When turkeys attack, 35lb turkey gets violent

My Pet Turkey has had enough!! Do not underestimate a 35lb turkey!!!

Turkey fight - Missouri Pet Turkey Fight

my pet turkey decided to pick a fight !!! My decoy lost!

The Breeding Cycle of Wild Turkeys

Learn the Breeding Cycle of a Wild Turkey

As hunters, it is impossible to know what a gobbler is thinking, but we do have a good idea about what his motives are during the spring.
Quite simply - women.  During the rest of the year a gobbler's movements will be determined, in large part, by his food supply. As the days grow longer, they turn their attention toward more important things like breeding hens. Learning how a gobbler reacts to hens can help you improve your chances of tagging a longbeard this spring.
In principle, spring turkey hunting is not difficult. Find a gobbling bird in the predawn darkness and set up nearby. As the sun starts to break the horizon, let out a few hen yelps and sit at the ready. When the bird flies down and walks within 30 yards, take him.
In the woods, however, it doesn't always work that way. Oftentimes, the trick to turkey hunting is finding the right bird at the right time in the right place. The same bird that ignored your calls in the morning may run you over later that afternoon.
Here are a few general tips about turkey behavior in the spring:

• Gobbling is used to bring hens to the gobbler. Remember that you are trying to do the opposite when you are turkey hunting. Be patient and adjust your calling intensity to suit his mood. You will typically want to try and get him fired up.
  
• Strutting is a close-range technique to attract hens to the gobbler.
  
• Dominant toms usually gobble more than subordinate ones.
  
• Jakes do gobble and strut. However, they are often afraid to, especially later in the spring after a dominant bird has whipped them a few times. Just because the spring woods are quiet doesn't mean there aren't any turkeys around.
  
• Gobblers are usually surrounded with hens early in the morning. Toward midmorning, the hens will often leave them to sit their nests. The time to be there is when a old tom is alone. Did you ever have a vocal bird at predawn working your calls only to have the bird shut up when he flew off the roost? It is probably no surprise, but he most likely had hens all around him.
  
• Gobblers still mate in the rain — they just don't gobble as much or you can't hear them as much due to the noise. There is no reason why hunting rainy-day gobblers can't be successful. Look for birds in fields and pastures when it is raining.
  
• A common misconception is that toms sometimes just get tired of gobbling and shut up later in the season. This is not true. Gobbling will peak just before hens are ready to breed (usually just before your hunting season starts) and again after most hens have started to incubate their eggs (usually toward the middle to later part of your season). Late-season hunting is a great time to find a lonesome tom.

Hunt Open Places for Turkeys

Open Places

Openings and fields are important to wild turkeys. In the summer, the majority of the turkey's food sources are found in open, sunny places. Newly hatched broods may be seen along the borders of fields and other openings, which provide the poults' primary meal of insects, as well as a variety of seeds and berries.
Grasses, berries and insects also are the primary foods for adult turkeys during this time of year, with plant material providing more than half of the summer diet for the turkey.
Fields are good places to view the attentive hen teach her brood the ways of the wild turkey. And when the following spring rolls around, they are also good places to set-up and wait for a feeding longbeard when the birds refuse to gobble.

How to Recognize the Dominant Gobbler

Pecking Order: Recognizing the Dominant Gobbler

Most of us would like to shoot the biggest, oldest gobbler on our property. The problem is that it can be hard to tell which gobbler this is until you actually have him in hand.
Fortunately, there are a few clues that may give a turkey hunter an advantage in picking out the dominant tom.
Most of the time, the biggest and/or oldest gobbler is likely to also be the dominant one within a flock. He can often be identified by the way he acts. When watching a small group of gobblers in the spring as they approach a hen or come to your calling, look for the longbeard that does all or most of the strutting. He will be the dominant bird nearly every time.
The other gobblers around the dominant bird will often strut, too, but usually they will not strut as long or as fully fanned. The boss gobbler may not come out of strut at all, his head is usually pulled in close to his body, and his fan is sticking straight up.
Another clue to identifying pecking order is to watch for attacks from the dominant tom toward other gobblers. The big boy may chase the others, or he may just turn their way, causing them to move off or break strut.
Gobbling behavior may also give clues to pecking order. Many times, but not always, the first turkey to gobble on a given morning is the dominant bird. However, on occasions when he doesn't gobble first, you may note that other gobbling turkeys suddenly fall silent when he finally sounds off. Another clue is that the hens may yelp back more often and with more excitement to the dominant bird.
Pay close attention to the turkeys' behavior, and you can take that top trophy we all dream about.

