Wild Turkey Hunts
Self Guided Turkey Hunts
What is typically picture on paid turkey hunting websites are harvest pictures showing clients at the lodge or at least the guide's road sign with logo in the background for advertising. On this website we have the same, well at least the wild turkey harvest pictures in our turkey hunter testimonial and gallery sections. We do not have turkey hunter pictures by a lodge or sign, we don't have any hunting lodge.
The intent of the live turkey pictures is to eliminate the mystery of the hunt conditions the hunter may face. This picture is part way into the spring turkey season and just into green up.
This field was freshly plowed just before a rain that prevented any further farming activity. It was a wheat field left fallow from the previous year for a spring planting of some other crop. The picture is cropped wide to show the surrounding habitat as best our camera can. The wooded background may appear to be a good sized patch of woods however, it is nothing more than a creek bed that did have spring runoff. The insert is an enlargement of the tom strutting for the hens that were up on the deadfall tree braches, presumably to get out of the wet brush.
Locally we have always described our turkey hunting as just that, turkey hunting. It was the advent of the traveling turkey hunter years ago that would inquire if our turkey hunting was for wild turkey. That question we did not have an answer for as we did not understand the question.
What we learned from that experience is many hunters do not have within their own home state sufficient turkey populations to support the resident hunter base. These same states recognizing the economic value of turkey hunting started bringing in transplanted flocks to develop local populations. These transplanted flocks were typically viewed as less wild and more domestic in terms of hunt quality. This same turkey propagation efforts typically employed feeders as well bring man influenced turkey behavior.
All of this combined into a mind set that the real turkey hunter should hunt naturally propagated or wild turkeys as a value measure of his own turkey hunting skill.
That was then and now the thought process is evolved to that of adding more spring turkey hunting time for those that simply enjoy turkey hunting. In the case of Mid-America Hunting Association spring and fall turkey hunting all our turkeys are wild birds by any definitional twist that could be developed. We further do not post feeder as there is no need to. All of our turkey hunting is within the 45 to 55% agricultural land use region where food is plentiful, our winters mild and the flocks experience strong regeneration in excess of hunter pressure each breeding season. This allows us to have a larger percentage of mature birds that gain the turkey hunter the added incentive to hunt to harvest heavier bodied turkey, longer h=beards, multiple beards and so on.
Where To Turkey Hunt
We spend a fair amount of time on the road scouting land, renewing leases or contracting new lease land. During that time on the road we get to see a lot of game. In this case a Kansas jake flock late in the summer. A curious act of nature that same sexed young turkeys will group together at this time of year.
Adding up all these incidental turkey observations allows us a good idea of wildlife distribution within the three state area we cover. This lends toward good recommendations to our hunters of where to hunt to maximize their field time and experience rather than allowing them to take a gamble and just simply picking a turkey hunting spot that may or may not have flock activity. These boots on the ground qualified hunt recommendations are the means by which many new members have such a good start they renew their memberships the following season.
