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CSUS journalism instructor and hunter Holly A. Heyser with a prize bird.
"We heard gobbling this morning."
The reaction was immediate and visceral: It's time.
While almost every other form of hunting in California has ended by this time of year, March 28 heralds the arrival of California's encore season: the spring turkey hunt.
Any legal game at this time of year would get hunters a little wound up. Once you've become addicted to the challenge of putting meat on the table the hard way, going to the grocery store just isn't the same.
But there's something about turkeys that winds us even tighter. What is it?
"Call and response," said my friend Phillip Loughlin, a Bay Area hunting blogger and occasional turkey-hunting guide, invoking the metaphor of perhaps the most compelling style of sermon there is. And he's right.
The essence of spring turkey hunting is using calls to sound like a lonesome hen and lure gobblers away from their harems and into your range. You call. A tom gobbles in the distance. You call again. He responds again, this time a little closer, making the hair on your arms stand up. You keep at it until he struts into range, tail fanned out, chest puffed up, his coarse, hairy-looking beard jutting from his chest. And then you dispatch him.
Everywhere and nowhere
At least that's the fantasy we chase. The reality is that turkey hunting is not a slam-dunk. According to surveys by the state Department of Fish and Game, hunters bag only one turkey for every five days of hunting in the spring. While other game birds such as ducks, geese, pheasants and doves are harvested in the hundreds of thousands each year, California hunters bag only about 25,000 wild turkeys annually.
This might surprise the casual observer. Anyone who spends any time on the American River parkway has probably spotted wild turkeys. Although they are relatively recent transplants to the state – first introduced in 1877 on Santa Cruz Island – they have thrived in prime habitat all over California. They like places with open grass for feeding and trees for roosting.
"They're everywhere," said Neal Kolesar, assistant hunting manager and the resident turkey hunting expert at Sportsman's Warehouse in Rocklin. "But just because they're there doesn't mean you're going to get them."
For starters, turkeys have fantastic eyesight and can detect minor movements at a substantial distance. Kolesar recalled a hunt with his father once at the state-operated Spenceville Wildlife Area. When they saw turkeys 100 yards off, his dad moved his foot just a few inches to set up for the shot, and that was it – the birds took off.
Ryan Mathis, regional wildlife biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation, says that turkeys' eyesight and hearing are their best defenses. "When I'm giving turkey-hunting seminars, I tell people the best camo is to sit still."
That, of course, is easier said than done – particularly if your gun isn't pointed in the right direction when the gobbler comes into sight, as I learned while hunting at our friends' Napa vineyard last spring.
Tension builds: Ready?
I sat with my back pressed against the trunk of a scrub oak, listened as the sounds of gobbling kept moving closer to me, and kept my shotgun raised and pointed where I thought the birds would appear. Finally I saw it - that gnarled red head bobbing through the grass out in front of me.
The turkey ambled closer, just 20 yards away – check! A perfect distance. He turned sideways and showed me the outline of his scraggly beard – check! It's got to have a beard to be legal game in the spring.
But my gun was not pointed in the right direction. My hair was in my eyes. The hood of my jacket had twisted and obscured my field of vision. And if I moved to fix any of that, he'd bolt and be out of range before I could shoot.
Wild turkeys roost near El Dorado.
A tom struts near Folsom.
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