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March in
Mississippi By: Tim D. Herald One of the
great things about hunting turkeys in Mississippi is that the Magnolia State’s
spring season runs from March 20 until May 1. Because of the lengthy season,
hunters can pursue gobblers in every stage of the breeding cycle and traverse
the countryside from the time the woods are reminiscent of winter until the
flora is in full foliage. Mississippi also allows hunters a generous bag of
three gobblers which further sweetens the pot. On my first
trip to Mississippi, I got to experience a lot of what the state has to offer. I
flew into Jackson with plans to hunt the last five days of March with long time
friend, and Clarksdale resident, Johnny Keesee. I had tried to work a spring
trip to Mississippi for a couple of years, but between busy schedules, Johnny
and I could never seem to find a date that worked. Keesee had plans to show me a
lot of his home state, and I was raring to go. My father joined me on this
adventure, but he was only able to hunt for three days. After picking
up our luggage and stopping for licenses, we drove a couple more hours to Mount
Ariat, a club that Johnny belongs to near Natchez in the extreme southwest part
of the state. We settled into a rustic cabin, and Johnny showed Dad and me a map
of the property. He pointed out a remote section of the property and told me
that if I was willing to make the long hike in before light, the area almost
always held gobblers. After Johnny gave us a few more particulars, we formed a
game plan and hit the sack. When I
stepped outside the next morning, I almost went into shock. The sky was clear as
a bell and the temperature was a lowly thirty degrees. It had been in the low
eighties for nearly a week. Thus the birds shut down, and the only gobble I
heard that day sounded like it was a mile away. Dad set up about 150 yards from
a bird on the roost, but the tom only gobbled five times and was with hens. The
next day I heard absolutely nothing, and Dad sneaked in too close to the bird
from the first day and spooked him from the roost. I decided that I would try to
help Dad kill his bird on the third morning because he was going home at noon. The
temperatures hadn’t improved on the third day, and we made the chilly
half-mile walk to our listening post under the light of a million bright stars.
Just after dawn the tom gobbled four times from about 150 yards away across a
small hollow. We heard him fly down, but again he was traveling with a group of
ladies. He never even acknowledged a single call that I made. I was
definitely thrown by the temperatures considering the time of year and how far
south we were, but the two things that surprised me the most about that part of
Mississippi were the topography and advanced succession of spring. I thought all
of the state was flat like the Delta, but the property we hunted was quite
hilly, with some very steep grades. The vegetation was surprisingly full with
the dogwood blooms on their way out. Of course that was in south Mississippi.
Dad went
home empty handed, and my chances were looking worse. The lows were supposed to
rise to around forty degrees, but rain was in the forecast for the following two
days. Johnny and I drove north to Winona where he leased about four hundred
acres. He showed me the basic layout of the property so I could find my way
around the next morning. He had a couple of important meetings the next day, so
I would be on my own. After the short tour, we drove the last hour and a half to
Johnny’s home in Clarksdale. The property
at Winona was a beautiful mix of rolling hills and pastures, but in stark
contrast to Mount Ariat, most of the trees were just budding. We had traveled
about 250 miles north, and spring was just beginning to shift into high gear.
The state’s diversity was really eye opening. My work was
cut out for me on the small farm in north central Mississippi because Johnny had
called up three longbeards and killed the dominant bird during the first week of
season. I knew there were at least a couple of gobblers left on the property,
but they had been given a thorough education in the consequences of running to a
call. I was
greeted by a steady drizzle the next morning, and as I do a few times each
spring, I questioned my sanity. The rain stopped about the time I got to the
farm, but I was about five minutes late. I stopped at the edge of a creek and
listened for gobbling that I expected to come from the woodlot on the opposite
side, but I didn’t hear anything except water dripping from trees. After I
tried my owl call in vain, I crossed the creek and entered the woodlot. I hadn’t
taken ten steps into the timber when I saw turkeys flying around about a hundred
yards in front of me. They were hopping and flying from tree to tree and
didn’t seem spooked. I sat down and began soft calling. Eventually more than
two dozen birds flew down, but though I stayed for over an hour, I never saw one
of them on the ground. I got up and walked quietly through the woods until I
could see a field bordered by the creek on one side. When I put up my
binoculars, I saw a fine longbeard strutting about two hundred yards from my
closest edge of the field. I belly
crawled up to within 25 yards of the field and eased to a sitting position
against a huge oak. I began yelping, and the tom turned and started toward me.
