days to the 2023 season.

Morgan Rode is the sports editor for NEW Media. Readers can contact him at sports@newmedia-wi.com.