Enthusiasts await start of turkey season

loading...

Brad Allen studies birds for a living, and hunts some of them for enjoyment. And on Monday morning, the biologist who serves as the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife’s bird group leader knows exactly where he’ll be, and what he’ll be doing.

In the woods.

Sitting quietly.

Hoping to lure a big tom turkey into range.

Monday marks the opening day of the state’s split-session turkey season, although junior hunters will get a head start this morning on Youth Turkey Day.

Count Allen as one of those hunters who eagerly awaits the arrival of Maine’s spring turkey season.

“I’m taking Monday and Tuesday off, and hopefully I won’t need Tuesday,” Allen said.

“Being in the woods [during the early part of turkey season], when you might hear a partridge drumming, you might hear a wood duck calling, you might hear a turkey gobbling, is just a great time of year to be out,” Allen said. “And no bugs. I just look forward to it.”

So, too, do thousands of Maine hunters, who have embraced the hunt enthusiastically since it was reinstated in York County back in 1986.

That year, only 500 permits were awarded, and nine birds were harvested.

A year ago, with 16 Wildlife Management Districts open to hunting across southern, central and parts of eastern Maine, 20,089 permits were sold, and 5,931 birds were shot.

Hunters are allowed to shoot one bearded bird apiece, and legal shooting hours are between one-half hour before sunrise and noon.

Allen said a harsh winter has the DIF&W concerned about the status of the population near its northern limit in Maine – from Dover-Foxcroft to Greenville, and over toward Lincoln – but said hunters likely won’t notice any difference from past years.

“I think south of Bangor everything’s hunky-dory,” Allen said. “The snow conditions were such that the birds got around. They might have been locked under somebody’s bird feeder for a couple of weeks, but then the weather changed enough to allow them to get out and scrounge again. So I think winter mortality [from] the Bangor area south, the heart of the turkey range, won’t be a problem.”

The state’s turkey reintroduction program has been so successful since its inception in the late 1970s that many people have made assumptions about the birds, Allen said.

Some of those assumptions just aren’t true, he maintains.

“A lot of people perceive that they are maybe out-competing deer in certain areas, but they only compete [with deer] for mast crops, beech and acorns, and usually when Mother Nature provides them, it is in abundance,” Allen said. “So it shouldn’t be to the detriment of deer. There are wild turkeys and deer [co-existing] everywhere in the United States, and [turkeys] don’t seem to out-compete them.”

Maine’s split season is based on a hunter’s birth year, with those born in an even-numbered year allowed to hunt during the A season, and those with odd birth years allowed to hunt during the B season.

This year’s A session: April 28-May 3, May 19- 24 and May 26-31.

B session hunters can hunt May 5-10, May 12-17 and May 26-31.

All unsuccessful hunters can hunt during the fifth week of the season, May 26-31.

While many hunters would prefer to get into the woods during the first week of the season, Allen said that this year, that might not matter.

“It’s going to be a challenge next week for the A season because the toms are going to be in the competition of a lot of hens,” Allen said. “They’re probably starting to lay eggs right now at the earliest, and a lot of the hens probably haven’t been bred yet. Early in the season, when the hens are all together with the toms, it’s hard to pull the tom away from the real thing [by making calls that simulate a female turkey]. So there will be some challenges.”

Challenges for some, but opportunities for others. Allen pointed out that there are plenty of turkey hunters who have been paying close attention to the flocks in their areas, and have things pretty well figured out.

“There will be some hunters who have scouted and have a can’t-miss scenario for Monday morning or for the youth hunt, but the died-in-the-wool hunters that are maybe back in the woods some will find it challenging pulling toms away from the real thing,” he said.

One option for hunters, Allen said, is trying to find the tom’s “strutting zone,” a place where he tends to frequent when he’s trying to draw hens to him.

“But if you’re just out on the landscape trying to hunt him while he’s walking around the landscape looking for girls and looking for things to eat, it’ll be a little bit more of a challenge,” Allen said.

Allen said the B season may provide better hunting this year, because this year’s opening day is four or five days earlier than it is during some years.

Hunters rely on calling in turkeys during the spring mating season, and after more of the hens have been bred, the jilted toms begin to get a little bit desperate.

Allen said a high percentage of hens will be nesting in the next week or two. After that, the gobbling of the toms will also peak as increasingly frantic males try to find their dream date among fewer receptive hens.

In the meantime, hunters may find themselves calling in large flocks of birds, and find it difficult to separate females – which can’t be shot during the spring season – from the pursuing males.

While a challenge, that scenario can actually present opportunities as well, Allen said.

“Some times you can actually call the hen to you, because they’re very territorial themselves,” Allen said. “And if you can make a hen angry enough to come to your decoy – because usually the decoy is a hen decoy – then sometimes she’ll drag the tom along, because he’s just lovesick and stupid.”

All of which reminds me of more than one college-era tale (at least the lovesick and stupid part) … although you’ll never hear me rat out my fellow “toms” (or myself) here.

Good luck on opening day … and especially good luck to those youths lucky enough to head out this morning!

Ice-out news

Readers have been checking in regularly with ice-out news, and I’m happy to report that many of the lakes in the Bangor and Ellsworth area have already shed their winter coats.

Among those: Green Lake, Phillips Lake and Beech Hill Pond.

Further north, a reader said that Cold Stream Pond in Enfield is also free of ice and fishable.

I’m no ice expert, but that seems to indicate that spring is officially upon us through much of eastern Maine.

If you’re north of Cold Stream Pond and your local pond or lake finally loses its ice, I hope you’ll consider letting me – and your fellow readers – know.

jholyoke@bangordailynews.net

990-8214