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It was “up in the morning” as they say in turkey hunting lingo. The daylight din of activity had ebbed so I was trolling along, stopping periodically to belt out a few yelps on my box call when I got a response, though not one I’d hoped for. It was perhaps the worst rendition of a hen turkey I’d ever heard, and I chuckled to myself thinking, “This guy will never kill a turkey.” Hoping to avoid the other hunter I moved off a way before calling again, and getting the same scratchy, awkward

One of the most common mistakes in food plot plantings and farming for wildlife is improper timing relative to the crop and the region. For example, the growing period for warm season annuals can vary pretty widely across the nation. The northernmost part of the states and on into Canada could have as little as four to five months of temperatures conducive to growing spring/summer crops. This is all dependent on how quickly the winter snow melts and soil temperatures rise as well as when the

Winter Flock Gatherings Huge winter flocks (think deer “yarding”) are not uncommon in colder climes. I watched as a Kentucky flock of more than 150 roosted birds scattered across a hardwood hillside as they cackled and glided into a protected valley below. What an incredible and noisy affair. The same occurred in Tennessee and Iowa. The image here shows part of a large Alabama winter flock of 66 birds. What’s with these big turkey rendezvous? There was forage available, but with all the

Many gamekeepers try to take a holistic approach to our properties, wildlife management and the arrangement of habitats we all strive to improve. In the upper Great Plains that I consider to be “my neck of the woods,” the single most limiting factor is often cover. Since the late 1800s when settlers first homesteaded the great prairie, the horse-drawn moldboard plow and generations of later farming practices all but wiped out what once was a sea of tall and short- prairie grass from central

Managing duck Impoundments requires a year-round cycle of monitoring, with the primary goal of growing a food crop and then flooding it. The fastest way to get ready to plant after duck season is to drain all the water from the impoundment, usually beginning on the first day after duck season ends. The process of draining takes time, because the wet ground will also need time to dry out before any kind of equipment can operate in the impoundment. However, anyone watching an impoundment after the

We’ve all heard statements like, “A whitetail ‘lives’ by its nose.” It’s true! To be able to identify another deer or the threat of a human or other predator from just a miniscule, molecular whiff of odor would probably make most humans freak out. The olfactory portion of a whitetail’s brain is said to be approximately 1,000 times larger than a human’s! That’s difficult for most humans to even comprehend. So, knowing that a whitetail's number one guard is its extremely responsive sense of smell

Getting ducks within reach of your shotgun can be tough. Everything has to go just right to get ducks to drop their feet and glide into your decoys. More times than not, something will go wrong. The slightest flaw in your presentation will send ducks back in the sky and headed south. There’s a number of things that tend to flare ducks from your hide, but we’ve narrowed down some of the best of the worst. Here are 10 reasons ducks flare from your blind. 1. You Call Too Much Some say it’s not

Decoys are visual aids used to draw attention, give birds and animals a reason to close the distance, and to add realism to a hunting ambush setup. Decoy placement, posture and movement (or lack of motion) can all be important. When hunting waterfowl, positioning of your decoys in relation to the hunters’ locations and considering the wind speed and direction is vital for consistent success. As migrating birds move south, they look to flock with other birds. We hope that our fake offering of

A few years ago a friend called and asked me about his idea of attracting more ducks to his farm. “All we need to do is build a levee across that little slough near Pine Creek,” he said. Drawing more mallards to his land sounded like a good idea to me, but I told him there may be a hoop or two to jump through. What he didn’t know was that you cannot dam or block a creek that is marked on a USGS map as a “blue line stream.” That’s because any work occurring in the floodplain of a stream

Planting during the late summer and early fall for the upcoming hunting season is one of my favorite times of the year. The anticipation of hunting trips and hopeful encounters with the deer we have been watching all summer is at its peak. I really try to encourage hunters to prepare and plan now so that busy time of year goes smoothly and you can eliminate some surprises that might otherwise derail a planting season. After years of answering questions for other gamekeepers, it is becoming