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Published October 01, 2006 12:00 am - It's the perfect "October gun", an old Savage model 24 DL over-and-under .22 rifle, and 20 gauge shotgun. It was made sometime between 1965 and '69, and you can select, via a button on the side, whether you want to fire the .22 rifle or the 20 gauge shotgun. Larry Dablemont: Mature gobblers feature routine The Joplin Globe By Larry Dablemont
Globe columnist It's the perfect "October gun", an old Savage model 24 DL over-and-under .22 rifle, and 20 gauge shotgun. It was made sometime between 1965 and '69, and you can select, via a button on the side, whether you want to fire the .22 rifle or the 20 gauge shotgun. It's a good October gun because you can hunt squirrels with the rifle barrel, and then, should you stumble into a flock of turkeys, have a shotgun barrel to hunt them with. With the capability of firing a high-powered three-inch magnum shot shell, it is a suitable turkey gun, especially in the fall when the young-of-the-year broods are what most hunters happen across. The old gobblers are out there, all right, but as a rule they don't run with the hens and youngsters. Usually they remain quiet in the fall, and stay in the deep woods. But sometimes, when there are lots of grasshoppers, the mature gobblers find them to be very tasty, and in the late afternoon they get out into the fields a little before flying up to roost. Mature wild gobblers usually have a routine, and if you figure it out, you can intercept them early in the morning or late in the evening. They run together, I have seen as many as 11 wild gobblers traveling together in October. Usually there are only three or four together. In October, the young turkeys group together, sometimes two or three broods, with maybe four or five old hens. There will be four or five pounds of difference, sometimes, in the young hens and young gobblers, so if you are hunting fall turkeys, you don't want a hen, you want to look for those young jakes, which should weigh from 12 to 15 pounds. If you are in the woods and accidentally break up a flock of young turkeys, it is fairly easy to call them back to the last place they saw their family members. You can call long and loud and it will work on young turkeys. Things are nothing like the situation you have in the spring. Every fall you read the same old stories the suburban nimrods write about running toward a flock, trying to scatter them, then calling the young turkeys back. But it is silly, and dangerous, to be out in the woods running with a shotgun in your hands, trying to alarm and break up a group of turkeys. Get out there unobserved and unheard and listen and call, using the call of an old hen calling her brood, or the call of young turkeys trying to keep in touch with each other, or lamenting the fact that they are lost. Fall turkeys respond well to a call at times. It's just that fall hunters, who don't hear any gobbling except on rare occasions, won't sit and wait and call. If you are patient and observant and persist with your calling, they will often come, and you can hear them as they do. But you have to know what you are hearing. I call turkeys in very often in October, often from a tree stand where I am bowhunting. Year after year, turkeys roost and feed and travel with a certain routine, and you begin to learn that. Trouble is, it gets to a point where it isn't all that exciting to shoot a 14-pound jake which still listens to his mama. An eight- or ten-pound spring-of-the-year-hatched hen is even worse. A challenge with a bow perhaps, but not with a shotgun. But still, they are all good to eat. I can't argue that. You have little trouble finding the broods if you'll get out in the woods at first light. They make a lot of noise, yelping and whining and putting, as they come off the roost. And if they go one direction, and you don't get a chance at them, it is likely they'll roost in the same place, or close to it, and go the same way again. 
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