My turkey opener was slow

Gobblers hit their strut zones from 8 to 10 a.m. Locate these areas and hunt.

Hunting conditions seemed perfect. Just a soft breeze, and a bit of lingering fog as the sun bathed the woods with sunlight. I was in place long before daybreak, put out my decoys within 150 yards of the roosted birds, and sat back for everyone to wake up.

It took a long time, and as best as I could determined, there was only one gobbler. He gobbled mightily from the roost, but this bird wasn't where I'd bedded down the others. Those birds had a bad case of shut-mouth.

The bird that gobbled was a half-mile away, on a piece of land that I don't have permission to hunt, and we traded sweet-nothings twice. I gave him some time before calling the third time, and he didn't respond.

Roost gobbling and then silence

I'd talked with a pair of hunters with first-season turkey tags, and they had ended their hunt yesterday. Today was my opening day, and only one thing could have made it more delightful -- seeing a bird. There was no way for me to know for certain, but my chat with the other hunters gave me a clue.

They told me each bird they would put to bed would gobble once or twice from the roost tree, fly down and shut up for the rest of the day. I've seen such situations on other occasions, but it's often weather related.

The early period after fly-down, is often when gobblers are vocal as they patrol one to four or five strutting zones. Temperamental longbeards may have several strut zones where they go to meet up with the hens, and this is usually a great time to work a bird.

However, it's been my experience not to call much unless a gobbler is rattling the trees with loud gobbles. Often, if many of the hens have been bred, they quickly move away from the big Toms to head back to their nest.

Sleep in and hunt the mid-day hours with minimum calling

What works? Try hunting at mid-day, don't call too much, and if you have a response, don't get too eager to reply. If a bird gobbles the second time, give him a soft call, sit back and be patient. A bird might come running in looking for a hen, but chances are equally good that they might sneak in without making a sound. Don't get too antsy about calling.

It goes against a gobbler's basic nature to come to a call. They expect the hen to come to them, which means hunters must be patient, and wait for him to edge closer. Play these birds with a cool hand, and don't try to hurry them.

Take a page out of the gobbler's book, and take your time. I've occasionall spent two hours patiently wooing a lusty gobbler away from other hens. It can be done but all sorts of things must fall into place.

Proceed slowly and don't try to hurry a gobbler

Rushing a bird at this point can lead to failure. But, using my example today, I try not to call to a roosted bird. Sometimes it helps, more often I think it hurts your efforts, and wait for the bird to fly down. Talk to him a little bit on the ground, and don't try to hurry up the process.

If he comes, there's a good chance he'll come all the way to you. Get up and move too early, and you may lose your only chance of the season.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Are you a giver or taker?

Where wil bear and deer go when there are no more wild places?

Are you a giver or a taker? It's a very simple question that goes far beyond a one-word yes-no answer.

The bottom line here, in the event this question surprises you, is very simple. Do you take more from your fishing or hunting experiences than you give back?

The purchase of a fishing or hunting license grants us no more than a chance to legally fish or hunt or trap in season. It is a privilege but not a guaranteed God-given right.

It promises opportunities, not limit catches or a heavy game bag.

In days of old, when knights were bold, landowners also owned the fish and game. They owned the river water that flowed through their properly, and Heaven help any soft-headed peasant who poached one of the king's red deer stags, a brown trout or an Atlantic salmon.

The population 300 years ago was far less than today, and peasants were kept in their places and ruled with an iron fist. People caught poaching were severely punished, and any fish or game illegally taken was confiscated.

Things are much different these days. We have flowing springs, but bottled-water plants are tapping into the aquifers. They take our ground water but put nothing back. There are developers ready to quickly fill wetlands, and they operate on the premise that it's easier to apologize later, if caught, than seek permission first.

These are trying times, and everyone wants and needs some outdoor recreation. We need to smell the roses, but what will happen when the roses no longer bloom? What will happen when former trout streams become a turgid trickle before drying up because a bottling plant has shipped our water out of state for corporate profit, and the trout have disappeared because bottlers have drained and sold our water?

Stand up and speak for what you believe in.

How many people are speaking out? Are you standing up to face big business, and asking the hard questions: Is sale of our water a right and proper thing to do? What happens to Great Lakes water when Arizona, New Mexico and Texas want their share? What will we do then?

God help us if the Asian carp gain entrance to the Great Lakes. Out new Carp Czar says he doesn’t think it will happen, but while people stand around and wring their hands about the problem, some of those fish could be moving through Chicago’s canals and waterways. Are you following that problem and pushing for immediate action? I(f not, why not?

Who among us speaks out about urban sprawl in the Traverse City area? Or near Charlevoix and Gaylord areas? On the Petoskey-Harbor Springs region? If you haven’t looked lately, the northwestern corner of Lower Michigan is spreading out at a rapid pace, traffic is horrid, and it reminds me of Detroit.

