Last week, my good friend Steve Buoy and I journeyed out to western Oklahoma for a spring turkey hunt.
We had planned to make the trip the previous week.
However, because of COVID-19, we had decided to postpone it for a while.
When the Coronavirus numbers seemed to improve some, we decided to go ahead and make the trip last week.
I for one am taking this virus very serious. There’s little doubt it’s deadly. But the numbers have begun to flatten some as Gov. Kevin Stitt has stated.
The number of people testing negative for COVID-19 in Oklahoma far outweighs those who have tested positive. That is encouraging.
Once we could see that, we decided to go ahead and see if we could harvest some turkeys.
We hunt in Ellis and far southern Woodward counties. When we went, Ellis County still had not recorded anyone testing positive for the virus and in Woodward County only one had tested positive.
Also, those two counties have much lower populations than some of the others across the state.
We took our own food for lunch, supper and breakfast.
The spring season opened April 6 and it remains open through May 6 across the statewide with the exception of several counties in the southeastern portion of Oklahoma.
In the Southeast Region, the season opens April 20 and closes May 6.
Those counties included in that region are Pittsburg, LeFlore, Coal, Pushmataha, Atoka, Choctaw, McCurtain and Latimer.
When Steve and I hunt, we drive the roads and walk and drive some of the pastures to spot the turkeys and get an idea where they might be. Then we can figure out where to set up and either call or wait on them, hoping they come our way.
Steve and I have been hunting turkeys, quail and deer together for 35 years.
Some hunts are really successful, others not so much so, but only a few haven’t been successful at all.
This hunt was one of those in the little success category.
We saw far more deer than we did turkeys this time. The deer are more much more plentiful. There were some turkeys, but they were extremely difficult to find for some reason. We weren’t skunked on this hunt as we say, but it could have been much better.
The spring season limit is three turkeys. However, some counties allow hunters to harvest two gobblers and others only one, though the total season limit is three. In the counties we were hunting the gobblers we could each bag two.
This trip, we didn’t come close to shooting two in each county. Maybe next season it will be better.