Hearing didn't help

The old gobbler rattled the woods for 15 minutes from his roost.  When he flew down, I distinctly heard him gobble two more times.  Dad never heard him at all.  But hearing didn't help.  That gobbler marched right to Dad's calls and his decoys and Dad put him in the freezer.  I heard him very well, but he ignored my calls and decoys.  It was Dad's 65th wild turkey harvested.  He's only 50 ahead of me. 

It's Turkey Season

Today is opening day.  Dad and I were out there, but no game in the bag....yet. 

This is the view from my blind this morning.  There are no gobblers in my sights. 

I saw one hen turkey today.  She almost walked up to my decoys before she spotted me. 

Dad saw some gobblers, but didn't get one.  Over the years he has harvested 64 wild turkeys.  I've got to hustle to catch him.  I've only shot 15. 

Our season lasts for three weeks.  The limit is two bearded turkeys.  We'll keep at it until we collapse from fatigue.  This is an exciting time in my corner of the Ozarks. 

Gobbler #15

At 6:50 this morning I shot Gobbler #15 (in my lifetime). It was a beautiful morning. The temperature started at 53 degrees. The sun came up nice and bright. An old gobbler started calling about 5:45. Just after 6:00 a hen flew into the small valley field in front of me, followed by four more hens in a few minutes. Then four gobblers walked into the field. Only the two biggest toms strutted and gobbled. The other two males had nice beards, but they acted quite subservient.

A fence divided the small valley field in half and all the turkeys were on the opposite side of the fence from me and my two decoys. When I called, all four gobblers looked over my way, but none came across the fence.

At about 6:40 the two bigger gobblers and two hens went north and the two smaller males and three hens went south. The last young gobbler stopped at the fence and stared at my decoys for several minutes. After a few steps he turned back, ducked under the fence and came right to me. I shot him at 35 steps. Although he had a 10-inch beard, he only weighed 15 lbs.

Now I'm only 49 turkeys behind my Dad's harvest total. The legal limit in Missouri is four per year. I need to shoot the maximum for 12 years to have a chance to catch him.

I had a chance to see several spring migrants after I carried my gobbler out to the road to meet Dad. This morning's bird list includes eastern meadowlark, northern cardinal, American crow, northern bobwhite, redwinged blackbird, brown thrasher, blue jay, American goldfinch, eastern kingbird, indigo bunting, blue-gray gnatcatcher, turkey vulture, Canada goose, dickcissel, bobolink, and scissor-tailed flycatcher.

There were three grassland species foraging this morning over a fescue pasture (dickcissel, bobolink, and scissor-tail). I think this was the first time I had ever seen a bobolink in an Ozark pasture. I only noticed dickcissels in recent years. There are many thousands of acres of hay and pasture here where there was once only forest. These prairie birds are likely only migrating through. They would probably not have much success nesting in tall fescue.

So it was a good morning all way round!

Deer Season Holiday

It was a holiday! Students at Mountain View - Birch Tree schools are back in class today after having the first Monday of the firearm deer season off. We didn't have that holiday when I was in school. Summersville got two days off. Winona students get the whole week off. But that's nothing. At Eminence school will resume after Thanksgiving. That's 7 days for deer season and 3 more for Thanksgiving. If recent history holds true, over 200,000 deer will be harvested by Missouri firearm hunters during Nov. 14-24. Another 40,000+ will be taken by archer hunters during a 4-month season. Various other specialty deer hunting seasons will add to the total.



All across North America abundant deer numbers will bring out a multitude of hunters this fall. But it hasn't always been so. The estimated Missouri deer population in the mid-1800s was 700,000. But by 1925 the estimate fell to 395 deer in 23 counties.

According to Dean Murphy (1970), "The decline of the deer herd prior to 1925 was caused by year-round hunting for market, food or sport: deer of either sex and all ages were killed. Traps, snares, nets and dogs were used in additions to guns."

In the general election on November 3, 1936, the Missouri Conservation Commission was established and modern wildlife management came to Missouri. Deer hunting was closed in 1938-1944. Bennitt and Nagel (1937) "believed that the illegal kill equaled or exceeded the legal kill and was the chief limiting factor on growth of the deer herd."

Restoration of the deer herd was accomplished by careful studies of deer life history, habitat requirements, and land use factors. That was followed by strict law enforcement and transplanting wild deer from refuges (Peck Ranch, Knob Noster, Drury, Caney Mountain) to areas of suitable habitat. From 1937 to 1957 2,343 deer were moved to 70 release sites in 54 counties. Bucks-only hunting resumed in 1945 and the first any-deer season was in 1951.


Today's deer hunters probably don't realize how good they have it. My Grandpa David was a squirrel hunter and a woodsman who lived in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri in 1882-1976. But he did not see a live deer until he was 75 years old in 1957.

My Grandpa LeBaron was a deer hunter. He was one of the lucky few (about 100) who shot a deer in 1937, the last open season before closure. He shot a nice buck. That mounted head adorned the wall at Grandpa and Grandma's house when I was a kid. I loved to admire it and ask Grandpa about it. He shot it in Carter County with a rifle borrowed from Grandma's family, the Partneys. The rifle had 70 notches in the stock which served as a record of deer shot for the market. Seeing a deer was so rare that the carcass hung all day at the ice plant at Mountain View. The butcher couldn't cut it up because there was a crowd around it all day.

So... Go get 'em, you deer hunters. I don't want to hit any more deer with the car.