Post by Decatur on Jan 18, 2009 16:52:48 GMT -5
Poor Man's Grand Slam
written by Jim Spencer
The one-season slam is the grail of turkey hunting and the ultimate challenge for today's hunter.
The gobbler wasn't that great a bird, if you want the truth. He was an adult, but his wispy little beard and blunt, half-inch spurs wouldn't draw any admiring stares at a turkey banquet.
But as I watched him over the gun barrel that morning in northeast New Mexico, my heart bucked in my throat like he was my first gobbler. Because this one, see, was going to be my grand-slam bird. Earlier that season, I'd taken an Osceola in south Florida, easterns in Missouri and Rio Grandes in Kansas. This was the fourth leg of a quest that had come about pretty much by accident.
Technically, I'd completed my slam a month earlier, with the Osceola gobbler. A grand slam, turkey-wise, is when a hunter takes all four United States subspecies of wild turkey, regardless of the time frame. Since I'd taken the other three subspecies in previous years, the Osceola rounded out my slam. Technically.
But turkey hunters are funny. Turkey hunting is hard enough without adding rules to make it harder, yet many of us don't consider a slam legitimate unless the hunter takes all four birds in the same spring.
Most of the hunters I know share that opinion, even though we all recognize and respect the effort and dedication it takes to take even a multiple-season grand slam.
But the one-season slam is the grail. It's the ultimate challenge for today's turkey hunter, and it nags at every serious turkey hunter. Will I ever get a chance at a grand slam? Am I good enough to pull it off?
Most hunters never get the chance. Or, more accurately, most hunters never take the chance. A grand slam attempt takes a lot of time and effort, and no small amount of money. The travel is daunting, just by itself. Merriam's, Easterns and Rios can be found in fairly close proximity in parts of the Midwest, but then there's that infernal Osceola to worry about. Unless you're south of Orlando in central Florida, you're not into true Osceola territory -- and that's a long way from the nearest Merriam's and Rio Grande birds.
But if you've been itching to try, and you want to do it as economically and trouble-free as possible, I can give you some pointers. What follows here isn't the absolute gospel, and you can ignore it and still manage to get a grand slam. But paying heed will both increase the odds and decrease the expense.
First, do your homework. This is advisable for any endeavor, but if you're trying for a slam it's quadruply important. Everything's got to click, not once but four times -- and, usually, at least three of those times it must happen within a relatively short window of opportunity. It doesn't take a Las Vegas bookmaker to figure out the odds are against you.
Don't wait too late to start planning. A full year in advance isn't too early. It's important to learn as much as you can about the peculiarities of the subspecies themselves and about the differences in their habitats. Go to Florida with the same clothing you hunt Merriam's gobblers with in the Black Hills, and you'll wish you hadn't. Use the same run-and-gun, aggressive tactics on a hard-pressured Pennsylvania eastern that you can usually get away with on Rio Grande birds in western Oklahoma, and you'll wish you hadn't. Forget your padded seat cushion on a south Texas brushy-country Rio Grande hunt, and the first time you sit down under a mesquite or one of those horrid green thorny bushes, well, you'll wish you hadn't.
Talk to everybody you can find who's hunted the subspecies that you don't have experience with. Read books. Watch videos. Attend seminars. One of the best, most comprehensive books ever written on the subject of turkey hunting is Turkey Hunter's Digest by Oklahoma turkey slayer Dwain Bland. Order it through your local bookstore or online.
Call the experts. The big names -- call makers, camo designers, champion callers, decoy manufacturers -- are almost without exception friendly, outgoing and generous with their knowledge. Schedules permitting, most of them are happy to share their knowledge.
Talk to the turkey biologist(s) in the states you're researching. All 49 states with turkeys (Alaska is the exception) have a biologist on the National Wild Turkey Federation's Technical Committee, and these biologists and their phone numbers are listed in most issues of Turkey Call, NWTF's bi-monthly magazine.
