Wild Turkey Gobblers-- Part 1

 

       My grandfather got his first breech-loader shotgun in 1911 by guiding turkey hunters in the fall and winter in north Texas County on his father’s land bordering a northern section of the Big Piney River.  He did so by scattering corn to feed them, then scaring turkeys off the roost during the night and waiting for them to come back to the bait and the roost the next morning at first light.  

       He saw big flocks of wild turkeys during his youth but he told me he saw wild turkeys decline in the late twenties and thirties to near extinction in the Ozarks because of three reasons.  First and foremost, diseases brought in by farm families in tame turkeys, primarily something called blackhead disease. Secondly were the free-ranging hogs, which decimated acorn crops before the years end making that food source unobtainable during the cold snowy months.  But the biggest decline wasn’t due to the predators that like to eat wild turkeys and destroy eggs, nor was it due to habitat loss.  It was due to hard times and the coming depression.

       “Country folks were hungry,” he told me. “Gettin’ enough for them big families to eat was hard and turkeys was danged easy to kill, so they got kilt and et more than anything else. In the depression time if’n you had a hog or cow you was rich!  Those who had chickens got ‘em stole or et by hoot owls!”

       “I was a trapper and hunter and fisherman from the time I was a boy,” he said. “You could eat fried muskrats and boiled possum, even a beaver er a bobcat. Wa’n’t no coons to be had after awhile but ever farm boy knew where turkeys roosted.  So they got cleaned out.  I use ta take a turkey er two up to Houston and sell one for a dime or a quarter.  By1930 you couldn’t find one. Nor a deer neither.”

       As I tape-recorded his recollections back in 1966, I understood how those problems eliminated the wild turkey a hundred years ago.  Today, much the same things are coming about.  There are too many predators, but men are the number one predator and there are more now than ever. Gobblers are too easy to kill.
       Like my grandfather, I guided turkey hunters in the 1970’s and 1980’s in Arkansas and Missouri, and one spring, even in Kansas.  I worked at calling turkey gobblers for men who were well off, doctors, surgeons and dentists who could afford to pay a lot of money for the experience the hunt provided. None were interested in just killing a gobbler.  Often a friend and I would set up a camp in the National Forest or on a river in the Ozarks. There were so many wild turkeys back in those times that anyone who could hunt three days had a very good chance to get a gobbler.  Most mornings at daylight we could hear 3 or 4   gobblers if not more. We almost never failed. 

       There were some years I spent more time trying to get a client a gobbler than I spent hunting by myself. In the years I guided hunters, nearly thirty-five clients killed more than sixty turkeys, which I called in.  And that was the key to it… they didn’t want to ambush one, or kill one off the roost or even use a decoy. It was old time turkey hunting at it’s very best.  

       Most of today’s young hunters don’t seem to care about that.  There are things today that were not thought of then.  Decoy’s, calls on smart phones, permanent blinds, and baiting are only a part of it. I’ll talk about some of that next week.

       I learned a lot of what I know about wild turkeys thru my grandfather and then turkey biologists working for the Missouri Conservation Commission back in the 1960’s. The Missouri Department of Conservation didn’t exist then and we’d be better off if it didn’t exist now in my opinion. I believe it is a corrupt agency with millions of dollars and agents who regularly break the law with no consequences, and no desire to bring back turkey numbers if it hurts revenue. 

       The ‘Department of Conservation’, established in 1982 after the1/8 cent conservation tax passed and money became plentiful for them, DID NOT EVER STOCK WILD TURKEY OR DEER. The “Conservation Commission” did that back in the 50’s and 60’s.  The latter agency we refer to today as the MDC, stocked some grouse and prairie chicken that have gone nowhere and the otter, which we watch decimate our streams and private ponds today.

       Wild turkeys now are at the lowest number I can remember since the 1960’s and in next weeks column I will tell you why and how landowners can bring them back.  In the meantime, you can read another story or two about wild turkey and some photos I have taken of them, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.

