| Make Good BetterWhat MAHA has done is taken Missouri spring turkey hunting and combined it with un-pressured private land leases where every turkey hunter hunts alone The success of our turkey hunting approach has been routinely demonstrated by comparing Missouri's state wide spring harvests compared to licenses sold to that of MAHA hunters to their reported total Missouri MAHA lease turkey harvests. The rate difference is that routinely Missouri public and knock on door hunters statewide have a harvest rate of 0.5 toms per license sold and that of MAHA turkey hunters ranging from 1.1 to 1.4 toms per hunter over the last several years. However, this turkey hunter statistical comparison is skewed. While it cannot be denied the MAHA turkey hunter has the advantage of hunting controlled private land and the state wide hunter is hunting the entire range of available public, knock on door and lease land. It is the MAHA turkey hunter that makes the substantial difference in the harvest rate success statistics. The key factor is that he is a self guided hunter. Self guided turkey hunters that seek that added advantage of our do it yourself hunter approach as a group are more dedicated and correspondingly more skilled at turkey hunting than the average hunter. To test this self guided turkey hunter idea any turkey hunter can compared all the turkey hunters he knows to where they hunt and their turkey harvest success rates. Most will agree those that hunt public lands are those turkey hunters that may exert less effort and having lower total turkey harvests as well as successive years of success. The MAHA turkey hunter is screened for his ability to hunt on his own based on his primary and secondary hunting interest. This aspect means he is an accomplished hunter. Noticed we did not state he must be an accomplished turkey hunter, just a hunter that understands the perils of self guided hunts - the no guarantee peril. The few inexperienced turkey hunters we gain each season are typically the crossover type hunter skilled in one discipline and trying a new hunting discipline for the adventure of exploration. This type of hunter always finds success as he is in the hunt for the hunt and not that success is instant. This hunter also has an advantage with the MAHA buddy hunt program where he can team up with an experienced MAHA member/turkey hunter for mentorship. All of these advantages further inflates our turkey hunting success rates.
HuntsOverall, when it comes to Missouri spring turkey hunting the hunter can expect a good hunt in terms of eyes on plenty of turkey with opportunity to hunt many of them. Most experienced turkey hunters report little difficulty filling both tags. New turkey hunters, those with three seasons or less experience, report it was not too difficult to adapt to Missouri spring turkey hunting with most harvesting at least one tom per trip. What may be of more interest are the disadvantages many of the new to MAHA and Missouri hunters identified about the Missouri spring turkey hunts when comparing it to their experience in Kansas. DisadvantagesWhile we identified these next topics as turkey hunting disadvantages, that identification itself is probably a poor choice of word. We use them as they are what was told to us and forward the thoughts as completely as we can in this multi hunter compromise of an article. The two most common shortfalls were the limitation of one tom per hunter for the first week of the Missouri spring season and the short three week season. Again, this is comparatively speaking regarding their Kansas turkey hunting experience.
Youth SeasonThe most vocal were the hunters that went youth only turkey season and combined with the challenge of scheduling the youth turkey hunt during school spring breaks. Most of the parents would not consider allowing their child to miss school for a turkey hunting trip and in the same discussion the parents choice of when to hunt was when the child had break time to include long weekend fly-in and hunt. How this overlaps with available state turkey seasons more often caused the selection of which state to hunt. For those that had the choice between Kansas and Missouri season it was more a view that Kansas was the turkey hunting state of choice. |
