Kansas Spring Season Turkey Hunting Keys

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Changes

Kansas spring turkey hunting has been a good option for our turkey hunters for as long as most can remember. The very oldest of our Kansas hunters will tell the classic “…back in the early days…” stories how there was not much to talk about and the occasional wild tom harvested by a local boy would certainly be something to pass about the Co-Op. That appears to have been 25 years ago.

How times and Kansas turkey hunting have changed. The talk now is not about any one turkey hunter tagging a single Kansas tom. The talk the last many years and currently is along the lines of how fast anyone filled both tags, beard and spur length and if one or both were Eastern or Rio Grande continuing with where the Rio and Eastern line has shifted and who harvested a hybrid. Not really the type of information we were seeking for this article, but a good example of how our spring turkey season has developed.

Not paying attention cost us a picture of birds in the roost late on a gloomy day scouting trip in this non-descript and now vacant tree pictured as much out of frustration as to its complete ambiguity.

The droppings below the tree shows this to be a routine roost tree of long standing on a small interior pasture. We were distracted looking farther down the small farm lane watching deer when the flock lets us know they were there by scattering deeper into the creek bottom and waiting to do so only when we were right on top of them.

First Hunt

The intent for this article was to present what new to MAHA self guided turkey hunters may want to know about how to setup their first Kansas spring turkey hunt, especially the non-resident turkey hunter that has never experienced Kansas and its open terrain.

To that end a while back we started collecting information from our older Kansas turkey hunters what are the components to a successful hunting trip. The idea was how to prepare our growing numbers of non-resident members for their first spring season hunt. The response was a whole lot less about Kansas spring turkey season hunting techniques and more about how to put the mechanics of the hunt together.

What we found out was that talking to our experienced do it yourself turkey hunters was that tagging a tom was taken for granted and of less concern than which motel has the cleanest rooms or which Kansas county has the largest flocks. This of course was not what we were looking for. We soon found it more beneficial to talk to our newest hunters or those between one and three seasons of hunts under their belt and limited the discussion to Kansas spring turkey. Their lessons learned were still fresh and contained the information they would have like to have heard first from others before experiencing it themselves. To that end we have a short listing of what they considered the most useful for those new to our area. Their answers focused on specific to Kansas habitat, scouting and how to setup.

Early in the season scenes of Kansas turkeys and habitat..

A tom on the prowl for hens. The roost on this lease was to the rear of the camera along a creek bottom. Flydown was always to the open ground. The same flydown area was frequented during the day by individual birds.

Talking habitat is one of the most beneficial aspects of this website. In this case we'll use this quote from a recently new resident:

"A lot of outsiders think of plains states as a flatland, but many of the remote areas of the best habitat and bird populations that will rival the best of the states in the country. The high side of the rivers and tributaries have have timbered bluffs that boarder crop fields and the birds are easy to pattern once they are located."