Food Plots and Honey Holes - Preparing for deer season

The idea of making big, elaborate food plots that require heavy equipment and hours of labor tends to intimidate landowners. But there's a much simpler and cheaper way to join the food plot craze. Grant Woods, one of America's top whitetail biologists and head of a deer management consulting firm, creates and hunts over what he calls hidey holes. "They're just small woods openings where I sweeten the deal in a place where deer already like to go--like putting ketchup and mustard on a hot dog."
These micro food plots require few tools: a small sprayer with Roundup herbicide, one bag each of lime and fertilizer, a rake or a leaf blower, and some seed. Building the plot is simple, and you can backpack in everything you need in a trip or two.
THE PERFECT SPOT Think small. A quarter acre is as big as you'll want to go. "An excellent place is around the trunk of a big, old tree that's been lightning-struck or killed by gypsy moths," Woods says. "Suddenly there's an opening in the canopy where sun hits the ground for a good part of the day." Log landings (cleared areas where loggers have piled timber), woods roads, and natural openings also work.
Woods preps the seedbed by spraying grass or weeds with Roundup. "Woody brush will have to be girdled [the bark scarred with a knife or hatchet] first," he says. "But don't go through the headache of clearing out dead trees--just work around them. You're not creating a field here."
If leaf litter is all that covers the ground, Woods uses a gas-powered blower to remove leaves and sticks for maximum soil-to-seed contact. "A leaf blower is one of the handiest tools a food-plotter can have. Not only does it do a beautiful job of clearing out the plot itself, but it's also great for creating an entry and exit trail to your stand." If you don't have one, use a steel-tined garden rake instead.
With the debris gone, Woods applies pelletized lime and fertilizer (which breaks down more quickly than the powdered variety) with a handheld spreader. "This is an essential step," he stresses. "Nearly all woodland soils are so acidic that even if plants grow, they'll taste bitter to deer. So I spread as much lime and fertilizer as I can haul in a couple of trips."
TASTY TREATS Finally, broadcast the seed on top of the lime and fertilizer. Deciding what--and when--to plant is critical. "You have a very specific mission: having that plot at peak palatability to deer when conditions are right for you," Woods says. "Seed it too early, and deer can wipe out a plot before you hunt it."
In most areas you'll be planting about three weeks before the opening of bow season, then hunting the site a limited number of times, depending on the crop. You need to consider both its attractiveness and its durability. Deer love peas, for example, but can eat an entire plot in about a week. Clover also draws whitetails and will buy you several more days, depending on the population density. Brassica blends are another favorite, but they mature at different times and give you maybe a month to six weeks.
It takes about four hours to establish a micro plot, according to Woods. "Some folks say that given the little time you can hunt one, you'd be better off just scouting more. That's true if you have exclusive access to a large tract. But if you're hunting only a small acreage or sharing land with other hunters, hidey holes provide an edge that's worth the time."

2012 Turkey Outlook for Missouri

 

A Good Hatch in 2011 Should Increase Turkey Numbers Throughout Missouri

In 2011, relatively dry conditions and an emergence of periodical cicadas that provided protein-rich food for nesting hens and growing poults helped Missouri’s turkey population experience its best hatch in nearly a decade. Brood-survey results indicated that 2011’s hatch was 42 percent above the previous five-year average. An especially notable improvement occurred in northeast Missouri where production was more than double the five-year average. In many parts of the state, hunters have already noticed the difference a good year of production can make. Because hatch success drives changes in turkey abundance, several more years of good production would bolster the number of turkeys in the Show-Me State.

Transitional times

Missouri’s turkey population has undergone a transition during the past several decades. When the population was expanding rapidly in the 1970s and 80s, people often reported seeing flocks of turkeys that numbered in the hundreds. During this time, production was high because turkeys were taking advantage of vacant, prime habitat.
But, a basic ecological principle eventually caught up with Missouri’s turkeys. As wildlife populations grow, factors that limit their size begin to exert an ever-greater influence. Habitats become crowded, predators find easier pickings (which leads to more predators), and diseases spread quicker. By increasing deaths, decreasing production, or doing both, each limiting factor helps put the brakes on an expanding population. Missouri’s wild turkeys were no exception. Although the 2011 hatch should certainly increase turkey numbers, and the potential for continued population growth exists, it’s unlikely turkey numbers will increase to the peaks seen in the 1980s. Many factors that affect wild turkey abundance have changed over the past several decades. As a result, hunters should expect year-to-year fluctuations in turkey numbers that stem from variations in reproductive success.
Wild turkey populations are dynamic. With persistently poor spring weather—at least from a turkey’s standpoint—turkey numbers can be expected to decline. With several years of good weather and production, turkey numbers can rebound. Thus, a sizable turkey population can occur in the same area where numbers were down just a few years earlier. Although Missouri’s wild turkey population is not likely to reach the levels observed in the 1980s, a few more years of good spring weather and production should lead to a substantial increase in the number of turkeys on the landscape.

A comprehensive approach to wild turkey management

comprehensive approach to manage Missouri’s turkey population. In addition to analyzing harvest data, turkey brood surveys and archer wild turkey observation surveys are conducted each year to monitor population trends. Thousands of hunters also are surveyed annually to obtain data on hunter opinions, success and satisfaction. Each year, turkey hunting regulations are reviewed by both the Department’s Regulations Committee and the Conservation Commission. Decisions are based upon both science and public input. The Department’s approach to harvest management strikes a balance between providing opportunities for hunters to enjoy the resource and ensuring harvest is within the limits of what the turkey population can sustain.
The Department sets spring turkey season to begin after most hen turkeys have already mated. Because of this and the fact that male turkeys represent 99 percent of the harvest, spring hunting is not a limiting factor on population growth.
Although a portion of the fall harvest consists of female turkeys, fall hunting has not led to declining turkey numbers. Fall hunters currently harvest only a small percentage of the turkey population. The 2011 fall firearms harvest of just over 7,000 turkeys represents less than 2 percent of the state’s turkey population.

Missouri’s wild turkey population remains strong

Although a good hatch in 2011 will result in an abundance of jakes in 2012, the poor hatches of 2007–2010 will continue to make finding mature gobblers more challenging than in past years. Missouri is still widely recognized as offering some of the nation’s best turkey hunting. Each year, Missouri’s turkey harvest and hunter success rates are among the highest in the country. Missouri’s wild turkey population remains strong, and although this year’s harvest is not likely to top harvests of the early 2000s, hunters can expect great hunting opportunities during the 2012 spring season.