Fall & Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook

"Fall & Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook" (240 pp.; 150 color photos) was released in August by Stackpole Books. I'm happy to say that between my seminar appearances from Maine to Kansas, phone calls, and both radio and magazine interviews, there's been some steady interest.

In the book, I examine fall and winter turkey behavior and vocalizations. I also provide details on locating, scouting, and calling autumn wild turkeys, with tips for patterning birds and identifying changing flock composition. Also discussed here is the strategy of hunting turkeys with dogs by using them to flush flocks before hunters call scattered birds back to their concealed setup. As a bonus, the material on firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle will benefit all turkey hunters—fall, winter, or spring.

To all of you who've bought the book: thanks. Others can contact me at hickoff@comcast.net for further information.

--S.H.

The Dark Phantom

Actually the nine-year-old that shares my last name . . .

--S.H.

Audubon's Turkey Writing

If you get a chance, pick up "John James Audubon: Writings & Drawings" (The Library of America, 1999). Selected by Christoph Irmscher, Audubon’s wild turkey writing presented here provides a historical glimpse into the nineteenth century world of the wild turkey, including hunting strategies prevalent at the time. It's great stuff, and undervalued in my opinion.

I'm still not certain as to why his painted gobbler head and feathering are so far off colorwise, but hey . . .

--S.H.

The View From Here

Spent the morning answering business emails here in the office, and making wingbone calls from my Oct. 13 Maine fall turkey--the life!

Seriously though, the latter is a great way to extend your turkey hunts before the next one (upstate New York in my case), and the former is a big part of my day: checking on assignments sent, double-checking queries that are out, confirming work due (thru August '08 right now on the editorial schedule).

Looks like a full spring hunt travel schedule with Florida in March as well, and South Dakota in May, among others.

A buddy just sent me some trail-cam shots of the Maine deer he's calling "the pickin's": a 10. pt, an 8 pt., and others. Our resident deer season begins tomorrow, a neat deal when in-staters get first dibs before everyone does on Monday. Rain is what they're calling for.

Saw four whitetails where I took my Maine fall turkey on the opener.

--S.H.

Red Sox Rock

Scorned by some, envied by others, flat-out ignored by still more. This thing, the Red Sox fan. You folks living outside of New England may wonder about this prevailing nationwide and regional condition from a nurture vs. nature angle. I mean, is it a birthright? Is it genetic? Is it a bandwagon deal? At least for some, it begins in the 4th grade. My daughter brought this handout home from school the other day . . .

--S.H.

Publications Update

Interest in my recently published "Fall & Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook" (Stackpole Books) continues, as I work on two other contracted book projects.

I've also just completed various magazine assignments for Outdoor Life, Cabela's Outfitter Journal, Turkey & Turkey Hunting, and realtree.com, so look for those articles early next year, or sooner in the case of the latter site. A handful of others await my direct attention on the monthly calendar.

Thanks to all of you regular readers as well who check out my "New England Afield" column in Foster's Sunday Citizen, which I've written for a decade now.

--S.H.

Bird At The Wire

Today is the last day of Maine's six-day fall firearms turkey season. Persistence pays. Read on . . .

My buddy Marc--a longtime wild turkey hunter with Grand Slams and calling contests to his credit--tagged this fine Maine hen this morning (pink legs, brown-tipped breast feathers, 9.2#s on my NWTF digital scale). There were around 20 in the flock, minus this one.

--S.H.

(Steve Hickoff photo)

My Latest Book

"Fall & Winter Turkey Hunter's Handbook" (240 pp.; 150 color photos) was released in August by Stackpole Books. I'm happy to say that between my seminar appearances from Maine to Kansas, phone calls, and both radio and magazine interviews, there's been some steady interest.

In the book, I examine fall and winter turkey behavior and vocalizations. I also provide details on locating, scouting, and calling autumn wild turkeys, with tips for patterning birds and identifying changing flock composition. Also discussed here is the strategy of hunting turkeys with dogs by using them to flush flocks before hunters call scattered birds back to their concealed setup. As a bonus, the material on firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle will benefit all turkey hunters—fall, winter, or spring.

