Turkey season upon us
April 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The neighbours are nervous. For the past few days, they’ve been trying to pinpoint the source of all the turkey talk in this suburban enclave and I think they suspect it’s coming from our house. You see, turkey season is upon us in the west and I’m about 10 days away from a combo trout fishing and turkey hunting trip in the area of Trail, BC.
Plenty of birds around again this year, I hear, and I’m getting real itchy to be out there at the crack of dawn, talking a longbeard down out of its roost tree. I’m in the process of breaking in a new diaphragm call–I really favour the dome type calls, easy to use and sound just great–and need to fine tune my yelps and clucks. Also made some perfections on my pot call design using jatoba wood for the pot and crystal glass in place of the traditional slate (get glass, crystal, aluminum and, of course, slate disks from Brookside Game Calls). Just need to get into the groove again and I’ll have every tom in the country sounding off; at least that’s the way it plays out in my pre-hunt dreams.
And speaking of turkey hunting, I’m wondering what it will take to get the BC government to come to its senses regarding the use rifles, especially centrefire rifles, for wild turkey. This is utterly irresponsible considering that most turkey hunters use decoys in combination with calling to attract the birds. I’ve seen a tom crippled by yahoos shooting from the road at birds 200 yards away; I’ve talked to dedicated hunters who have had bullets whizzing around their heads; and I’ve had landowners tell me that they will not allow hunters on their land because of run-ins with road hunters armed with rifles. Last year, I watched a couple of guys in a dualy pickup drive slowly up and down the farm road. Thankfully, I was set up quite a ways back from the road and the decoys were out of sight. Later that morning, when I got back to the Jeep, they stopped to talk to me, announcing proudly that they had no idea what turkeys looked like but that they had a flat shooting 17-calibre centrefire rifle that would reach out to 300 yards if needed. That, my friends, is a recipe for disaster. MoE needs to understand that and put a stop to it before something happens.
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