In about 60 years of hunting, I’ve read a lot of articles around deer, small game, upland bird, predator and turkey hunting. It’s hard for magazines to come up with something truly new to say about hunting anything, although I keep buying them. You probably do, too.
I think I have a topic about turkey hunting that I’ve never read or even heard of before. It’s good news for those who will be hunting in or near the affected historic flooding of the Wolf and Embarrass rivers.
I’ve always been a “cup is half full” kind of guy. I give most people the benefit of the doubt when they initially seem hostile, angry or troubled. When I face adversity, it tends to make me try even harder to succeed.
Although my house stayed high and dry when the Wolf River overflowed, most of my rural New London neighbors living on the slough side of our road were not so lucky. In fact, they had to sandbag on both sides of their homes, first on the slough side, and then when the water came down the road from the north, on the road side. My front yard and driveway became a small pond for about a week, but life is slowly returning to normal, although those with structural damage and contamination will be working on this for weeks or months.
I put up my turkey blind April 19 after a few storms passed. My hunting spot is on the same road but includes some dry farm field and woods on the edge of a backwater lake. As I write this on April 23, the floodwaters have already dropped significantly but still extend to places they never have before.
A friend who hunts turkeys nearby asked me if I’d been seeing any birds. In the weeks before the flooding, I saw many turkeys almost daily. As we know when we don’t see deer during deer seasons, the critters are still there. They have nowhere else to go.
Follow my logic. Turkeys can fly, sure. It’s amazing how many non-hunters don’t even realize this.
Turkeys roost in trees nightly and fly down from those roosts in the morning. They scratch and peck for insects, corn and other grains for most of the day — on dry land. They can waddle through water but they don’t go there looking for food. So the floodwaters should in theory reduce the area they’ll be wandering and concentrate on dry fields and woods, including the spot where my blind is located.
I’ve already heard some field reports from other hunters that gobblers aren’t gobbling much, but that’s OK, too. In my experience, most gobblers will start up while on the roost, and keep at it for the first 30 minutes of daylight, then shut up. If you are calling to a tom after that, and he sees your decoy, he may gobble or just come in silent.
If you believe in the process of natural selection, the silent toms will live longer than the noisy ones, whether they are calling to a real hen or a hunter. Predators like coyotes, foxes, bobcats and more certainly appreciate a noisy breakfast call as much as us turkey hunters.
I’ve shot lone gobblers well after 9 a.m. on a few occasions, including my very first bird in Iowa, who came to me on public land long after the other hunters had gone home. I seldom hunt past 10 a.m., both because turkeys seem to take a mid-morning siesta and because I can’t sit still for more than a few hours. Hats off to those diehards who want a turkey (or deer) so badly that they will sit all day. I honestly don’t want a turkey that much (venison is a different story).
According to the turkey hunting experts and biologists, the later seasons bring increased chances of success. Toms that have mated with hens will continue to look for more, and as the mated hens take cover to sit on their nests, fewer and fewer hens are roaming around to be bred. Once a tom gets with real hens, it’s tough to call him away to your blind, even if you do have Avian-X decoys or a decoy with real feathers and championship calling talents. Most of us have found this out in the field.
Flooding of farm fields will push spring planting back a bit. Those with Season C-F tags should see great hunting this year, in part because of flooding. Let me know if you notice more bird concentrations or success, and if the flood affected your hunting.
Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.