       

       

I will mention again that I have finally gotten my spring magazine printed and mailed. If you are a subscriber you should get yours this week.  If you aren’t a subscriber, get to be one by calling our office, 417-777-5227.

TURKEY HUNTING PHOTOS FROM YEARS PAST

TURKEY HUNTING IN ARKANSAS

 

TWO TOMS IN CAMP

GOBBLER

ARKANSAS TURKEY CAMP

 SEVEN BEARDED GOBBLER

Wild Turkey Numbers Falling

  

        Dennis Whiteside is a float-fishing guide who travels down a dozen or more streams across the Ozarks of Missouri each year, through all seasons.  He also is someone very knowledgeable about wild turkeys and he reports on what he sees through a survey that he turns in regularly to the state’s Department of Conservation.

         “I’ve done it for about 15 years, “he says, “I turn in the results on the form they gave me and I wonder why I do it. They have never responded in any way. This past spring and summer was the lowest number of turkeys I have ever seen while floating rivers with dozens of clients. Ten to fifteen years ago I would see lots of turkeys and hear lots of gobblers as we floated,” he told me. “Last spring I saw one hen with three poults, and heard only a few gobblers.”

         Dennis also counts numbers of turkeys on hunting trips and during spring drives through the Ozarks. We talked about how years back you would see eight or ten strutting gobblers and hens in March and April back in the reaches of green fields along timber edges. You could drive Ozark back roads and count a hundred turkeys in a dozen fields or less. He agrees with me that now such a sight is seldom seen… the turkeys are mostly gone from those places.

         I follow turkey populations in the Ozarks too, in five different counties. But I count them in December and January when turkeys group together in flocks assembled in winter gatherings close to where I live. They gather in a few places from adjacent lands of three hundred acres or more. One place they gather is along the lower Pomme de Terre River bottom above Truman Lake. About 20 years or so ago that river bottom field of thirty or forty acres had more turkeys in it than I could count, easily seventy to eighty birds. Last year there were between fifteen to twenty turkeys coming to the field each evening to feed, flying from the deep woods across the hills beyond the river. The decline in their numbers was little by little over the years, but numbers never as low as what I counted last spring. If those numbers I have seen in years past are compared to what I saw last winter, many areas have only about 20 percent of the flocks we had 15 to 20 years ago. 

         The Department of Conservation doesn’t have any idea what we have when it come to wild turkeys. I interviewed the director, Jason Sumner, a couple of months ago and he sat there and told me that there was an increase in turkey numbers this past year. To have the director of the Department say such a thing is ridiculous.

         He is not going to ever be out there counting flocks like Dennis and I do. He and the turkey biologist, Nick Oakley, echo the same refrain… that the alarming drop in wild turkey numbers is due to habitat loss and predators. As for the predators…the number of bobcats, hawks, owls and raccoons have remained constant and high for these past 10 years.

         And the idea that habitat loss is a factor is easily proved to be false. The five thousand acres around me is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. National forestland is much the same as it has always been in terms of good or bad turkey habitat. But numbers of turkeys on my neighboring land are getting scarce! I once heard eleven gobblers about 12 years back within a square mile of my home. You might hear one or two now on an April morning, but they grow silent in May, easy for hunters to find, call and kill.

         Ten years ago on my place I was feeding seven long-bearded gobblers behind my home. Now there are none! The last single gobbler to feed there was three years ago. None since! I quit hunting several years ago because there are too many of us out killing turkeys in the spring and fall.

