Projects and Publications

Let's see, here in the dog days of summer as my English setters pant in corners of this home office (97 degrees F.!), I'm working on my book Turkey Calls and Calling, which is slated for Spring '09 release by my publisher Stackpole Books. My Fall and Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook is forthcoming in August (Stackpole). The author's advanced copy I just received looks super. I'm pleased with it, and I think readers will both enjoy the text, which is written from the heart, and based on direct field experience, plus the color photos throughout.

As articles go, look for turkey features in Turkey Call, Turkey & Turkey Hunting, and N.H. Wildlife Journal come August, plus articles I'm working on for late '07, and into '08 (Outdoor Life, Cabela's Outfitter Journal, Realtree.com, T&TH, and others, including material for the Yamaha Outdoors website--on this, more once we go live).

As usual, you New England readers can check in with me in Foster's Sunday Citizen, where I've contributed material on the outdoors for a decade.

--Steve Hickoff (text/photo)

Winnipesaukee Bronzeback

Came across this old print from about 15 years back while rooting through images here in my office.

--Steve Hickoff

Family Flock Tracks

Found this set of wild turkey tracks this week in southern Maine: a brood hen with poults.

--Steve Hickoff

(Steve Hickoff photo)

Fall and Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook

Stackpole Books is issuing my Fall and Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook in August (6 x 9 softcover; 256 pages; 150 color photos). Here you'll find in-depth information on the rich history of our tradition, wild turkey vocalizations, turkey calls and calling, scouting, using dogs to find and flush autumn flocks, plus my take on archery tackle, firearms, ammo, safety sense, youth hunting, and the future of fall and winter turkey hunting. End matter suggests additional readings, and outdoor industry information. For more details, please contact me here by email, or directly at 207.439.9119.

--Steve Hickoff

Advanced Planning

Just shipped a fall turkey article I wrote for New Hampshire Wildlife Journal (Sept./Oct. '07 issue), which had me thinking a lot about autumn hunting seasons lately . . . not that that's all that hard.

While some of the other questions of the day include: (1) Will I be able to man up on watching all of NBA Finals Game 1 of The LeBron Show tonight (it'll end around midnight EST), and (2) Should I fish for freshwater trout or saltwater striped bass tomorrow? Likely neither if I'm wiped out from watching hoops . . . still getting my biological clock back in order after turkey season.

Still, calendar plans are underway for fall turkey seasons, starting with Sept. 15, the start of N.H.'s archery-only turkey offering. That'll mean pulling my Hoyt bow off the wall above this computer, and working on that muscle memory all summer, zipping arrows into hay bale-backed targets--after all, style is required when a guy like me shoots under, over, around, and between the legs of wild turkeys in range during the 101-day Granite State season . . .

Oct. 1 will see the New York state fall turkey season commencing on a Monday, and while that month often sees me road tripping there several times, some scheduling issues are in play here on the home front.

I routinely hunt both N.H. and Maine, since the border is 1/4 mi. away from where I type this. This coming autumn, N.H. will once again offer its 5-day weekday shotgun turkey season (the second ever; Oct. 15-19), which coincides with the proposed first ever modern-day Maine fall shotgun turkey season (that previous Sat., Oct. 13, will open the hunt option sources indicate; Sundays are closed here in Maine, and that Monday it'll reopen thru Friday, the 19th). So what's a guy to do? Hunt southern Maine . . . or drive to the westcentral and westernmost Granite State locations where that season is open? Both?

Maybe. I've also got the Vermont firearms turkey opener on Sat., Oct. 20, so yeah, it would be possible to hunt my way over there on Friday the 19th (the last day of NH's gun season for turkeys), then hunt VT. Stay tuned.

At any rate, it's fair to say October will be memorable as usual, and as always, pass way too fast.

--Steve Hickoff

(NWTF photo)

The Writing Life

A local college student, who wanted to know more about writing as a career choice, recently queried me by email about my typical day, and I replied:

I rise early (it’s 5 a.m. at the moment), and assess what assignments need attention that day here in my home office. As a Sunday newspaper columnist, longtime national sporting magazine contributor, website content provider, writer who shoots and sells photographs, and outdoors book author, I tend to multitask through the morning. This allows me to complete work on deadline, but also to manage a variety of tasks—that’s essential to a working writer’s approach. Around noon, I take a power nap with one of my English setters, who seem to enjoy this ritual as much as I do. After this, I tend to work on another assignment, or call/email editors, make notes, whatever. At 2:30, I pick my daughter up at school. Some evenings, I teach. The teaching is rewarding in that I get to share what I’ve learned over the years as a writer in my courses. I hunt. I fish. I run the dogs. Honestly, I do little that doesn’t contribute to my career. I tend to work most days of the week. It’s the best lifestyle for me, but not for everyone, I suspect.