Failing that, call the state wildlife agency of the state you're interested in and ask for their turkey guy. Ask his opinion of good public hunting areas. Ask about expected conditions for your spring hunt -- will you be ahead of the gobbling peaks, between them or behind them? What's the normal weather during the time of your planned trip? What are the best sources of maps for the recommended hunting area?
Before you turn this biologist loose, get the name and number of another biologist who works in the specific area that's been recommended and talk to that person, too.
Normally, there will be some contradictions between the advice you receive from the two people. That's to be expected; people have different opinions. But if you're getting good information from both, there'll be more agreements than differences.
One other person I'd recommend talking to is the NWTF's state chapter president in the state you're researching. These folks are also turkey addicts, and most of them will talk to you, but a big difference between them and the biologists is these folks are volunteers. They're not getting paid to talk to you. Ask politely, though, and you'll get some good information. They can also often steer you to other biologists and/or hunters who'll talk to you about your trip and offer suggestions.
Based on your conversations with the experts, decide on a specific area to hunt each subspecies and then acquire appropriate maps for each. Some state wildlife agencies publish county map books showing public lands and waters. If the state you're visiting has these books, by all means buy one. DeLorme also publishes state map books containing a wealth of useful information, at reasonable cost. Contact them at P.O. Box 298, Yarmouth ME 04096, 207-846-7000 (www.delorme.com).
National Forest maps are available for a fee from the individual national forest offices. These are excellent locator maps, but like the other maps listed so far, they lack topographic detail and the scale is too small for fine work.
That's where topographical maps come in. By far the most expensive maps you can buy, in terms of dollars per square mile, topos show the lay of the land in detail. Topos are available at map stores and engineering supply stores in major cities, or by contacting the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Distribution, Box 25286, Denver CO 80225, for a free index map of the state you're researching. Use the index to order your maps.
Nobody said this was going to be easy.
Based on your conversations with the experts, decide on a specific area to hunt each subspecies and then acquire appropriate maps for each.
We've been talking about public-land hunting because this is a poor man's grand slam, and the travel itself is expensive enough. To hold the cost down, you need to either hunt public land or, better, gain access to private land that you can hunt for free. Finding good public hunting is pretty easy with Easterns and Merriam's, somewhat harder with Rios, and pretty difficult with Osceolas. Let's look at each.
Osceola: There's just not much country inhabited by Osceolas, so access to them is more difficult. If you have friends or relatives in south Florida, it's sometimes possible to make connections to hunt private land in Osceola territory, but not everybody has those contacts.
Several public hunting areas in Florida have good turkey populations. The obvious problem is hunting pressure -- you're not going to be the only budget-conscious hunter looking for a grand slam. Three Lakes WMA in central Florida is a good bet.
Eastern: The word "easy" doesn't belong in an article about getting a grand slam, but getting an Eastern gobbler is the easiest for most turkey hunters. For one thing, most hunters live in Eastern territory; Easterns range from the Atlantic coast to east Kansas, from Louisiana to Minnesota, from east Texas to south Maine.
Public-hunting opportunities are more plentiful for Easterns than for Osceolas, too. Every state with Eastern turkeys has public-land hunting for them, and in some states, there are literally million acres of it.
Rio Grande: Forget Texas for public-land hunting for Rios. Most of the country's Rios live in Texas, but practically none of them are on public land. However, if you have contacts in the Edwards Plateau area or points south, you might find great hunting on private ranches there.
For public land Rios, look to western Oklahoma and central and western Kansas. Public land isn't overly plentiful in either place, but you can still find a place to hunt. I've taken public-land Rios in both states.
Merriam's: The Black Hills of South Dakota and Montana is the most famous of all Merriam's habitats, and it's not a bad bet for a poor man's grand slam. But don't overlook the Rockies. There's good hunting for Merriam's turkeys in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and elsewhere. Most Merriam's range is public land, in fact. You won't have any trouble finding a place to hunt. Culling through all the possibilities will be your problem.
written by Jim Spencer
The one-season slam is the grail of turkey hunting and the ultimate challenge for today's hunter.
