Spring Turkey Season
Turkey Hunting
Hunter Interests
| Universal spring turkey season topics raised through the years by many of the Association self guided hunters discussing hunts, skills and techniques.SafetySafety is a recurring and often over written topic about spring hunts, nonetheless our spin on private land safety has different value over public land hunts. This is the one type of hunt that the most accidents occur and some have been fatal. None to date on MAHA private land, however they have occurred on public and other lands every year. Hunters access Association land by a mandatory telephone reservation system that limits guns on the ground and have been set for each farm to allow ample acreage for each hunter to hunt all day long each day throughout the entire season. This eliminates the common spring season factor of not knowing where other hunters are such as happens on public land or land given permission by knocking doors or hunting on family or friend's land.
While turkey hunting Association land we encourage hunters not to hunt right on the fence line because we do not have control of the neighbor's land and do not know what type of people they are. If you choose to hunt next to the boundary be especially cautious and careful. We also encourage all hunters to wear a blaze orange hat or vest when re-locating, entering or exiting the woods, especially if you have a tagged tom in your possession. Not a common practice on a turkey hunt for most, but a safe one. While using a gobble call always be cautious of another hunter sneaking up on your location. If you encounter a hunter sneaking up on your call do not make any sudden movements. Use your voice to communicate. Expect the unexpected when on a hunt not just with the turkeys, but also for the weak hunter that may be maneuvering on your call.
Scouting
A productive method of spring turkey season scouting is to glass a flock and small groups from ridgeline to the next ridge as well as individual turkeys and follow them from a distance to pattern their route and to roost at dark. Others look for turkey sign such as scratching, droppings and tracks. Once a spring flock is located it is good to return to the same location and listen from a distance to the birds gobbling from the roost trees and move in to about 300 to 400 yards and let them fly down and take their course. Once the turkey have moved on try to pin down their roost location and make a decision on where to set up in the morning. For the run and gun spring turkey season hunter the big timber of south Missouri is attractive where a gobble in the distance can be heard and maneuvered in on. However, in the agricultural heavy north Missouri, all of our Iowa ground and more so in Kansas the open farm fields prevent concealed hunter maneuver. The value of learning more effective turkey hunting patterns based on cover and food habitat differences than past experiences shows again during fall deer hunts. This is the case where the hunter must accept the conditions as they are in reality rather than come with pre-conceptions of how he wants the hunt to be. That one aspect of hunters basing future hunts on prior experience under different conditions accounts for more failure than any other piece in this self guided hunter organization that does not have a guide controlling the hunter's behavior relative to how to hunt in terms of terrain.
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Overall, when scouting in preparation for a spring turkey season hunt we do not allow ATV's or any type of vehicles to drive on or across Association land to scout or hunt. All hunts and scouting are by foot only and as such planning a walk-in route to a setup should always be part of any successful find of a roost. Those thinking of driving into a spring turkey setup amaze us to think that would work.