Skip to main content

Turkey Season 2.0

Here we go! Turkey season has kicked off in Maine and as Dad and I are getting ready to head out with my friend Brian, I can not help but think of where we were a year ago.

I wanted to shoot a turkey while I was pregnant so that I could say that I got both a deer and turkey while waddling around in the woods.  It didn't happen but Dad and I learned a lot about this new critter that we were hunting, which is why I asked Brian to take us out for a day.  We need to learn how close they need to be to us in order to take a successful shot and we need to learn how to get them to come to us.  We were successful last year in having them call back to us, but we were not able to get them to come to us.  I think (hope) that is the missing piece.

New this year, Mainers can hunt all day (instead of just the am) and can take two bearded birds.  We have SO many turkey here that this is necessary to keep the population somewhat under control.  Dad has been seeing them around the house and has taken our box call and had great responses from three turkey up on the hill behind his house.  Still, nothing has come down to check out this new "turkey" in the area.  Last year, we saw a handful of jakes and a hen.  I want to see a big Tom with his feathers puffed out gobbling!  And then I want to see him dead ;)

Our turkey decoys from 2013
My friend Robin went out on opening day and within an hour had sent me a picture of her turkey - almost 18lbs with a 9.5 inch beard and about 1 inch spurs.  Seriously, she is an awesome outdoors woman and sets a pretty high standard for what all of us should be and could be doing!  If you have not read her blog, you should and experience for yourself what it's like to be an outdoors woman in Maine.

Back to turkey... Friday is the day we head out.  The weather should be good and I have new camo pants this year.  Last year, I was scrapping together my hunting clothes, partially because to deer hunt, you dont need camo (so I didn't own any) and partially because I was 9 months pregnant and couldn't fit into my hunting pants.  This year, I will be head to toe in camo, with a new shot gun that Dad bought (our current guns are useless) and with a guide to help Dad and I learn this new hunting style.

Wish us luck and hopefully come Monday, I will have a picture to post for all of you!



Comments

  1. Erin good luck, I hope you have success or at the very least enjoy your time in the outdoors

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Taking Turkeys to Texas

There are a few less turkeys in Maine to hunt this year. A few months ago, Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife in partnership with the National Wild Turkey Federation , captured and released more than 50 birds into East Texas with the hope of rebuilding their population.   “Eastern turkeys are where the restocking efforts originally began,” explained Shawn Roberts, Director of Field Operations for the National Wild Turkey Federation, “We tried in the 1920’s but it didn’t work.  We tried pen-raised birds and that didn’t work either. The only thing that was successful was to trap birds and relocate them to good habitat.” “We started this current effort in the early ‘80s and we had to begin looking outside the state to see if we could get them moved in. We didn’t want to violate The Lacey Act so we had to come up with a way to compensate the states that were giving up a resource either by trading other wildlife or paying them monetarily,” said Roberts. Texas is on the very edge o

Utilizing technology to make you more aware

Staci and I were roaming around the woods on a piece of property that she knew. It was snowing and we were chasing deer tracks to see if we could find some early sheds. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and we were relaxed and not really paying attention to where we were going. We knew the border of the property and we knew that if we walked long enough we would hit roads or the bog and find our way back. We got to a point where we thought we knew where we were but we were not sure. Staci got out her compass to take a waypoint to make sure we were going in the right direction to get back to the truck. I took out my phone and turned on OnX. Within seconds we knew where we were, where the property borders were in relation to us and we could watch the dot (that represented us) on the map move as we walked out of the woods and got closer to the truck. In another adventure, my son and I headed out on a shed hunting mission.  When we got into the woods, I turned on the tracker

Where are the women?

This week, my interview with Steve at The Maine Outdoorsman went live. Steve said yesterday 200 people hit his site viewing over 500 pages. That is a lot of people reading about little ole me and hunting. Why? When I think of women who are in the general public's eye and hunt, I can think of 2 - Country singer Miranda Lambert and Sarah Palin. Why only two? Why is the female hunter such a fascinating thing? (I should probably note that I do not have cable so any and all female hunters on the hunting stations are lost to me. I'll keep it to the general public because that's what I am familiar with.) People/media were fascinated by the fact that they could get footage of Palin and her gun, shooting (and gutting) animals but I feel like the nostalgia would be lost if they had the same footage of McCain. Lambert and her hubby Blake Shelton tweet photos of their kills, and comment on what/where they are hunting. I only know this because I follow both. That's it.