How many people will take a few minutes from their busy lives to ask why this is happening and how can it be controlled? Why does state government allow this to occur? Why are cities like Detroit becoming an empty maze of cluttered and unsafe streets, boarded up crack houses, and why has 1.2 million people fled Detroit over the past 20 years? Why is the same thing happening in Flint and other once prosperous southern cities?

What will become of our open fields, marshlands, hardwoods and conifers that now provide cover for game and non-game animals and birds? Has anyone paid attention to the downsizing of Michigan's deer herd and our Department of Natural Resources? The marked decrease in snowshoe hares and various game birds such as ruffed grouse has become alarming?

What will happen to our environment and wild game if no one cares?

As alarming, what’s happening to the hoped-for increase in hunter numbers? Baiting died three years ago in the Lower Peninsula, and hunter numbers went with it. At the same time, baiting continued in the Upper Peninsula. Is this fair and equitable treatment to Lower Peninsula hunters?

Is it fair that private landowners get preferred treatment from the DNRE for spring turkey tags, but private landowners in the Northern Lower Peninsula cannot get such a permit. How fair is that?

The answer is simple. We're talking about habitat loss in most parts of the state. We're talking greedy businessmen. How, I wonder, can Exxon and other gas companies declare such huge profits for shareholders while the average motorist breaks his back trying to stay solvent in a credit-card society that is rife with foreclosures. We have Medicare programs that no one understands. It's bureaucracy at the worse possible level.

Granted, what has happened in the past several years to our deer herd is not easy to cope with or accept. But take a hard look at some of the problems.

Urban sprawl is eating away at the land needed for deer to thrive. People move north, buy five or 10 acres of paradise, and disrupt deer travel routes. Homes are built where deer once crossed roads. As more people move in, buy land and build homes, the terrain becomes fragmented. The deer soon disappear to another area that has yet to be exploited, but how long will that area be safe?

People are seeing bears where bruins have never been seen before. The animals need a place to live, but humans have taken over. My wife and I own 20 acres we bought 30 years ago, and admit that we added to the problem. However, we did it long before the big northern invasion began, and since then, plant food plots every year to help wildlife.

Deer numbers in our area are way down so we hunt elsewhere at times. Does this solve the problem? Of course not, it just puts a bit more hunting pressure on an area that hasn't yet felt the full force of land development like what has taken place around Traverse City and other northern cities.

Thirty years ago Traverse City was a quaint northern Michigan town with about 8,000 people. Look at it now. We have the same problems as southern cities have faced for many years. Drugs, embezzlement, robbery, murder. Such things now live on our doorstep, and paradise no longer glimmers.

Twenty or 30 years from now, when Traverse City has expanded southeast past Kingsley to Fife Lake, southwest to Copemish and Thompsonville, northwest to fill the entire Leelanau Peninsula and Benzie County, and northeast to meet Charlevoix and Gaylord that are expanding southward, we'll have the same problems that people fled when they moved north.

The difference is those who moved north brought their heavy baggage with them, and now they want this area to be like their home area once was. Folks, it doesn't happen that way.

When will many people learn to care for other things and not be selfish?

When will people look around, see the slow but sure decay and destruction of this area, and wonder how and why it has happened? Of course, the answer is easy: we are too busy raising our family, pinching pennies because half our pay is a view of the bay, and if we live long enough, we'll learn that if we aren't part of the solution, we must be part of the problem.

Meanwhile, paradise has been turned into another drug store, gas station, bank or a cement-carpeted parking lot. And one must look hard to find a rose to smell, a deer to see, or that wonderful silence at night when the northern lights dance and glow in the heavens and the coyotes howl at the moon.

The problem is we've taken what we feel is ours and given nothing back. How sad is that, and when will we learn? Sadly, I’m sure many people will be asking that question after it’s too late to change our ways.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Calling gobblers can be easier than you think

It was a simple question. A man asked a few days ago if i was a great turkey caller.

The answer was a resounding "no." Great callers are guys such as Greg Abbas, Chris Boesel, Paul Butski, Bob Garner, David Hale, Rob Keck, Dick Kerby, Harold Knight, Arnie Minka, Will Primos, Carl Salling, and a host of others. I'm not a great turkey caller, and must fight hard to make even a passable yelp on my diaphragm call.

However, after many successful years of turkey calling and hunting, I am OK. I can call most birds I encounter. I considered the question put to my by the young man, and it's obvious he's looking for some help. I can't help him much by telling him how to blow a better yelp with a mouth call.

I didn't have much time to talk with him that day but will see him again this week. In the meantime, I can teach him a few tricks about calling and hunting turkeys.