         Several southern states have changed season lengths; bag limits have been reduced and regulations altered. Missouri has done nothing and it is making turkey numbers pretty lean. To help the wild turkey in my area I have changed from a gun to a camera and I encourage hunters in the Ozarks to do the same. As for my advice for the Departments of Conservation in any Midwest state… Let the flocks alone in the fall or allow a one-week season only in October. Change youth season to the back end of the regular season. Set the regular season back one week. Shorten it to only two weekends. Allow only one gobbler in the spring for two years along with all of the above, and you’ll see recovery in wild turkey numbers. But the Missouri Department would never option for any of that because it would cause them to lose money through the loss of turkey tags. Their main goal is not wild turkeys, it is the sale of  wild turkey tags!

The Knife

 

         I found an old pocketknife the other day, fairly rusty, and with part of the handle gone. It had three blades, but one was broken.  If you soaked it in oil and sanded away the rust and loosened it up again, the old knife would have a few years left in it. I wondered just where it had come from, and when it had been new.  What era had it seen and what stories could it tell if knives could talk?   What kind of man had carried the old knife...was it perhaps a gift he had cherished in a day and time when little things meant a great deal more than they do today?  Looking at the old knife, I could almost picture him in my mind.

         I grew up around Ozark rivermen, farmers, trappers, hunters and fishermen who owned such knives.  At a young age, I learned the importance of a good knife.   Most of my schoolmates had some kind of pocketknife, many handed down from fathers or grandfathers, and each one a prized possession.  I had several, a lot like that one I found recently, usually with blades worn down from constant sharpening... some with a point or handle partially broken. I got most of them from my grandfathers.

         Folks said you could judge a man somewhat by his knife. Anyone wearing a large sheathed knife was thought to be something of a show-off, since there were no Indians left to fight during my boyhood.  A man who had a dull blade was considered a bit lazy, and if a man had broken blades he was perhaps careless.  Anyone who asked to borrow a knife wasn't looked upon highly.  A fellow who lost his knife regularly wasn't dependable, and one who cut himself was a real greener. If you swapped knives where I grew up, you were gullible. Kids at the old country school did that on occasion, one would hold his knife in a closed fist and offer to trade for whatever pocket knife you had in your pocket. If you ever yielded to temptation, you would likely find out that anyone wanting to trade knives sight unseen had one in such poor shape he didn't figure you could come out ahead.

         Old-timers kept favored knives for years, until the blades were sharpened to near nothing. Then they gave them to youngsters they thought highly of as my grandfathers did with me.  Or perhaps on occasion they gave them to kids who made a nuisance of themselves asking for one, as I often did.

         I never knew any Ozark woodsman to carry a large sheathed knife,

though there may have been some during the deer season.  A good outdoorsman carried a small axe to do heavy work, and a large pocket-knife with two blades or maybe three. One blade was always duller than the others, used for emergency prying or scraping or anything you wouldn't want to use a fine-honed edge on.  But you could bet there would be one blade he kept so sharp he could darn near shave with it.

         Knives weren't so expensive then, but there was less money to waste, so they were taken care of.   As they grew old, Ozark outdoorsmen often became whittlers. You could see them in the summer sitting on a bench in front of the courthouse telling tall stories about legendary bucks and catfish too big to fit in a johnboat, all the while whittling away on a cedar plug.  They'd move inside during the winter, and tell the same stories before the pot bellied stove at the general store, whittling away and chewing tobacco.

         If you had some ability, you whittled something like a toy or a figure.  If you weren't that good at it, you just whittled.  You didn't have to whittle anything in particular, just whittling was enough. It showed that your knife had an edge so keen you could whittle a toothpick out of a railroad tie, and that said something about you.

         Grandpa Dablemont used his knife to fashion rabbit-trap triggers or deadfall sets, to skin a mink, cut bait, or shave a rough edge off his sassafras paddle.  Grandpa McNew had different uses for his knife. He cut green hickory whistles for his grandkids, and cut off plugs of tobacco for himself. He used it to trim his toenails regularly before bedtime, and then used the same knife to peel an apple on occasion. The old timers I grew up around seemed to never eat an apple off the core. They sliced off pieces, chunk by chunk, and balanced each slice on the knife blade with a leathery thumb while guiding it to their mouths.