The gobbler wasn't that great a bird, if you want the truth. He was an adult, but his wispy little beard and blunt, half-inch spurs wouldn't draw any admiring stares at a turkey banquet.
But as I watched him over the gun barrel that morning in northeast New Mexico, my heart bucked in my throat like he was my first gobbler. Because this one, see, was going to be my grand-slam bird. Earlier that season, I'd taken an Osceola in south Florida, easterns in Missouri and Rio Grandes in Kansas. This was the fourth leg of a quest that had come about pretty much by accident.
Technically, I'd completed my slam a month earlier, with the Osceola gobbler. A grand slam, turkey-wise, is when a hunter takes all four United States subspecies of wild turkey, regardless of the time frame. Since I'd taken the other three subspecies in previous years, the Osceola rounded out my slam. Technically.
But turkey hunters are funny. Turkey hunting is hard enough without adding rules to make it harder, yet many of us don't consider a slam legitimate unless the hunter takes all four birds in the same spring.
Most of the hunters I know share that opinion, even though we all recognize and respect the effort and dedication it takes to take even a multiple-season grand slam.
But the one-season slam is the grail. It's the ultimate challenge for today's turkey hunter, and it nags at every serious turkey hunter. Will I ever get a chance at a grand slam? Am I good enough to pull it off?
Most hunters never get the chance. Or, more accurately, most hunters never take the chance. A grand slam attempt takes a lot of time and effort, and no small amount of money. The travel is daunting, just by itself. Merriam's, Easterns and Rios can be found in fairly close proximity in parts of the Midwest, but then there's that infernal Osceola to worry about. Unless you're south of Orlando in central Florida, you're not into true Osceola territory -- and that's a long way from the nearest Merriam's and Rio Grande birds.
But if you've been itching to try, and you want to do it as economically and trouble-free as possible, I can give you some pointers. What follows here isn't the absolute gospel, and you can ignore it and still manage to get a grand slam. But paying heed will both increase the odds and decrease the expense.
First, do your homework. This is advisable for any endeavor, but if you're trying for a slam it's quadruply important. Everything's got to click, not once but four times -- and, usually, at least three of those times it must happen within a relatively short window of opportunity. It doesn't take a Las Vegas bookmaker to figure out the odds are against you.
Don't wait too late to start planning. A full year in advance isn't too early. It's important to learn as much as you can about the peculiarities of the subspecies themselves and about the differences in their habitats. Go to Florida with the same clothing you hunt Merriam's gobblers with in the Black Hills, and you'll wish you hadn't. Use the same run-and-gun, aggressive tactics on a hard-pressured Pennsylvania eastern that you can usually get away with on Rio Grande birds in western Oklahoma, and you'll wish you hadn't. Forget your padded seat cushion on a south Texas brushy-country Rio Grande hunt, and the first time you sit down under a mesquite or one of those horrid green thorny bushes, well, you'll wish you hadn't.
Talk to everybody you can find who's hunted the subspecies that you don't have experience with. Read books. Watch videos. Attend seminars. One of the best, most comprehensive books ever written on the subject of turkey hunting is Turkey Hunter's Digest by Oklahoma turkey slayer Dwain Bland. Order it through your local bookstore or online.
Call the experts. The big names -- call makers, camo designers, champion callers, decoy manufacturers -- are almost without exception friendly, outgoing and generous with their knowledge. Schedules permitting, most of them are happy to share their knowledge.
Talk to the turkey biologist(s) in the states you're researching. All 49 states with turkeys (Alaska is the exception) have a biologist on the National Wild Turkey Federation's Technical Committee, and these biologists and their phone numbers are listed in most issues of Turkey Call, NWTF's bi-monthly magazine.
