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2022 Turkey Hunting Thread

had my tail fan and wings drying outside like a real dummy. bye bye! sucks!!!! i was gonna use em to make a strutting jake decoy. Wings are gone and the tail fan is spread all over the lawn. I kept forgeting to bring them into the garage. didnt have borax yet. of course the morning after i bought some all the parts are shredded.
I feel your pain brother! I've had this happen before!!! Sorry you lost your fan and wings though.
 
Baking soda will work in a pinch if you get caught without borax.
salt works fine too. laziness is my only real excuse. you reap what you sow. i got one more chance at a tom before season is over. i promised my wife we could go to SC to visit friends and this past saturday it was heavy rain and 20 mph winds nonstop. i might sneak out of work sometime this week but if i actually get one shes gonna know i wasnt working lol. ive got a similar situation this season as woodsdog2. I had a great flock of toms on the property all year and they have been skirting it the whole season. last thurs was the first hunt i had toms actually roost on the property. my second hunt of the season i had one walk in but its been tough. i wish i still had my old lease. We shot 4 toms in 5 hunts and there was plenty left at the end of the season. never had time to get out to the mountains and hunt public this year because of the baby. cant wait til i can just bring him with me haha
 
Baking soda will work in a pinch if you get caught without borax.
I also take the time to really cut as much tissue off of the tail fan butt and wing buts as possible but not so much that they don't hold together anymore. With much less "meat" on the tail fan, it really dries quickly with salt, borax or baking soda no problem. I've also used powder dish washer detergent too as it draws moisture in like salt and borax but slightly not as effective at keeping the flies at bay.
 
Quail decline is due to clump grass disappearance, replaced by grass like blue grass fescue and lawn type stuff.
Those same grasses are very hard on turkey poults as well. I am hopeful that the North American Grasslands Conservation Act will get written, funded and passed. I think it could be a substantial component of recovering our quail and turkey populations. We need to find a reasonable incentive for predator species removal also. To put some perspective on that issue, only using dogproof traps on the weekends we go up to my buddy's farm through the spring, I think we are 86-87 total for the this spring and last spring. That is a combination of coons, skunks and possums. When you think about that kind of pressure on a landscape level it is painful. Speaking just for here(AR), landscape level habitat is not good at all either which increases the likelihood of nest being destroyed. Maybe the biggest problem is that of the things that we can have some measure of control over, they aren't the fun parts of hunting. Considering that most of the habitat is privately controlled, how do we get folks actively engaged in the work required? Most people dont care for the actual doing of habitat work and even fewer want to have to deal with a trapped skunk. People are going to have to decide if they just want to complain about the state of turkey and quail populations or if they care enough to actually get off their butts and do something to help the situation.
 
What baits are you trapping with? I have taken some, but nowhere near your numbers, so we either have less overall or I need to up the game!
 
Thx and very interesting! I tried that here, but got the best hits on mini marshmallows and vanilla favoring, so it may be a regional thing.
We have had good luck with the mini marshmellows too but stopped using them because the cat food bacon grease combo was working. We havent tried the vanilla though. May need to give that a try.
 
Thx and very interesting! I tried that here, but got the best hits on mini marshmallows and vanilla favoring, so it may be a regional thing.
For coon selectivity, my best bait has been full marshmallow (regular size) pulled in half to let the inside odor emanate from your DP trap or box trap. I have had no skunks or cats or any other critters bother with that bait. Skunks can be euthanized with an acetone injection into the chest cavity with a specialized syringe pole and an 18 gauge needle. They do not spray when euthanized this way. I've also had very good success with covered box traps and slow and steady handling. I've use old blankets or towels and have driven them out to properties I've had permission to release them on with no spray. The skunk essence is worth some money for lure makers.
 
We have had good luck with the mini marshmellows too but stopped using them because the cat food bacon grease combo was working. We havent tried the vanilla though. May need to give that a try.
If I used cat food and bacon grease I would have every critter known to man in my coon selective traps. However, they are all turkey nest raiders too so if you don't care what you get as long as its a turkey nest raider than yes, that's a great bait.
 
Funny story of one of my buddy's friends in WVA. He set out a nuisance coon line with DP's and he was using the push-pull style trigger and a black bear was going along raiding his sets and got its tongue caught in the DP! He had to call their equivalent to our DEC and they hired a bear hound guy who found the tongueless bear and euthanized it. Needless to say he's switching to just the one way DP's.
 
If I used cat food and bacon grease I would have every critter known to man in my coon selective traps. However, they are all turkey nest raiders too so if you don't care what you get as long as its a turkey nest raider than yes, that's a great bait.
Yeah, our goal was to put a serious thinning on all nest raiding species. We also have a trapper that comes in after turkey season to catch coyotes.
 
I leave possums alone since they eat poisonous snakes (also largely immune to snake venom), and they eat about 5000 ticks per year on average each. Since I have no love of poisonous snakes, but I actually worry about ticks more, possums are OK in my book. Knock on wood, I have never been bitten by a snake, but have been bitten many times by ticks. I have several friends who have gotten Lyme Disease and one friend who contracted that allergy to red meat from a tick bite. I can't imagine how bad it would be to not be able to eat a steak or hamburger. I'll trade a few turkey eggs for less snakes and ticks. What has a turkey done for me lately, lol?
 
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