         Grandpa's knife was an old Shrade-Walden, and he was proud of it. It had "good metal in it", he claimed.  And he referred to the men he liked and respected the same way.  They "had good metal in 'em." I think the original term was 'mettle', but he didn't know that. 

         I still have a couple of old knives owned by my grandfathers.  I sometimes carry one around for awhile for good luck, but I am ever fearful of losing it.  Still there is something about sitting at a deer crossing, whittling on a stick with a knife that is 100 years older than I, and once fit in the weathered hand of one of my grandfathers.

 

The spring issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Magazine has arrived from the printer.  To get your copy, call me at 417- 777-5227.

 

Fishing An Ozark River

 

Piney River Goggle-eye

         There is a different kind of fishing in April and May in the Ozarks, something that goes back a couple hundred years… grabbing suckers.  It’s a pretty simple thing.  When the suckers are running upstream to spawn, folks just found a nice clean gravel bar and used a white rag and big treble hooks to ‘grab’ the fish we all called yellow suckers.  

         Actually those fish referred to by most Ozarkians as ‘yaller suckers’ are golden redhorse. In the book, Fishes of Missouri by biologist William Pflieger, there are white suckers, blue suckers hog-molly suckers and river redhorse commonly found in sections of the Ozarks.  None of those suckers get much bigger than 3 or 4 pounds but the river redhorse, 70 years ago reached 15 pounds or better quite often.  

         If you don’t know suckers well you might not realize what species you are grabbing, but they all are great eating if you know how to score the fish body, that consists of cutting thru the meat to the backbone every quarter inch or half inch, therefore eliminating the tiny thread-like bones throughout the body.

         If you look out into the river current when the suckers are schooling before the spawn and you have a treble hook out there, you can’t see it very well.   But you can see a white rag tied about 2 feet in front of the hook. When a fish is over the rag, jerk hard and the hook finds it’s mark and the fight is on.

         But while you are grabbing suckers you might be missing some really good rock-bass fishing.  I have always called them goggle-eye and they too spawn in mid April in rocky swift shoals and the pools at the    end of the current.  When I was young, dad and I used little ‘shimmy-flies’, which were made in Salem, Missouri by a fellow named Art Varner.  We would often catch 12 or 15 goggle-eye from one shoal by just letting the spinner flash and keeping the upright hook from turning over.  

         In time, rubber beetle spins became popular for the little fish and the black perch as well. The beetle spin was just a rubber bait duplicating a shimmy-fly.  And with each lure, every now and then, a good-sized smallmouth would attempt to eat it.  Today in river eddies that once had a hundred goggle-eye, I think it is safe to say there are only half as many now.   Limits have been reduced and in many Ozark rivers and the length limit has been set at nine inches. But enforcement of the regulations on goggle-eye is seldom found on the streams.  The scrappy little fish hold their own but I wish I could find them again like they used to be.   Thankfully you can find them though, and it’s good to know that they are hanging in there.

         First time I ever went fishing as a boy was in April.  Dad took me, and one of our old wooden johnboats, on a trip down the upper reaches of the Big Piney River and tried to teach me how to cast an old Shakespeare reel with braided line and a monofilament leader. 

          I was about six years old and I developed a backlash that I was trying to unravel when a scrappy green sunfish (known to dad as a black perch) picked up the little lure we called a “shimmy-fly” and took off with it.  The little fish was only about eight inches long but to me he was a slab-sided frog-eater and the struggle to reel him in was memorable. I will never forget it.  

         I have caught thousands of black perch since then and that’s because they are such a prolific and adaptable little creature that they survive from the muddiest pond in the Ozarks to the biggest lakes we have here.  Every river in the Ozarks has an abundance of them; they often get as big as goggle-eye (rock bass) and as numerous as long-ear sunfish (punkin-seeds). They will sometimes hit a lure as big as they are.  They can do that because they have such a big mouth for such a little fish. They are a member of the sunfish family, which black bass and bluegill are also members.

