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Turkey takers are happy 10-year-olds

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS — Tom turkeys were recently taken by these 10-year-old boys, each was mentored by their fathers. Mason Oldenburger took his tom turkey near Janesville with his father Mike observing. Wyatt Brown used his 20 gauge shotgun to take his turkey while his father Tyson watched. The youth turkey season dates were April 7-9. Regular turkey seasons opened April 10, and all seasons end on May 15.

Spring turkey seasons have begun. Hunters hitting the woodlands and fields in pursuit of bearded (tom) turkeys have been waiting a long time for this special time of the year.

Hearing gobbling tom turkeys in their pre-dawn darkness roosts is an impressive sound as their gobbles send messages to all turkeys of where they are. At fly down time just before sunrise, those same tom turkeys may go silent, or if conditions are right, keep on gobbling, sounding off their desire for hen turkey attention.

A hunter’s calling may also entice a tom turkey to come in for investigation of a rival in his territory. Seeing a full strutting tom with his wide spread tail fan is one of nature’s best natural moments.

“Turkey hunting is a passion with our hunters who enjoy it for its intimacy and for its setting,” said Jim Coffey, forest wildlife research biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “It is a great time to be out experiencing the timber’s springtime awakening.”

Coffey adds that most shots are at close range, and those shots at 30 yards or less are most successful. Iowa’s wild turkey population is steady after another successful nesting season in 2021. The best areas in Iowa were in the southeast, north-central and northeast.

Two-year-old tom turkeys are the most likely to gobble, and those two year olds are also more vulnerable to hunter setups. All the while, turkey movements may be associated with reproduction, and those birds are also eager to eat as new green shoots of grasses, clover, and shrub buds emerge. Leaf litter on the ground gets raked about by turkey feet in efforts to expose insect movements.

Turkey eyes are superior detection organs of other turkeys or on constant watch for predators. Hunters understand the importance of camouflage head to toe clothing, and then the hunter must maintain silent stillness and no movement.

Turkeys have monocular periscopic vision, which means their eyes function independently of each other. This allows more information to be sent to the brain, and because turkey eyes are on the sides of their heads, they have nearly 360 degrees of field of vision.

Turkey ears are also excellent detectors of all things happening around them. For a turkey hunter, the sound of the calling can be pinpointed by a wild bird, and if that bird decides to come to the call, it can make a straight line to the source if it so chooses. There are no external ears like we humans have, but each ear registers sound volume separately, another adaptation for finding other turkeys with the uncanny ability to determine distance to the sound and go directly to that spot.

The head of a tom turkey is rather unique for its lack of feathers, but the head has white, blue and red tissues that can fade or brighten with blood flow as a tom becomes excited, agitated, or just has a change in mood. All of these color changes are part of the communication process between turkeys. The subtle chucks and whir sounds also denote mood, and at very close range, wild turkeys seem to be always talking to each other in super soft tones.

Turkeys have between 5,000 and 6,000 feathers, all arranged in tracts. The bird can control how the feathers are exposed from laying flat to erect and all puffed out — a tom turkey in full strut may appear twice as big as his body actually is underneath all those ornamental and life sustaining weather proof coverings.

The colors of feathers have meaning for other turkeys. For humans, we are amazed by the iridescence of blues, purples, browns and black. Eastern wild turkeys like we have here in Iowa have tail feathers tipped in brown.

A subspecies called the Rio have buff colored tail feather tips. Merriam’s and Gould’s turkeys have more whitish tips. The beard on a tom turkey is a series of special feathers that appear more hair-like protruding from the center of his chest — this differentiation between males and females is important. However, it is possible for a hen to have a shorter but distinctive beard in rare cases.

Turkeys can run fast on the ground. In the air, they can hit 55 miles per hour and then set their wings to glide long distances. Wings serve tom turkeys doing battle with another tom. The chest muscles of turkeys are powerful enough to make the wings available for fast take offs to either avoid predators or to make flights to roost trees and sunset times, and wings are also used to dust themselves in dry soil particles.

