Turkeys

A hunter based in Bend and Redmond has choices. Between Bend and Maupin, bird numbers run one to five per square mile. Yes, you can find turkeys close to home but you are going to work at it. Eighteen gobblers were tagged in the Upper Deschutes Unit last year. Harvest in the Metolius Unit dropped…

My taste in shotguns runs to wood and blued steel, I like two barrels, one on top of the other or side by side, but last year I won a Weatherby SA-08 semi-automatic with a five-dollar ticket in a raffle. I didn’t need another shotgun I told myself, but then I reflected on a day…

According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, turkey hunters tagged 4,132 toms in the 2011 spring season. And the top producer was the Melrose Unit with 563 birds and an average 2.7 days of hunter effort, .51 birds per hunter and .19 birds per hunter day. With a harvest of 381, the White River…

Southwest Oregon has more turkeys than any other corner of the state. So many, that Oregon has instituted a fall season to keep populations in check. Lots of edge habitat with mixed oaks, madrones and bottom lands along creeks and rivers keep these turkeys (Rio Grande transplants) happy.

A few of the state’s gobblers have been gobbled. A few more have been to school and educated to the ways of the hunter. In the spring, a hunter can mimic the calls of a hen turkey to draw a lovesick tom within shotgun or bow range. If a gobbler is surrounded by hens, he…

Pointing the truck west we raced dawn’s blush toward the Umpqua River valley. It would be the first turkey hunt for my friend Dana and myself. With no experience hunting these birds we needed all the help we could get. I bought a call that I could operate without enrolling in a turkey as a…

He is big. Sometimes 20 pounds or more. One suspicious move and he’ll duck his head and run. Don’t move a muscle. Not yet. He stops to strut, fanning out his tail feathers and puffing out his chest as if to boast, ‘Look at me girls, ain’t I the pretty one though?’

To smoke a wild turkey, start with one muzzleloading shotgun. Add 100 grains of Hodgdon Triple 7, drop in a fiber wad and add 1-1/4 ounces of number 5 lead shot. Then tamp down another fiber wad to keep the load tight and dry. Garnish with a 209 shotgun primer and serve. At the end…

Last December, I hunted fall season turkeys with a muzzleloader. After locating several flocks that ranged in size from 4 to 25 birds, we set up an ambush along a fence line. I could take a turkey of either sex, but the first bird to get within 15 yards was a Rio Grande gobbler with…

Many people that don’t hunt or fish or go on long backpack trips scoff about the attraction that the great outdoors holds for us. Forget about them. There is one reason why you have to get out there and spend those precious days afield. It has nothing to do with amassing wealth or possessions. It…