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HabitatThe basic answer to the first question we posed to our do it yourself turkey hunters of what it takes to be successful in Kansas was to learn the land - meaning the habitat. We found this meant different things to different hunters and was largely contained to that most Kansas hunters are coming from big woods states and hunting the Kansas' big wide open was a bit of a shock that at first stymied the hunt. These were turkey hunters that far more frequently would hear a tom before ever seeing one in their home state. The converse they found was far more frequent in Kansas where long range visibility often lends to scouting by binocular rather than a common big woods tactic of walking logging roads and listening for gobbles. While this advantage was not lost on the first year MAHA turkey hunting member, it did develop a sense of overconfidence with the follow up being a range of specific to our Kansas spring turkey hunter failures. These failures largely lead to the mis-reading of the flock’s home range and a longer learning curve at how to identify a roost area versus daylong movement area. The common wild turkey story was along the lines there were turkeys just about everywhere they looked and never where they were regardless of moving between setups. This changed once the hunter learned to roost the flock during the last hours of daylight rather than attempt to pattern all day long activity. A significant key. After this was assimilated success rates increased in terms of fewer days to harvest and increased number of hunters filling both tags on a single hunt. This success was largely due to setting up to ambush off the roost and the need to stay put rather than move. However, this one step forward was met with continuing trail and error. PressureThe next Kansas turkey hunting error (while we identify this as a Kansas error it is an error some will make in most places) was that after learning the value to roost a flock the hunter would then be a bit over exuberant and press in too close for an early morning setup at the roost. This was detected by the stories of how the hunter would be well within easy hearing range and sight of the flock in the roost trees, watch them flydown, and the turkeys seemingly disappear slowly moving away from where the hunter had setup. These Kansas turkey hunters would go on to say how they would try to get as close to the roost as they thought they could get to gain a quick shot off the roost before the birds dispersed for the day. It was not long until these same hunters learned on their own to move their setup to the anticipated strutting areas away from the roost and within sight of the roost. That learning typically took two years of turkey hunting experience and notably from former run and gun type turkey hunters. |
