If you are indeed a deer hunter you need to know this… I talked to a taxidermist recently who asked me to pass along something to deer hunters who kill big deer and want to have the head mounted. He said to tell them to be sure when they call in their kill to get the required measurements accurate when they are asked for the size of the beam, points, etc. He says that a woman agent has been coming into his shop the last year or so, looking at deer heads and comparing each set of antlers to what was actually called in, to see if it matches that. So I called some other taxidermists to see if it is happening in their shop and they said it does, several times each deer season.
They feel that if they are not paid in advance for all incoming deer heads they may lose the mounted head without being paid. The taxidermist who called me says the agent is looking for any discrepancies and can confiscate the deer head and write a citation if she feels there is any significant difference. He says that sometimes a hunter loses his deer head on a technicality and there isn’t a thing he can do about.
Even if you do not intend to have your deer head mounted, if you call in a very large set of antlers conservation agents may show up on your doorstep in an attempt to charge you with something and take the antlers. You can read about a recent case like that where a 17-year-old boy lost a big set of antlers to an agent who actually entered his home illegally, without the necessary search warrant. The story is on my website larrydablemontoutdoors On that website you can also read two separate letters I have written to the director of the Department of Conservation and to each of the four commissioners. I think you would be interested in those letters.
Our fall magazine was sent out in early September. If you ordered one and didn’t get yours, send me an email at lightninridge47@gmail.com
This past week as the weather cooled and the acorns pelted my rooftop, a covey of 15 or 20 quail fed around in my back yard for much of an afternoon. The big oaks are producing a lot of acorns and there is also a lot of grain dropped on the ground from our bird feeders. I sat on my back porch and watched them for quite some time and it made me happy to see there were more in this October covey than in past fall seasons.
Then a day or so later there were 15 young turkeys, fully grown now, feeding across that back yard for most of an hour. They love those acorns and a few grasshoppers here and there. In the past ten years the largest flocks of poults I have seen up here on this wooded ridgetop numbered no more than a half dozen and often times only three or four. Where I once fed seven big gobblers at a corn feeder there have been none now for years.
Wild turkey numbers in much of the Ozarks are down forty to fifty percent of what they were fifteen or twenty years back and don’t believe the baloney about changing habitat being the reason. On lands where the habitat is the same or improving turkey numbers have gone down for years. I think some of that is an increase in predation but the most of it is in the liberal seasons, the youth season and many more hunters than there has ever been. One landowner I talked to this summer said he is seeing flocks increase because he stopped all turkey hunting, spring and fall, three years ago.
I never enjoyed a month more than October because I always spent so much of it outdoors hunting wild turkeys. Back years ago there were so many gobblers and broods that I loved hunting them. Sometimes I would spend a day on a river in the Ozarks and hunt turkeys on a float-fishing trip. October is one of the best months to fish for bass with a topwater lure and late in the evenings turkey flocks would show up on the bottomland side of the river to feed just before flying across to the bluff side to roost. Late October evenings were wonderful times to hunt turkeys but I never will shoot another except with a camera. Knowing the diminishing numbers of gobblers, if you do decide to hunt them this fall, let the older gobblers go and pick out a young turkey, preferably a young hen, to eat. But better yet, leave the wild turkeys alone and go fishing, or sit in a tree stand in the month of October with a bow, hunting deer.
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