Wild Turkey Season Isn’t Over Thursday
These are not the best of times for turkeys, and things won’t get much easier on the birds after Thursday.
Hunting season in California lasts until Dec. 11.
But don’t waste your pity. Wild turkeys are far more wary than their domestic cousins, and their acute eyesight and hearing make them some of the most elusive game the state has to offer. Especially in the fall.
“The difficulty in fall hunting involves locating areas where winter flocks have gathered,” said Jesse Garcia of the Department of Fish and Game. “The flocks usually consist of a hen with her brood, or a small gang of gobblers. A group of turkeys may spend an entire winter in a single canyon no larger than a square mile.”
And don’t count on locating the tom by mimicking a hen.
“Adult toms are usually on their own and won’t respond to the hen calls that attract them during the spring breeding season,” Garcia said.
He did offer some tips for first-time hunters, however.
They include studying audio and visual tapes that demonstrate the proper calling techniques for fall; searching areas with good bird dogs and looking for places where acorns, pine nuts or dogwood trees are plentiful as well as depressed areas where water might collect.
“If you flush a flock, search the immediate area,” Garcia says. “Sometimes a stray bird or two will hold, like quail.”
Also, sit uphill from where the birds were and try the call.
“Flocks that have been dispersed will try to regroup, so they tend to respond well to the ‘kee-kee’ call, which is the call of the lost jake (young male); and an assembly call, or cluck, which is the call of a dominant hen,” Garcia said.
And those who don’t find their turkey don’t have to go home empty-handed. Wild pigs share some of the same habitat and the season on those hairy beasts--which can be taken by shotguns loaded with single slugs--is open year-round, Garcia said.
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If it’s hunting season, it’s poaching season as well.
But nobody could have expected a caper as brazen as that pulled off recently in Wyoming.
Three sets of trophy antlers were stolen from the “Stop Poaching” display at the Wyoming Game and Fish regional office in Casper.
The racks, from two mule deer and an elk, had been confiscated from poachers and put on display “to demonstrate the severity of Wyoming’s poaching problem,” the department said.
It has not given up hope of retrieving the antlers, though, and hopes to get some clues through its hot line. Assuming that nobody has stolen the phone.
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It has been more than three years since the toxic spill that all but killed the upper Sacramento River, and the healing continues, both natural and otherwise.
The Department of Fish and Game this month has scheduled a revegetation project that includes the planting of more than 2,000 willow and cottonwood trees along the 38-miles stretch of affected river, above Shasta Lake. The trees, it is hoped, will “refill gaps in the blue-ribbon trout stream’s riparian vegetation” that were created when a railroad tank car spilled an herbicide into the Sacramento at the Cantara Bridge.
Briefly
BAJA FISHING--The striped marlin bite off Cabo San Lucas did not develop as expected, but dorado and tuna have been keeping anglers busy. Some of the tuna have been pushing 100 pounds and the dorado are averaging 20 to 45 pounds. Noteworthy catches: three yellowfin tuna weighing 170, 153 and 130 pounds, aboard Gaviota V; a 172-pound striped marlin aboard Tracy Ann, and a 132-pound sailfish aboard Ruthless.
East Cape/La Paz: Dorado, tuna and sailfish are abundant throughout the region. “There’s so many dorado down here right now they don’t know what to do with them all,” said Bob Butler of the Fisherman’s Fleet in La Paz.
Loreto: There are still some dorado, but the prominent catch has been cabrilla, one of the tastiest fish in the sea. Yellowtail are beginning to show, but the fish are small, with few weighing more than 10 pounds.
MISCELLANY--The Long Beach Rod & Gun Club, in cooperation with the Long Beach Parks, Recreation and Marine Department, has scheduled its annual Kids Fishing Derby for Dec. 3 at El Dorado Park in Long Beach. Prizes will be awarded for largest fish--last year it was a nine-pound carp--and other categories. No cost other than $5 park entrance fee. Details: (310) 598-2403. . . . Prospective hunters can obtain their hunter-safety certificate in one day, thanks to a 10-hour class being offered Dec. 10 at Mike Raahauge’s Shooting Enterprise in Norco. Details: (800) 773-4868.
