February 22, 2018 by Shawn Chittim
It’s hard to believe that this 2018 Spring Wild Turkey Season will be my 32nd spring turkey season, that's how the seasons have flown by hunting the Ol’ Mighty Tom Turkey. I’m getting older and I have a lot more gray in my hair, strike that, what little hair I have, is pretty much all gray. However, I am more passionate and enjoy hunting these birds more than ever before and I'll hunt them every season across this great country as long as the good lord above will allow me. I love everything there is about spring turkey hunting; more than anything it’s the time it has given me with my family, friends and clients that I appreciate.
The mornings are cold the bed is warm, but the birds are just beginning to break from their winter patterns and February is the time to prepare of your Spring Turkey hunting success, for sure here in California anyway. I'm older and things have changed in the last 32 years, it’s a different world in turkey hunting now. How drastically things have changed in just the last few years. The advancements in technology has changed things in a big way, for the hunting community and that includes for the turkey hunter. There are more birds to hunt but it has become very popular and with that a lot more competition and a lot more pressure on public land birds. It seems the private land birds are more educated as well, I guess proof positive that it truly is survival of the fittest.
In the early 90’s one of my best friends and my turkey hunting confidant at that time and I use to spend hours at the county assessor’s office with our topo maps in hand. We’d research and mark landowners boundaries and public land, looking for that next hidey-hole turkey spot. Now, well guess what "There’s an app for that".
I used to practice my calling all the time, record myself and play it back, listening at quality and proper cadence. Well yep, you guessed, now "There’s an app for that", too.
Well, I’ll tell you what "There isn’t an app for" and that’s for hard work. The early morning listening sessions, walking the woods looking for sign on new ground, and the willingness to look and travel farther and deeper than others in search of flocks off the beaten track. That is pure preparation only the driven turkey hunter is willing to endure. Sure, many people will kill birds with little effort or concern, but to consistently put big birds in front of your hunter throughout the season, you have to built your bag of tricks through preparation.
We are in good old days of “Spring Turkey Hunting” in California, those days are now. The 2018 Season will start with a Junior Only Hunt March 24th-25th, 2018 followed by the General Spring Season March 31st - May 6th, 2018, and finishing up with a Additional Junior and Archery Season May 7th-20th, 2018. We are a mere four short weeks before we’ll hopefully calling longbeards to the gun. For us at SC2 Outdoors we are knee deep in scouting, patterning birds and periodically checking the strut zones that have produced in past seasons for Ol’ Mighty Tom we hope to tangle with in 2018.
Posted in: California Spring Wild Turkey Hunting
