Turkey Gallery 7

Spring turkey season is about sex and food and that is true about turkey hunting everywhere.

Applying these two basics to Kansas, Missouri and Iowa habitat may be just the advantage to ensure a more successful spring turkey season. The sex part is simple find hens and toms will be sure to follow. The food part begins with turkeys being creatures of habit.

A 20 pound tom with 1 1/4 spurs and a 10 inch beard was harvested and all that was inside its crop were the alfalfa sprouts from a spring planting pictured above. The same filed was used for dusting as shown below.

Grain is by far the preferred winter and early spring turkey food source.

Harvested crop fields will first attract the turkeys with the waste grain keeping them coming back. This develops into habit that continues even after later plowing and or disking. The grain in the central mid-west that is most likely to be present during this time is corn. Corn has the kernel hardiness to survive laying on the ground when still on the cob. Milo and soybean will have rotted away long before spring season. Grain on the ground is of course the ideal and not likely to be found. The next best food source are the sprouting alfalfa or wheat fields.

As the time goes on all grain will either be eaten or plowed under with the new plantings and the same crop fields will continue to attract birds when the sprouts appear. Enhance this element with sex through decoys and skilled calling and the best two turkey attractions are present to bring in the toms.

What is left to find is that which is true for any state turkey hunting and that is the roost and water source.

Connect the dots between all these elements and better habitat cannot be found. All this is further enhanced through the Association reservations system where every hunter is assigned an individual property to hunt, alone. These facets make for the ability to produce the number of success photos we have in this website.

Group turkey hunters may enjoy the day a field traveling from the same vehicle and hunt the same lease or spread themselves out over a property each.

Turkey hunting reservations ensure hunter separation to enhance safety. Essentially a hunter may hunt a property a day and be on a different property every day, or work one farm until tags are filled. It is the self guided wild turkey hunter's choice.

How many turkey hunters do you know that can say they have too many places to hunt. Everyone of our hunters can say that.