Lastly, there are spurs on the legs of toms, spear-like projections that serve them well in battles between toms. Thrashing spurs can cut deeply into an opponent as spur length is typically one to two inches long.

The tip of the spur is needle sharp. Do be careful picking up a newly killed turkey that may still be able to thrust its legs about to inflict damage. Hunters like to pick up a turkey by grasping its neck. Once the bird is dead, its legs become the “handle” to carry it home.

For the two 10-year-old boys featured in today’s photos, a proud moment indeed happened while they carried their tagged tom turkey over their back. By the time they arrived at dad’s vehicle, a 20 to 25-pound turkey is really heavy, but their smiles negated any complaints. Congrats to both boys for a hunting task well done.

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This weekend is Easter, a springtime event worldwide with both religious and celestial histories. Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon on or after March 21. Easter is liturgically related to the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the Full Moon.

The date of Easter varies based on mathematical approximations that follow a 19-year cycle. March 21 is the church’s date of the March equinox regardless of time zones. Easter can be as early as March 21 or as late as April 25. Put that in your basket of things to know.

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More signs of spring: first off, I happened to be at the right place at the right time recently to observe a mink scampering along the opposite river bank. This member of the weasel family, mustelids, is more common than we think. Yet it is mysteriously cautious, curious and secretive as it goes about its life.

Mink are medium sized slender bodied and long bodied short legged mammals. They are predators of rabbits, ground nesting birds, fish, crayfish, mice, squirrels, muskrats and just about every type of insect it may locate. Permanent water is a critical factor in a mink’s habitat. Forested areas adjacent to water will serve nicely as home. Dens may be excavations under the root systems of mature trees, in bank cavities, or even in muskrat burrows or lodges. A male mink may have a home range of five miles in diameter, which will take two weeks for him to cover.

Temporary homes (den sites) are used within the territory as he patrols. Female mink are home bodies with a range of only about 20 acres. She will bring off a single litter of pups usually during early May with three to four young in the litter. Males and females assist with rearing duties and take the young on hunting forays at night usually, when the young are six to eight weeks old.

Lastly, as much as I would have liked to obtain a high quality image of the mink, the circumstances were such that this was impossible. So my memory has a great new addition and a description to share.

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Thirteen lined ground squirrels have also been noted. They have begun to emerge from their deep underground hibernation burrows. This little six inch long bodied gopher can be found in grassland prairies or often along gravel roads where ditch grasses support mouse and insect food sources for this critter.

The coat coloration helps to name this mammal for its 13 stripes from head to tail. Side stripes have internal light dot spots all arranged on a dark brown to light brown fur covering. Look for these little ground squirrels scampering across pasturelands or along gravel road sides. Daytime predators such as the red-tailed hawk will be watching.

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Coming up on April 19, a brown bag lunch will take place at the Iowa River Wildlife Area. The walk is titled “Spring Ephemeral Walk” as a description of the newly blossoming wildflowers of the forest.

Ephemeral is the term for lasting only a short time. Call the Marshall County Conservation Board office at 641-752-5490 to register, and bring your own sack lunch.

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Africa vacation notes and photos will be shared at the Albion Library on April 19 at 2 p.m. George and MaryJo Baitinger will present their program of a recent vacation to South Africa and its many stops within that country. Kruger National Park animal sightings were just a few of the places they observed. This is a free program. Come learn about the adventures of this Albion farm couple as they explored other parts of our Earth.

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Have you ever studied maps? I mean, in such a way as to find blank spaces which the average motorist or vacation bound person avoids? Those blank spaces are rare these days. However, while many folks avoid these places, naturalists can be drawn to them precisely because of the unknown or undiscovered things that the landscape can show to a person with an inquisitive mindset.

Aldo Leopold said it well in his book “A Sand County Almanac” when he compared recreational sites with busy roadways and amenities to other places that he described as bla≠nk spaces on the map.

“Recreational development is a job of not building roads into lovely country, but building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind,” he said.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

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