I never heard back from her . . .

--Steve Hickoff

First Sighting

Saw the first southern Maine wild turkey poults this morning. Heard a far-off gobble too. Transition underway . . .

--Steve Hickoff

Haunted By Waters

"I am haunted by waters." That's Norman Maclean's famous last line of his novella A River Runs Through It, of course.

Me too. The Lamprey River once nearly drowned me when this waterfowl hunter tried to retrieve a downed mallard on his own. I thought the half-submerged log extending out into the steady October current would hold me, and it did, sort of. That my waterlogged watch died at exactly 8:47 a.m. indicated something worth noting: namely that it was my watch that bought it, and not this writer. I got the duck, and shimmy-swam back—a fool who had made a successful retrieve. (I can hear you waterfowlers hissing over your coffee and Danish: “Get a Labrador retriever, Hickoff!”)

I’ve caught and released more trout from its water than likely any other in the state of New Hampshire (and eaten plenty too), excluding maybe the upper Connecticut, Isinglass, Stonehouse Pond, and well . . . let’s just say, I’ve caught plenty of fish here. This particular season has been more of a challenge—turkey hunting has gotten in the way, and a guy can only do so much in a day on a steady diet of five hours of sleep a night. Summer’s coming though.

I like how the Lamprey has that serious look of an official river (no creek here), and that anthropomorphized power that surely lets you know it can knock you on your butt if you don’t watch out. Pardon the analogy, but it holds you hostage in many ways.

I used to take my English setter sweetheart Midge, then a pup, along with me when flyfishing its banks for trout, as we were bonding then in all the usual ways. Mixing bird dog puppies and angling isn’t a troubling thing for me—though elitists have occasionally targeted several high profile magazines with letters for running photo essays on the subject (dogs, guys fly fishing with dogs, dogs with trout).

Mostly I remember the catnaps my little white pup and I took in the sun along the Lamprey River banks, my cap over my eyes to shadow out the sun, the muscular tumble and roll of the water within earshot, my sweet girl sleeping her puppy sleep on my chest—now gone just ten years later.

The Lamprey was part of all that.

--Steve Hickoff

(Steve Hickoff photo)

Just Walk Away, Walk Away . . .

Maine's spring turkey season ends at noon tomorrow, though this stormy then clearing morning would be my last chance afield . . .

After dropping my daughter off at school, I headed out when the weather started to clear (it had rained hard overnight, with thunder and the usual springtime drama), found a gobbler feeding in a far grassy field, and s-l-o-w-l-y pussyfooted into the woods nearby--my calling raised nothing. The bird was gone by the time I peeked in that field again (I suspected it was now in the nearby woods), so I set up and cold called some more, but got no response. Around 11:20 (should have made the move earlier, turns out), I pussyfooted away some 100 yards or so, and cold called again, thinking maybe that gob had been listening to my racket . . . it roared back from that woods. It and another: the longbeard (has an intense gobble, that one), and the fat jake (gobble is a work in progress) I'd been tangling with since the second week of B, and again this final week.

Well, we'd have to make this snappy, eh, with high noon on the rise . . . I called, they ripped back . . . I moved forward some (the longbeard had come through the woods that way mid-morning on Monday, gobbling hard). They hammered. I stayed quiet, then softly yelped. They were coming, for sure.

I made ready, as one gobbled no more than 40 steps away, but through plenty of green . . . the lead bird, the longbeard, roared to my hard left, there in the field through a lush stand of green and branchy tangle--no shot. He strutted, started to hook around behind me, looking, looking . . . the other bird, the jake, went silent. In the next 20 minutes or so the strutter and his buddy hung up, alternating between 45-50 yards in the field then the woods behind me (I eventually slithered around to face their way)--I heard gobbling, spitting and drumming, but they stayed out of sight the way late-season turkeys sometimes do.

The. Minutes. Passed. Too. Fast. I wear my watch face on the inside of my left wrist for such occasions, and part of me died when I saw the hands hit 12.

It's. All. Good. Arggggggggh.

--Steve Hickoff

Fall and Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook

My publisher Stackpole Books is issuing my Fall and Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook in August (6 x 9 softcover; 256 pages; 150 color photos). Here you'll find in-depth information on the rich history of our tradition, wild turkey vocalizations, turkey calls and calling, scouting, using dogs to find and flush autumn flocks, plus my take on archery tackle, firearms, ammo, safety sense, youth hunting, and the future of fall and winter turkey hunting. End matter suggests additional readings, and outdoor industry contact information. For more details, please contact me here by email, or directly at 207.439.9119.

--Steve Hickoff