There are two basic things to remember about turkey calling: Don't call too often and don't call too loud. Let's take a look at these aspects of calling.

Gobblers like those fanned out are to call when with hens.

Someone who toodles too often on a turkey call usually winds up spooking birds. They tend to call too often and too loud, and occasionally at the wrong time, thereby spooking gobblers that may be coming to the call. They also may blow a "clinker," a sound that is not natural to a turkey's limited vocabulary. That can send a bird scurrying into the next county ... but not always.

Hunters are wise to limit their calling in most cases. As a general rule, let a gobbler do most of the talking. Call just enough to keep him interested. A bird that calls but keeps getting farther and farther away, is not going to come at that time. After the gobblers and hens separate about 10-11 a.m., the talkative gobbler may return to where he heard a hen call. Patience is one of the best friends a hunter has. Sitting still for three or four hours can be a painful exercise but gobblers often return to where they heard an early-morning hen.

My young friend is trying to learn how to run a diaphragm call, perhaps the second-most difficult call to learn. The hardest call to run is a wingbone yelper. I've met a few guys that could play Dixie on a wingbone call but those that can make great turkey music are few and far between.

The easiest call to operate is the push-pull call. Push on a plunger, and it moves the lid over a wedge-shaped piece of wood, and it produces a realistic turkey call providing it isn't used too much. The next two calls -- a box call and an aluminum, glass or slate call -- are far easier to work. Done properly, they can produce great sounds that imitate an amorous hen turkey.

Learn to use all forms of turkey calls (right).

Everything, within reason, about using a turkey call, is a matter of cadence. There is a certain flow or rhythm to turkey calls, and those calls are difficult to make with a diaphragm call  without a great deal of experience and practice, and knowing what each call is supposed to sound like. Go out as soon as the snow melts, take along a foam cushion to sit on, leave your calls home, and just listen to wild birds calling. Go home, or out in your car with the windows up so you don't drive your wife nuts, and practice. A few people pick up on the sounds they should make quickly, but for most people, it may take two or three years of constant  practice before they can run a good yelp.

The box and slate calls are far easier to use. Box calls can be held horizontally, as I prefer, or vertically as many southern hunters prefer. It makes no difference how you hold the call. What is important is how you bring the handle or lid of the call across the top of the sound chamber. Play with this a little bit to get a good feel for it.

Some years ago, and a few months before my twin brother died in 2003, I was guiding a man and my brother wanted to hunt as well. I didn't want to take out two people at once so in the predawn darkness, I helped George set up a jake and hen decoy in front  of one of my hunting blinds. I gave him a one-minute course on making a yelp. I bid him good luck, and the other guy and I went off to where we were going to hunt. I worked a big gobbler for an hour that morning but the bird wouldn't complete the circle and come out in front of us.

We eventually gave up on that bird when he finally walked off after spitting and drumming for 20 minutes behind us. There was something a bit off about my set-up, and I knew  I could take that bird on another day. We drove to where George was hunting, and there were two gobblers in front of him. I shut down the car without spooking the birds, and watched through binocuars as he shot the largest gobbler. He was geeked to think he'd called in not one but two gobblers on his first hunt.

George shot that bird, and both men wanted breakfast so we headed for town to eat. My brother headed home with his prize, but I managed to snag back my prized call that I'd let him use. The man I was guiding shot his gobbler about an hour later.

Four different box calls that I use (left).

One thing I didn't tell the man who had questioned me about turkey calling was that on any given day a gobbler will respond to only one call. A hunter may start out with what normally works, and the birds pay no attention to it. Learning just one technique or calling can be rather limiting. When next I see him, I'll try to coax him into learning three methods: box call, slate call and diaphragm call, and in that order.

The box call user can become reasonably proficient in an hour or two. The yelp should be the one call used most often, and for many hunters  it's the one that draws in the most gobblers. A whine or purr is easy on a box and slate call but difficult on a diaphragm call. He told me he is trying to perfect his fly-down cackle call, and I asked why. Soften up and shorten up on a yelp, and you've got a close approximation to that call. The trick is to learn the yelp, and how to make a soft and semi-loud call.

Timing is important, and I prefer to put gobblers to bed at sundown. That way I  know about where they will be in the morning, and can sneak in fairly close (100-125 yards) of the roost tree. Know your terrain, and don't try to call birds across water. It can be done, and I've done it a couple of times, but birds often hang up at water. Call to birds you know are on your side of the waterway.

