By Daryl Bauer, Fisheries Outreach Program Manager
Spring turkeys have been occupying most of my thoughts and time in the past couple of weeks. I have been trying to spend as much time as possible in the field hunting.
Now, when I say “hunting” that includes the whole process. Yes, I look forward to finally getting a big tom in range, squeezing the trigger, and punching a tag. However, I believe that part of the hunt is just “the cherry on top”. The real hunt includes hours, days of preparation including especially scouting. My philosophy has always been to scout, scout, scout some more, and then scout.
I am old, and old school. I still believe the best scouting is done by actually putting boots on the ground and spending time in the field. Yes, there are modern tools that can aid the scouting efforts. My kids got me a trail camera a couple of years ago and I have had some fun playing with it.
My trail camera has been used primarily in the backyard to record foxes, raccoons, possums, rabbits and the odd neighborhood cat. In addition, the past couple of springs I have posted the trail camera in likely spots to capture an image or three of some spring turkeys.
After having the trail camera on post for a little over a week, I was eager to see what images I might have. I got excited when I saw there were over 130 exposures. Most of those were false alarms. Those exposures were caused by the wind moving grass or branches in front of the trail cam. In spite of that disappointment, my wife and I got a big laugh out of the very first photo.
That photo was the one you see featured at the beginning of this blog post. Looked like a tom walked right up to the camera to look right at the gadget. Looked to me like he was seeing “Whazzup?”
I plan to show him in the coming days. Stay tuned!
(Editor’s note: Yes, that is a tease!)
