Not only are your calls vital to your success as a turkey hunter, they can also be hand-crafted works of art. But they certainly take their share of abuse season after season, especially when you’re a run-and-gun hunter putting them through their paces in a variety of environments and weather conditions. Taking the time to care for and maintain your calls can keep them bringing in gobblers and sounding great season after season. Here are some care tips for the variety of calls you keep in your vest:
Read the ArticleIf Mother Nature stays on our side, British Columbia will have an unprecedented morel mushroom bonanza from late May until the end of June. Morel mushrooms are a prized delicacy in restaurants and kitchens worldwide. By the end of last year, 1,600 wildfires ravaged 870,000 hectares of land because of climate change, decades of fire suppression and unprecedented temperatures. In the ashes of wildfires or other natural areas impacted by intense burning, bumper crops of morel mushrooms can grow—although it’s never a guarantee.
I didn’t understand the fanaticism surrounding turkeys until I was in the thick of it. In fairness to myself, I could hardly be blamed. I spend most of my time in a part of the country with such decrepit turkey numbers that NWTF population maps just show a white void when it comes to my stomping grounds. I don’t see turkeys when I deer hunt, rarely find feathers, and until last year, when I spent a couple of weeks pursuing the primeval beasts, I had never heard a gobble outside of a barnyard environment.
The simpler a recipe is the more crucial it is to use great ingredients. You cant cover up inferior ingredients through the cooking process. For a breakfast sandwich the key components are always your bun and whatever is the main filler in the sandwich. A breakfast sandwich is most often filled with soft ingredients so having a hard bun will likely end with the ingredients being pushed out the other side of the bun as you eat it.
Where I reside in Montana, winter days are short, menacingly dark, with snow storms frequently followed by rain; weather that is unappealing to most. As the spring days grow longer, I am drawn to spend more time outside enjoying the extra hours of the season. Everything about spring turns my thoughts to adventures in the mountains. Witnessing the mountains emerging from winter while engaged in a hunt is something I never grow tired of. The varied thrush is a bird I often hear during long, drawn-out evening glassing sessions in the mountains. With their first calls echoing through dense stands of old growth timber, and the scents of a forest gradually rewarming, it’s easy to fall in love with spring black bear hunting.
To find sheds you must search where the bull elk spend their winter and spring. The most effective way to find these areas is to scout in the winter. In December bulls will group up in bachelor herds and move to their winter range. Depending on the area and the severity of weather, this move could be 1 mile or 100. Bulls will then spend the winter months feeding on big south facing, wind swept slopes where feed is ample and not buried too deep under the snow. Some of these slopes can be seen from roads. Others you'll have to hike in to scout. Glass these slopes from a far. If you find bulls they'll likely shed near there come spring.
The Florida woods that my family has called home for six generations are the closest thing the United States has to a jungle. They’re hot, wet, muggy, and full of everything that likes to bite—from mosquitoes, to water moccasins, rattlesnakes, gators and everything in between.
After a successful hunt putting in the miles chasing gobblers, there are few things better than getting that wild turkey on the grill and sharing it with friends and family. This bacon, guac, and Swiss wild turkey smash burger has long been a favorite of the Halloran family. It’s pretty simple to make, but has some unique flair to differentiate it from your same-old-same-old burger.
Not only are your calls vital to your success as a turkey hunter, they can also be hand-crafted works of art. But they certainly take their share of abuse season after season, especially when you’re a run-and-gun hunter putting them through their paces in a variety of environments and weather conditions. Taking the time to care for and maintain your calls can keep them bringing in gobblers and sounding great season after season. Here are some care tips for the variety of calls you keep in your vest:
When David Halloran takes a trip to the lumber yard, the employees there think he’s crazy. Whether he’s looking at a domestic wood like maple or something exotic like purpleheart, David lifts, prods and examines each and every rough-cut piece, analyzing things like density and grain. He’s looking for the little things, the tiny details that other people just can’t see.
When cooking at basecamp, simple one-pot cooking is the way to go. Nothing better than a hearty stew on a chilled desert night after chasing ibex all day in the sun.
Peanut or groundnut stew is a popular dish found in many West African countries with countless regional variations. You’ll find differences in preparations and the accompanying starch (rice, yams, fufu etc), but most versions will feature a savory, hearty stew that includes tomatoes, peppers, peanuts and some type of meat. My version uses venison, in particular the elk I got while hunting in Utah. This is a simple to put together, one pot meal, fitting for a cold day at the end of winter. Perfect for sharing with friends and family as a vehicle to relive stories about and lessons learned from the hunt.
My own inadequacies lay manifest as I postholed up the snow covered ridge. Every labored breath a stark reminder of the wrong turns I had taken the year before. All of the mornings I had chosen to silence my alarm and stay in the warm, cocooning, opulence of my blankets. The extra helpings. The well intentioned declarations to start over when the next Monday came. They all hit me like a punch to the gut as I willed my diaphragm to rise and fall and begged for the breath that would offer some relief, some respite from the burn of lactic acid and the ache of muscles atrophied from too little use.
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