Failing that, call the state wildlife agency of the state you're interested in and ask for their turkey guy. Ask his opinion of good public hunting areas. Ask about expected conditions for your spring hunt -- will you be ahead of the gobbling peaks, between them or behind them? What's the normal weather during the time of your planned trip? What are the best sources of maps for the recommended hunting area?
Before you turn this biologist loose, get the name and number of another biologist who works in the specific area that's been recommended and talk to that person, too.
Normally, there will be some contradictions between the advice you receive from the two people. That's to be expected; people have different opinions. But if you're getting good information from both, there'll be more agreements than differences.
One other person I'd recommend talking to is the NWTF's state chapter president in the state you're researching. These folks are also turkey addicts, and most of them will talk to you, but a big difference between them and the biologists is these folks are volunteers. They're not getting paid to talk to you. Ask politely, though, and you'll get some good information. They can also often steer you to other biologists and/or hunters who'll talk to you about your trip and offer suggestions.
Based on your conversations with the experts, decide on a specific area to hunt each subspecies and then acquire appropriate maps for each. Some state wildlife agencies publish county map books showing public lands and waters. If the state you're visiting has these books, by all means buy one. DeLorme also publishes state map books containing a wealth of useful information, at reasonable cost. Contact them at P.O. Box 298, Yarmouth ME 04096, 207-846-7000 (www.delorme.com).
National Forest maps are available for a fee from the individual national forest offices. These are excellent locator maps, but like the other maps listed so far, they lack topographic detail and the scale is too small for fine work.
That's where topographical maps come in. By far the most expensive maps you can buy, in terms of dollars per square mile, topos show the lay of the land in detail. Topos are available at map stores and engineering supply stores in major cities, or by contacting the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Distribution, Box 25286, Denver CO 80225, for a free index map of the state you're researching. Use the index to order your maps.
Nobody said this was going to be easy.
Based on your conversations with the experts, decide on a specific area to hunt each subspecies and then acquire appropriate maps for each.
We've been talking about public-land hunting because this is a poor man's grand slam, and the travel itself is expensive enough. To hold the cost down, you need to either hunt public land or, better, gain access to private land that you can hunt for free. Finding good public hunting is pretty easy with Easterns and Merriam's, somewhat harder with Rios, and pretty difficult with Osceolas. Let's look at each.
Osceola: There's just not much country inhabited by Osceolas, so access to them is more difficult. If you have friends or relatives in south Florida, it's sometimes possible to make connections to hunt private land in Osceola territory, but not everybody has those contacts.
Several public hunting areas in Florida have good turkey populations. The obvious problem is hunting pressure -- you're not going to be the only budget-conscious hunter looking for a grand slam. Three Lakes WMA in central Florida is a good bet.
Eastern: The word "easy" doesn't belong in an article about getting a grand slam, but getting an Eastern gobbler is the easiest for most turkey hunters. For one thing, most hunters live in Eastern territory; Easterns range from the Atlantic coast to east Kansas, from Louisiana to Minnesota, from east Texas to south Maine.
Public-hunting opportunities are more plentiful for Easterns than for Osceolas, too. Every state with Eastern turkeys has public-land hunting for them, and in some states, there are literally million acres of it.
Rio Grande: Forget Texas for public-land hunting for Rios. Most of the country's Rios live in Texas, but practically none of them are on public land. However, if you have contacts in the Edwards Plateau area or points south, you might find great hunting on private ranches there.
For public land Rios, look to western Oklahoma and central and western Kansas. Public land isn't overly plentiful in either place, but you can still find a place to hunt. I've taken public-land Rios in both states.
Merriam's: The Black Hills of South Dakota and Montana is the most famous of all Merriam's habitats, and it's not a bad bet for a poor man's grand slam. But don't overlook the Rockies. There's good hunting for Merriam's turkeys in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and elsewhere. Most Merriam's range is public land, in fact. You won't have any trouble finding a place to hunt. Culling through all the possibilities will be your problem.