By Larry Dablemont

Globe columnist

The wild turkey season is upon us, and I haven’t even been scouting.

I’ll do all my scouting during the opening week of the season, with a turkey call and a shotgun. The concept of “scouting” for wild turkeys is about the silliest thing I have ever seen written, but it once was a regular column every year about this time for most outdoor writers, especially those who lived in city suburbs.

There was a time, 40 years or so ago, when “scouting” seemed like a good idea. For every gobbler in the Ozark woodlands back then, we have about 20 or 30 now. Back then, it was a good idea to try to get out at daylight and hear a tom sound off on a distant ridgetop, or find a track in a mudhole somewhere.

It gave you a little more confidence that you had a chance to get one, slim though it might be.

Today, I can open my bedroom window and hear a half dozen gobblers on a clear spring morning before sunrise. Every now and then there’s two or three in my back yard. In a half dozen spots I hunt, I know exactly where there are a half dozen gobblers or more, within hearing of my call whatever morning I go there.

I don’t go scouting for gobblers, I go out with my camera to get some good pictures or I go out looking for mushrooms or I slip up the river to catch some fish. And in doing any of those things, I see and hear turkeys.

To tell the truth, as bad as most of us turkey hunters want everyone to think turkey hunting is a special art, killing a gobbler has become a pretty easy thing to do.

I figure that on most April mornings, when the wind is calm and it isn’t too cold and there’s some sunshine, I can call up two or three wild gobblers. Sometimes, I must admit, I don’t do it, but I always figure I am about to, and an awful lot of times, I do.

Honestly, I have a harder time calling my in Labrador than I have calling in a wild turkey on opening morning.

It has made it difficult to claim to be an “expert” or a “professional.”

Turkey calling championships have become ho-hum affairs, and it’s hard to tell anybody something about turkey hunting they haven’t already heard somewhere or learned on their own. Nowadays, your greatest attribute for success is just the ability to sit still for awhile, and the ability to walk far enough to get away from the pot-bellied guy on the four-wheeler who is blowing an owl-hooter at first light.

Another thing I have to be honest about, I don’t think the modern gobbler is nearly as wary as the ones were 40 years ago. Today you can hear one gobble a dozen times in ten minutes. When I got started, I seldom heard one gobble more than a half dozen times between first light and noon. They came to a call like cold molasses dripping from a stone crock, and it might take a couple of hours to get a glimpse at one at 60 yards. Even then, he might come no closer.

What’s with these modern wild turkeys that cover 200 hundred yards in three and a half minutes? Maybe I’m a better turkey caller, but I doubt it. I haven’t improved at anything else over the last 40 years, why would I get so much better at turkey calling?

Well, next weekend is the youth hunting weekend and I don’t have a youth. I knew where there was a couple, but some other hunters got ’em, and I have to stay home during the youth hunt until my little grandsons get to be 5 or 6 years old.

Nah, I’m joking, I won’t be shooting a turkey for my grandkids. Most hunters who take a youngster out next weekend won’t do that either. Those who do are a minority, but there are still too many of them.

The thing to remember is, 40 years ago a youngster couldn’t get a wild gobbler. It was something reserved for experts and professionals. Now we’ve got 13-year-olds calling up the first one they hear.

No, I don’t recommend you go scouting for gobblers. Just go catch some crappie or white bass and wait for the opening week to do your scouting ... with number 6 shot and a full choke.

And if you see where some champion caller and pro hunter is giving a seminar on spring turkey hunter, don’t waste your time. He don’t know a thing you can’t learn at the pool hall. Just go find some farmer with a couple of old tame hen turkeys and listen to them. Any one of them can lure in a modern day spring tom.

Things just ain’t like they use to be, back 40 years ago, when gobblers were ghosts ... and wore moccasins.



Address correspondence to Larry Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo., 65613. Send e-mail to lightninridge@alltel.net, check the Web site www.larrydablemont.com, or call (417) 777-5227.