Photo By Phillip Jordan

Some say that turkey hunting in the Magnolia State is at its lowest ebb. Talk to me about the 2005 season and I might agree: It was terrible where I hunted. However, the situation turned around in a 2006 season marked by increased gobbling activity and bird sightings, reminding us that the sport often runs in cycles driven by previous years’ nesting success. Bottom line: Turkey hunting’s always in flux.

PAST SEASON RECAPS
Each season I participate in the Spring Gobbler Hunting Survey sponsored by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, keeping log sheets of what I encounter in the turkey woods. Such records can tell you lot from year to year.

In 2005 I conducted 18 separate hunts -- six in the morning, 12 in the afternoon. The number of hours spent on the hunts totaled a considerable 62. In late April, three days from the end of the season, I finally called in my only gobbler of the whole season.

During those days afield, I had several encounters with gobbling birds, but nothing up close and personal. Most disheartening: the scant number of hens observed. Also depressingly deficient: jakes, only one of which I saw in all my time in the woods. That, I assumed, meant that the next season would bring slim pickings, too -- but that assessment would prove to have been wide of the mark, as the situation in fact turned in my favor. Whatever the reason(s) for the reversal, I ended up harvesting two quite respectable birds this past season. (And missing a third -- although on that particular hunt, I did kill a nice sapling! Those trees just don’t always know when to duck.)

Unlike the prior year, 2006 featured birds doing a lot of gobbling, and often. Too, I spotted and heard many more hens milling around in distant pine thickets than had been the case in ‘05. Even so, I still only saw one jake -- which, like most young birds, wasn’t very sophisticated: I’d set up decoys, and it took only one call for it to come running right to my blind.

My hunts in 2006 numbered 16 -- six in the morning, 10 in the afternoon: a total of 49.75 hours in the blind. So I hunted less last year than I had in ‘05, but killed more turkeys. Overall, the ‘06 hunting experience was much more rewarding, as I saw and heard more turkey activity, which is at the heart of keeping interest levels up and maintaining the desire to keep heading back to the woods.

As it turned out, my own results for those two seasons mirrored what was going on throughout most of the Magnolia State during the period.

FLOCK STATUS UPDATE
As hinted above, the pivotal factor in the success or failure of every turkey season is the condition of the hatch in prior years. While hunting and natural mortality take a significant number of birds out of the population annually, neither of those rivals in importance the level of replacement of lost flock members with young poults; that’s what makes or breaks future seasons. Having plenty of jakes that can ultimately mature into boss gobblers all begins with nesting success.