         But the black perch are good eating too. As a boy who liked to camp, I always had black perch to eat at night when I camped on a gravel bar near some big eddy on the river even if I hadn’t caught a bass all day. They are especially a favorite food for my number one trotlining target, the flathead catfish.  And they weren’t bad eating for me either.

 

To read other articles about fishing and the outdoors go to larrydablemontoutdoors on your computer.  Contact me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

OLD TURKEY HUNTER

 

I have an extensive collection of old magazines and  I thought some readers  might enjoy this ancient story on turkey hunting.  It was entitled “The Gentle Art of Turkey Hunting” and appeared in a1914 magazine called Forest and Stream.

 “The wild turkey is probably the wariest bird in the woods. His hearing is the keenest, and whether from the sense of smell or from some unknown intuition he will take flight and disappear without any apparent cause. For genuine stupidity however, the turkey certainly outrivals the verist greenhorn with a piece of can or an old pipe. Like partridge or quail, wild turkeys will follow a trail or shallow ditch in which some corn and leaves have been strewn and walk straight into a pen, with an opening at the bottom. After scratching the leaves and trash back into the hole, they never look down again to find the opening through which they came. In this manner great numbers of them are caught. 

The Pot Hunter shoots them from a blind, which has been previous baited with corn or peas, but the true sportsman will only shoot them after he has called them to him when they have flown from the roost in the morning. 

Once when the writer was returning from a visit through a short cut in the woods on a beautiful sunshiny morning, a flock of turkeys was seen some distance off on the edge of the swamp. I immediately squatted behind a large pine tree and began to look for something to call them with. Fortunately, I found a small piece of cane, and covering one end carefully with my closed fist I began to call slowly and to my great delight I saw an old hen feeding toward me. I had no gun and was too young then to notice which direction the wind was blowing from and even hoped she might come near enough for me to catch her. I continued to yelp and the hen came nearer and nearer. With my heart in my mouth and almost afraid to breathe, I waited until she got within about ten feet of the tree, when I made a terrific leap, and all but got my arms around her, I had miscalculated the distance however, and she disappeared like a brown streak through the woods. 

This gave me a keen zest for turkey hunting however, and I determined never to be caught again without my gun and unprepared for Mr. Turkey. I had a small muzzle-loading gun, which I used to load with small shot, or chopped up lead or pebbles, or anything I could get, and I determined in future to wrap one buckshot in the moss, which was rammed down on the birdshot, so that I might be prepared for large or small game.

On a brisk cool morning I spied a lonely gobbler on one of my tramps through the woods. At first, I thought that it might be a tame turkey, but he was too far from home for that so I determined to try my luck with the single buckshot as I did not suppose that the small shot would do anything more than to make him run a little faster. I blazed away and to my delight he seemed to be very wobbly. I rushed up to him and grabbed him by the neck thinking that I could strangle him. He was, only wounded very slightly, and promptly proceeded to put up the fight of his life, and gave me the worst licking with his wings and claws, which I ever got. I conquered him in the end however and carried him home in triumph on my shoulders. An amusing incident occurred on one occasion when a bird, which had already been wounded by someone else, was flushed by a pointer dog. He lit on a small tree, and having nothing but birdshot in the gun, I fired at him with that and brought him to the ground. He was still only wounded however, and the dog, having been frequented by the poultry man for chasing the tame turkeys, was afraid to catch him for fear of being whipped. He finally grabbed the turkey by the neck and dragged him to me as if to say “here he is and I have not hurt him.” I need not say that I was glad to have the dog as I could not have caught the wounded turkey without him.”

 

To get the Spring outdoor magazine I put out, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal or my book about turkey hunting, The Greatest Wild Gobblers, just call my office (417-777-5227) or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com 

A Fish in the Sky

Actual photo I personally took...no enhancement