Gobblers often sound off from the trees about the same time as the little tweety birds and larger crows begin mouthing off. Let the gobbler call two or three times in an attempt to determine where all the nearby hens are. Then give a soft three-to-five-note yelp, and hush up. The bird will usually pause and then answer, as will other gobblers in the area, and after he calls a couple of time, give the same soft call again. Keep it soft. Turkeys have amazing hearing and eye sight.
Some old turkey calls from 35 years ago (right).
Once the gobbler starts coming, call only if the bird seems to have stopped or lost his direction. This is not the time to over-call or call too loud. If you have decoys out, keep the jake or gobbler decoy closest to you, because gobblers usually head for the jake to kick his tail feathers although sometimes they single out the hen to jump on.

Have your shotgun up and across your knees with butt of the shotgun stock against your shoulder. The bird may try to circle or may head right for the decoys. Wait until his head comes up to look around, and shoot once, shoot straight and don't miss. Don't shoot at birds over 40 yards away/ Sure, with today's high powered shotguns, it's possible to kill the occasional bird at 60 yards but there too much margin for error.

Calling turkeys is easy, and since no two turkeys sound alike, the notes of your call may be off just a bit. Get the cadence right, stay hid with good camouflage, and don't move. The gobblers often come running, and this, my friends, is what turkey hunting is all about.

It's not just about shooting a big longbeard. It is about calling that heavily bearded limb-walker to the gun. That is what endears wild gobblers to those camo-clad hunters who get up long before dawn to hunt them. It's really all about calling the bird, and the excitement is breathtaking as a bird moves closer. It's what causes sane men and women to forsake a warm bed in favor of sitting with their back against a big tree. Hardly anything in hunting can beat calling a big bird within shotgun range.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Establish A Winter Practice Routine

Several people I know have small archery ranges in their basement, but they are narrow and limited in length.

One man I know has a 17-yard range in his basement, and it serves he and his wife well. They can go downstairs any time they please, and shoot a dozen or two dozen arrows at the 17-yard target. He cut a shooting hole through a plywood partition, and now they can now shoot 25 yards.

It helps keep their muscles limber, and their shooting eye in good working order. They can pick up their bow, and shoot standing up or sitting down. It offers them a fine way to practice.

Some archery shops have leagues, and that is another good way for winter hunters to continue practicing without having to go outside and wade through the snow. League shoots are fun because there is always some camaraderie among the shooters along with the competition.

This deer wouldn't offer a clean shot unless the hunter was behind and off to one side.

But one man I know has a 3-D course set up in his back yard. There is one tree stand location with two targets, and four ground targets. He goes over the area with a snowblower after every snow, and keeps the lanes reasonably open for he and his wife ir friebds to shoot.

Of course, during a winter like this one, it's rather hard to stay ahead of the snow. It's even more difficult to keep shooting lanes open, and the snow has to go somewhere. He's constantly moving his 3-D targets, and any miss means a lost arrow until spring arrives and the snow melts.

There is a distinct advantage to shooting outdoors during the winter months. Each archer is dressed in clothing similar to what they would wear during a December bow hunt, and they can learn to judge when fingers are warm enough to help them shoot straight. It also seems to toughen up their body, allows them to build up a tolerance to the cold, and makes them less miserable in cold and snowy weather.

Another friend has a long garage, and it has a small wood burning stove that he keeps going all winter. One corner of the garage is set up solely for the purpose of winter target practice.

His longest shot is 20 yards, and he has targets set at 10, 15 and 20 yards. He also has built an easily moved shooting window to replicate hunting from inside a coop.

He fashioned it out of a single sheet of plywood with braces at the bottom so it will stand erect. He has the shooting window positioned so it will be at the perfect height for taking shots while sitting down. He shoots all of his deer while sitting, and he can easily move his targets or the shooting window to make shots easy or difficult.

He also has a rheostat on his garage lighting system. He can make the garage as bright as noon on a sunny day or he can dim the lights to simulate those shots taken during the last few minutes of legal shooting time. One year he took his used Christmas tree out of the house on New Years Day, stood it up where a buck appeared to be coming out from behind a tree.

Taking a shot at any of these deer means knowing the exact distance. Winter practice can help.

It added a degree of realism to his target shooting. He even went so far as to build a ladder stand at one end of his garage, and could practice shooting down at targets from a height of about 10 feet.

Does all of this practice help these hunters? All of them shot bucks last year, and none of them missed a deer, and every one of these folks were able to bow-shoot a buck and place the arrow with enough accuracy that not one animal traveled over 75 yards before dropping.

Winter archery practice is important.

Is this taking things too far? I don't think so. I mentioned above that I shoot every day, but I do it inside where it is warm and dry. Shooting outdoors, from a tree stand, or inside a garage means these folks are as serious as a heart attack when it comes to shooting and killing a deer.

My hat is tipped to anyone who practices shooting during the winter, spring and summer months. Come fall, they are ready to hunt. And when a buck offers a shot, and they decide to take it, that deer's life is measured in mere seconds because they won't miss.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors