[oucorry]

Ed Godfrey

Are the toms ready for love?
"They are getting real interested,” said Rod Smith, southwest region wildlife supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.



"They are still flocked up like sometimes they are early in April, but there will be some birds that will call right in, but a whole lot of them will still be with a bunch of hens.”

Oklahoma's month-long spring turkey season opens today, and at least hunters in northwest Oklahoma won't be hunting in the snow as they did last year on opening day.

In fact, last year's unusual spring weather led to an estimated 20 to 25 percent decline in last year's harvest. Turkey hunters want sunny days, not snowy ones.

"If it is cloudy and overcast, the gobblers just won't go out in the field and strut,” said Bill Decker, a veteran turkey hunter from Oklahoma City. "If you got warm sunshine, they will feel like it.”

Another experienced turkey hunter, Leon Mixer of Edmond, agrees.

"Normally, even if you've got a real cold morning but it's sunny, the toms are real responsive to calls,” he said. "Turkeys in general will be extremely vocal on cold mornings as long as the sun is out.”

Turkey hunting has become Oklahoma's second-most popular hunting season, only behind the deer gun season.

The simple reason for this is wild turkeys are everywhere. The population is such that hunters in all 77 counties have a decent chance to harvest a gobbler.

State wildlife officials said last summer's flooding did not hurt the overall turkey population like they had feared.

Even areas that received heavy rain still produced a late-season hatch of birds, Smith

Trying to lure a gobbler away from a hen during the spring mating season is not an easy thing to do when the gobblers are, as they say, "henned up.”

"You can't call a tom away from 20 or 30 hens,” Decker said. "It just ain't going to happen.”

Typically, as the hunting season begins, the toms and hens will be together and stay together until the hen goes to nest.

"It seems like in the early part of the season they are tougher to call,” said Leon Mixer of Edmond, another experienced turkey hunter. "Once those hens start busting up and start to nest, then them ole' gobblers go off and become a whole lot more receptive to the calls.”

Decker begins the season by using by strking his brass and slate calls to talk to the toms. Later in the season, he shifts the conversation to the hens.

"An ole' hen sound, a raspy type call, will attract younger hens to come to her, to rejoin her. When they do, the toms will follow.”

Hunters should expect mixed results with calling early in the season, Smith said.

"Some birds will work good and others won't,” he said.

Gobblers are generally more receptive to calling later in the season but some birds, especially those on public lands that receive heavy hunting pressure, can get call shy.

Fooling a tom into thinking a lonesome hen awaits depends on the gobbler's mood, Decker said.

"If a tom is not 100 percent sure that's what he was wants to do, you got a lot more work to do,” Decker said. "If he is red hot with spring fever, you won't have to do much at all to make it happen.”