If a Texas turkey hunter imagined the perfect spring hunting season, it almost certainly would look a lot like this one.

"It would be hard to come up with a better situation than the one a lot of people are seeing this year," said Jason Hardin, who heads turkey programs for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's wildlife division. "It's still early in the season, but, so far, just about everything I've seen and heard has been very positive for turkeys and turkey hunters."

That promises to continue through the remainder of the 2017 spring Rio Grande season, which runs through April 30 in Texas' 54-county South Zone and a 10-county areas of the Post Oak Savannah and through May 14 in the 101-county North Zone.

The state's Rio Grande turkey population is riding the peak of what appears to be a still-building wave. Three consecutive years of good-to-great nesting success have boosted the state's turkey numbers, already the largest in the nation, to highs not seen for decades in some areas.

A large number of those birds are the product of a 2015 nesting season that was above average in almost all of the state and spectacularly successful in many areas. And 2-year-old gobblers - birds entering their first mating season as adults - are a turkey hunter's dream. Charged by testosterone and unfettered by the wariness that comes with experience, 2-year-olds are brash, loud, aggressive and much more vulnerable to the blandishments of a hunter using a call to offer yelps, clucks and purrs imitating a potentially cooperative hen.

Two-year-old gobblers' aggressiveness - rashness - in pursuing prospective mates can make even novice turkey hunters believe they're world-class callers. That aggressiveness sometimes rubs off on older, long-bearded gobblers as competition for available hens increases.

"There's a tremendous number of 2-year-old birds out there, this season," Hardin said. "That's really working to the benefit of hunters."

Bob Linder can testify to the validity of both points.

Hunting a property in Brooks County during the opening week of the South Zone season, Linder said it took less than an hour to call in and bag an adult gobbler.

Big numbers

Over the next couple of days, Linder, a veteran turkey hunter, world-class turkey caller and long-time officer in the National Wild Turkey Federation conservation organization, traded his shotgun for a camera and called in a total of 19 gobblers. The birds, he said, were "running to the call," not carefully and slowly making their way to what they thought was a hen.

" I saw more 2-year-old gobblers than I've ever seen," Linder said, adding he noted a fair number of jakes (year-old, sub-adult gobblers), indicating the 2016 hatch was at least average or above average.

"This is the best (spring turkey season) in 15-plus years, in my opinion," Linder said. "Enjoy this year. It's awesome."
Bill Crowell echoes Linder's assessment of Texas 2017 spring turkey season. Crowell, a longtime turkey hunter whose Humble-based Crowell Custom Calls handcrafts turkey calls, has hunted multiple areas of Texas this season and has been hugely impressed with what he has seen and heard from other Texas turkey hunters.

On a hunt in LaSalle County on opening day of the South Zone season, Crowell "worked" more than a dozen gobblers and pulled a total of 10 birds to his decoys.

"It was the single best day of turkey hunting I've ever had in Texas," said Crowell, who took a 3-year-or-older gobbler (20 pounds, 11-inch beard, 1.25-inch spurs) then just called in birds to photograph. "There were so many birds, and they were working to calls really good."

'Really aggressive'

He experienced similar results on a hunt near Junction in the Texas Hill Country.

"There are just worlds of birds out there, and they're really aggressive," Crowell said.

How aggressive?

Crowell said he had an adult gobbler attack and savage one of his decoys, spurring and attacking it so violently that it broke the stake holing the decoy in the ground and punctured it multiple times.

"That decoy will never hold air, again," he laughed.

Crowell said he's gotten multiple reports from hunters who use his calls, all of them invariably gushing over how many birds they've heard or see and how willing to work the birds have been.

"It's just looking like one of the best seasons in years," Crowell said.

Hardin said he's experienced and heard the same over the first couple of weeks of the season.

"It's been a good season, so far," he said. "I'm not hearing any complaints."

And it could get better as the birds' nesting and incubation season begins.

Some hunters reported having trouble calling gobblers early in the day, when dominant birds have been surrounded by their harems of hens. These "henned up" gobblers have ignored calls, opting to stick with the hens they've already attracted rather than go looking for a single unseen hen.

But with nesting season beginning in earnest, those hens are leaving gobblers by midmorning, wandering off to build nests or lay the single egg they lay each day until their clutch is completed. Nesting chronology varies across the state, Hardin said, but it generally begins around the first week of April in much of Texas' Rio Grande turkey range.

Some of the best success hunters have in calling mature gobblers is coming from mid-morning through early afternoon, after hens have abandoned their gobblers for nesting duties leaving mating-minded gobblers looking for company, said Hardin and Crowell.

"Don't give up if you can't get a bird to work early in the morning," Crowell said. "Mid-morning can be the best time to get a bird to answer you and work."

'A season to remember'

Finding unattached and "workable" gobblers will likely become easier as the season wears on and hens begin spending less time hanging with gobblers and more time incubating eggs.

"A lot of the time, some of the best hunting happens later in the season, when there are fewer hens available to gobblers," Hardin said.
And nesting effort should be strong this year, he added. A mild winter and regular rains have resulted in outstanding habitat conditions in much of the state. An abundance of forage has allowed hens to build the body condition needed for the physical rigors of egg production and nesting. And an early spring and rain-fueled flush of grasses and other vegetation are providing a bounty of nesting cover, perhaps presaging another good year of nesting success.

That plenitude of plants has been both a blessing and curse to some turkey hunters, Hardin said. Turkeys prefer fairly open areas with ground cover low enough they can see approaching dangers. The birds avoid areas where grass or other ground vegetation limits their vision. This spring, many of the fields and senderos normally used by turkeys (and turkey hunters) are too rank and high for the birds to feel comfortable.

"With the mild weather and the rain we've had, a lot of senderos and pipelines and fields are knee-high or higher in grasses," Hardin said. "Turkeys just don't feel comfortable in those areas."

But that can work to hunters' advantage, forcing birds to travel along the relatively limited open areas such as caliche roads or other areas with little or no view-obstructing cover, he said.

"The birds are going to travel along and use areas where they can see," Hardin said. "If you can set up in those areas, you're improving your odds."

With Texas' strong turkey population, an abundance of 2-year-old gobblers, the onset of a strong mating and nesting effort, those odds already are stacked in turkey hunters favor.

"This is going to be a season to remember," Bill Crowell said.

It already is.

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