Education

With just two weekends left in the 2015 Nebraska Spring Turkey Hunting Season, we may be in the ninth inning, but there is still time to score on a gobbler.  In fact, some hunters will find the best hunts of the season in the final days this year. During the peak of breeding, gobblers often have all the hen-attention they want. We are now past this point and the boys are working harder to find willing hens.   Some are more …

It was text book spring turkey the morning my son and I guarded the woodland edge in southern Nebraska.  The first bird sounded off from the roost as the dark of night just started giving way that cloudy early morning.  From the sounds of it the turkey was not far off, either. We clucked back a soft reply and were quickly cutoff by the bird.  A little while later we tried some yelps and received another excited response.  Every call …

We have come a long ways with our decoys over the last ten years.   20 years ago we had a few hard body decoys and some foam critters that looked like a ginger bread cutout.  They worked but when things went south, you always felt like it could have been the decoy.  They just looked like lipstick on a pig! Over the last few years, manufacturers have begun to figure out that the key to decoys is posture.   …

Once in a great while we are blessed with a bird that challenges us to the core!  Trashtalker was that bird.  We met four years ago during a hunt with my daughter.  We had set up in a large hollow or draw that had not shown much activity in the past.  But then…it happened!  A bird sounded off not 100 yards away in the hollow.  It gobbled….roughly 70 times in 45 minutes!  Never met such a vocal bird.  We called …

If burning some powder, breaking some rock and flinging an arrow or two sounds like fun – and you are between the ages of 11-16 and graduated from Hunter Education – then you will want to check out the Day at the Range hosted this Saturday by the Seward County Izaak Walton League.  This FREE event, which starts at 9:00 a.m., takes place just south of Seward, NE and features shotgun, rifle, muzzleloader and archery ranges with instruction from certified …

Weather permitting I will be celebrating Arbor Day my traditional way by dressing up like a tree, making sexy, fowl noises and hoping to seduce the bird that takes center stage in the Nebraska woodlands each spring – the wild gobbler. To appropriately do so I will rise well before daylight, dream about a hearty breakfast while munching on stale granola bars and drinking bad coffee on the morning commute to the river bottom.  Once parked at the field entrance …

When I started chasing gobblers in the spring very few people used them. Now many feel naked if they walk into the field without a turkey decoy or three. I hunted several years before getting my first fake which was made of foam and looked more looney tunes than lonely hen.  But I put her to use with some great results. In the (over) two decades that have passed since then turkey decoys have changed – a lot.  As manufacturing …

It is hard to type on the ipad as I sit here strapped to my bow release.  But we are finally back in the spring turkey woods.  Aaaaah does it feel good to be  home.   I almost forgot how fickle these early season birds can be. Throughout the winter, turkeys have been grouped up into winter flocks.  Partly because resources are limited and partly because they had nothing better to do.  Now that we are entering the early phases …

There are few things as exhilarating as dueling with the king-of-spring – the wild turkey.  The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is here to help as educators and biologists answer your spring turkey hunting questions and provide strategy-insight with a live Twitter chat on Friday, April 10.  Follow along on Twitter from noon to 1 p.m. (CDT).  Tweet questions to @NEGameandParks using #NebraskaTurkey. If you are unable to participate during that time, tweet your question before the fun begins. Whether …

What I am about to tell you may be used by some to justify the next purchase of a rifle, bow or shotgun.   You may want to tape this to the refrigerator as soon as you read it.   But I guarantee you that, if you are a shooting sports enthusiast, hunter or angler, you will swell up with pride.  How the funding for the greates conservation model the world has ever known all came together to provide us the hunting, fishing and …