Kentucky’s spring turkey season opens in April, and if you want to have a decent chance of bagging a bird, it would be a good idea to get into the woods now and look around.
You can make preseason turkey scouting as complex as you like, but all that’s really needed is a decent pair of binoculars and the willingness to get up early. Get out and look and listen for birds. (This can also be done at dusk, but first light provides a better sense of when and where birds come off the roost.) Occasionally, blind luck follows turkey hunters, but generally, it’s tough to bag a bird if you don’t know where they are.
One thing you cannot legally do while preseason prowling for turkeys is sound like a turkey, although it’s OK to sound like other critters. So seriously do wildlife officials take this restriction that it is etched in the Kentucky state hunting regulations:
“A person shall not mimic the sound of a turkey in an area open to turkey hunting and where turkeys are reasonably expected to be present from March 1 until the opening of the youth-only turkey season, and from the close of the youth-only turkey season until the opening of the state-wide turkey season. However, locating turkeys with an owl, crow, coyote, or woodpecker call is permitted when scouting.”
For a full review of the state spring turkey hunting regulations, visit fw.ky.gov/Hunt/Pages/Spring-Turkey-Hunting.aspx.
There are other scouting strategies that springtime gobbler seekers can and should employ. My friend and colleague Scott Bestul, who plies his trade at Field & Stream, has details. Learn all about them at fieldandstream.com/story/hunting/how-to-scout-for-spring-turkeys.
Bestul’s tips are on target, and at various times, I have employed each (except the trail cam approach) but, unfortunately, to little avail. That’s not because the advice is unsound. It’s because I’m not a good turkey hunter.
I take no shame in this. Repeated attempts have only reinforced that I am the poster child for “THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO IN THE TURKEY WOODS.” I fidget. I change locations. I call too much. I call too loudly. I don’t call enough. My calling sounds like a critter in pain. I mess with my eyeglasses. I lack patience. I adjust my cap. My attention waxes and wanes. I touch my nose. I wonder if crappie are biting. The cumulation of this is that a critter with a brain the size of a walnut regularly defeats me. Draw your own conclusions.
I typically hunt alone but occasionally enter the woods with a friend or colleague, many of whom are skilled and accomplished turkey hunters and gladly offer advice. And although the advice is sound, it rarely helps. Several years ago, I found myself in the woods one warm, pre-dawn April morning with a guide. He was a few years older than I, widely experienced, and deeply skilled in the ways of the turkey woods. We were hunting in Muhlenberg County, which has long been one of Kentucky’s lodestone turkey producers. Last spring, Muhlenberg County hunters tagged 622 birds—the highest number of any county. “We need to get in the woods early,” he had said. We met in Central City at 4:30 a.m.
We were set up well before sunrise in a patch of gently rolling timber. Just as it was getting light enough to see, we heard a gobble. We quickly took our positions. I sat against a tree, 12-gauge at the ready. My guide crouched behind by my left shoulder, occasionally calling so seductively that no gobbler could possibly resist. The bird appeared at the top of the ridge, darted toward us at startling speed, and then suddenly stopped. I gazed down the rib of the shotgun trying to decide if it was within range. I decided it was. Then, it wasn’t. The bird vanished, racing away so quickly that it might never have been there.
I remained motionless hoping, perhaps from my inexperience, that the bird would return.
The guide stood up, clearly displeased with the turn of events.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You moved.”
“I didn’t move.”
“You moved. Let’s go.”
“Go?”
His disgust was almost palpable.
“Yeah. We’re done. At least, I’m done.”
I was convinced I had not moved and said so. But given my track record since, I probably had.
• • •
Kentucky was once nearly devoid of turkeys. In 1978, the statewide flock was estimated to be about 2,400 birds. That year, hunters killed 44 turkeys. In the 2021 spring season, hunters tagged 29,221. Statewide, bird numbers are more than 200,000.
The 2022 Kentucky spring 23-day turkey season opens April 16 and runs through May 8. The season bag limit is two bearded birds, but only one bird can be taken per day. Youngsters get the first shot during the two-day youth season, which, by statute, is the first weekend of April. This year, that is April 2-3.
Take a kid hunting. It will be good for them, good for the sport, and good for you.