The field had two sections, and the turkey and I were in the small one. The
large section was separated from the smaller piece by a deep tree lined ditch
that ran into the creek. The creek bordered the entire length of both fields on
the north side. The two parcels were joined in one spot where a farm road
crossed the deep ditch, and it was from that point where two sleazy hens
emerged. They talked
pretty nasty to that old longbeard, and it didn’t take them long to lead him
away into some planted pines. I was disappointed, but at least I knew a mature
tom was still in the area. I stuck a couple of decoys out in the field and
settled back in to spend the rest of the morning blind calling. About 11:00,
I heard some clucking coming from behind me and to my left. The noises got
louder, and I finally turned my head ever so slowly toward the approaching
turkeys. I expected to see a couple of birds, but instead there was a whole
drove moving my way. I finally counted 34 turkeys feeding at distances of 20 to
75 yards from my setup. There was a small hill that’s base was only about 30
yards from me, and there were turkeys scattered from the top to the bottom of
the rise. With all
those birds, there was never a good time to move my gun, so I just took a chance
and swung it 90 degrees in one quick motion. I don’t know how, but I got by
undetected. There was a big bodied jake about thirty-five yards away, but I
didn’t see any other toms. Then I spotted a longbeard near the top of the
hill. He was feeding just like all the hens, and none of the birds acted like
they heard my calling. I pleaded on my Knight & Hale diaphragm hoping to get
some of them interested in my decoys in the field, but they steadily moved off
parallel to me. Finally, they disappeared into the planted pines where the other
birds had gone earlier. I hunted the
rest of that day and only saw two more hens.
The wind picked up, and rain fell occasionally. An hour or so before
dark, I called it a soggy day and drove back to Johnny’s house. When I got
there, the weather forecast called for rain all night and most of the next day.
I could only hunt until about 10:30 AM, so I figured my chances of tagging a
gobbler were slim. It rained
all night but stopped just before dawn. Johnny and I positioned ourselves
between the field where I had seen the gobbler and where the big flock of
turkeys had roosted two nights before. By a half an hour after sunrise we
hadn’t heard a gobble, so we went to the field to set up for a while. I
thought that with the woods dripping wet, a gobbler might want to get out in the
open to strut like the previous morning, but after an hour, we gave up. We then
moved around in the woods and made multiple setups. We would stay 30 to 40
minutes at each spot and go through a general calling routine. First we would
both start off calling very quietly and infrequently. Then we would turn up the
volume and call more often. Finally we got really aggressive and called a lot. A
couple of times we even mocked a fight. By 9:30 we still hadn’t seen or heard
a turkey, so I suggested that we go back and check the field. There was
nothing in the field but green grass, and Johnny said that maybe we should slip
up and glass the big section of the pasture. We carefully moved up to where the
farm road connected the two sections, and I spotted a turkey about 400 yards
away. Johnny and I both inspected the bird through binoculars, but it was too
far and too misty to tell if it was a gobbler. After a few minutes we saw birds that were much smaller and lighter in color. We then
knew that the first bird we had seen was a gobbler, but he was with hens. He was
also a long way away. The best
plan we could come up with was to get down in the creek, which had fifteen-foot
banks, and skirt the edge of the field to cut the distance. The birds were
slowly feeding in our direction, and we hoped to get just in front of them and
call enough to lure them close enough to the field edge for a shot. We took a
landmark approximately where the birds were feeding and climbed down into the
deep ditch that we slowly followed to where it emptied into the creek. The going
was tough because the narrow ditch had very steep banks and lots of fallen trees
and roots crossing the small channel. Once we got
to the main creek, we moved more easily. Trying to be as quiet as possible
walking through six inches of water, we hurried up to the end of a point of
trees we had marked on the creek bank. There was a small drainage there, and I
slowly climbed toward the field to take a look. I asked Johnny if he would trade
me guns because mine had a scope, and I was afraid I might pop up and have to
take a less than perfect shot. After the switch, I continued on up the bank. When I got
to the top I could see that there was a barbed-wire fence bordering the field.
There was a small ledge about four feet below the top of the bank, and I stopped
there and knelt down to catch my breath. Then I eased up to take a peak into the
field. When I stood up I was looking eye to eye with a hen. I shifted my eyes
and saw over twenty more. The close bird was only about fifteen yards away, and
she was suspicious. I purred a little on my Magnum Hen mouth call, and she
calmed down and began feeding again. I scanned the area and spotted the
longbeard about fifty yards away. He was
bringing up the rear of the flock in full strut off to my right, and there was a
patch of blackberry briars between us. I got my gun up, but the bird needed to
walk to the left about fifteen yards to give me a shot. I was afraid to call
much because there were so many hens so close, so I clucked and purred softly.
The flock was still moving slowly from right to left, and I figured if a hen
didn’t bust me, I was in a good spot. The old
gobbler was spitting and drumming every few steps, and he was truly majestic in
that misty green field. I counted 24 hens in his court as I waited on the
procession to move on. Finally the gobbler approached the end of the blackberry
briars, and I knocked the safety off. It seemed like it took him ten minutes to
take those last three steps, but finally he was in the clear. I squeezed the
trigger at 10:05 AM. The two
dozen hens hit the air in mass confusion, but the boss gobbler never twitched.
My 3½ inch load of Winchester Supreme 5’s really did its job. My Mississippi
tom had a 10-inch beard and sharp one inch spurs. After the walk back to the
truck, I had time to take a few photos with Johnny and still make my plane in
Jackson at noon. We had cut it close, but even though the weather had been
terrible and the turkeys didn’t gobble much, I took home a nice Mississippi
longbeard and a new understanding of the diversity that makes up the Magnolia
State. There are a lot of turkey hunting opportunities in Mississippi, and I
already have plans to go back. |
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