To all of you who've bought the book: thanks. Others can contact me at hickoff@comcast.net for further information.

--S.H.

Ongoing Maine Fall Turkey Season

Maine wildlife biologist Norman Forbes filed this report to my inbox:

"The first fall wild turkey hunting season with a firearm began this past Saturday in wildlife management districts 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25. The season runs from October 13 thru October 19. A resident or non-resident big game hunting license is required as well as a wild turkey hunting permit ($20.00 for resident, $47.00 for non-resident). One turkey of either sex may be taken and must be registered at an official registration station.

"There has been a fall archery season on wild turkey since 2002 in certain parts of the state with hunter success running approximately between 5 and 15 per cent annually. It is anticipated that the success rate with a shotgun will be greater, and the department will be closely monitoring registration stations, as well as gaining insight from the hunter questionnaire issued to a sample of permit holders.

"The first day of the shotgun season 15 birds were registered at Sawyer’s Market in Little Falls and 5 registered at Wing’s Market in New Gloucester."

[I checked in the first fall turkey at Eldredge's Fly Shop in Cape Neddick that Saturday morning.]

Forbes continues: "One benefit of having a fall season should be a reduction of nuisance birds around farms. Birds that are allowed to forage where livestock are fed quickly become accustomed to the easy pickings and lose their natural wariness over time. Farmers and their family members will not only remove nuisance birds but will also enjoy wild turkey for dinner."

Nuisance? Hmm.

--S.H.

Tag Filled

My Maine fall jake--taken this morning at 7:45 during the state's first modern autumn turkey gun season--weighed 10 1/2 lbs. at the check-in station. Of the inch-long beard, the Yankee gentleman remarked: "Well you've got to staht some whey-yuh."

Good hunt, albeit one day and done, but I'll take it.

--S.H.

(Hickoff photo)

Maine's Fall Turkey Season

Maine's first modern fall firearms season for wild turkeys opens tomorrow in Zone 3--fortunately, I live in it.

Right now a steady cold rain is falling, but it ought to break by morning. The weatherheads are calling for sun and wind tomorrow (42-60 degrees F.). Clearing skies ought to have turkeys shaking off in open areas after fly-down like black Labs following wet retrieves.

I can live without the predicted wind, which has just picked up outside, and which also takes your ears away a little as you try to call and work birds to your setup. Not completely, just a bit. A Saturday opener is what it is, I suppose. Useless speculation as to how many folks ponied up $20 (resident fall permit), or $47 (nonresident) dogs me. "You worry too much about that s---," a friend likes to point out.

Five weekdays will follow in the short six-day offering, M-F, 10/15-19.

Stay tuned . . .

--S.H.

It's All Good, Right?

Hunting pheasants on public land is a bit like casting to planted trout: it feels pretty good in all the obvious ways, even though you'd prefer your birds and fish wild given the option. Factor in a bird dog, and the pleasure is in watching that canine find and--in the case of my English setter Radar--point the quarry. Even liberated pen-raised ringnecks run and understand survival. Still, it feels like a preserve hunt, and in some ways it is.

So after I pounded out some copy for a destinations piece this morning, quarreling over parking access in the article for the longest time, I kenneled him up and we hit a spot over in New Hampshire--we weren't alone.

In truth I'll take one migratory woodcock over a brace limit of stocked pheasants, but today we found no 'doodles, and Radar's sweet point on one of the bigger birds couldn't be resisted. Weight in the field vest usually feels pretty good. He also pointed (at my encouragement) a dead cockbird a guy had dropped with a golden BB, one that folded about sixty yards from his muzzle, after first being shot at a third that distance. Lost. Found by my hunting partner. I handed the rooster to the stranger. "You using 6s?" I asked the guy. "7 1/2s," he said. Tad small for ringnecks, but hey . . . it was pretty clear he wasn't after woodcock.

As for our end of things, the little pile of frozen pheasant breasts and legs in the freezer will make a stew one of these days. Ten-bird season limit on the planted ones, and we still have a ways to go . . .

--S.H.

(Steve Hickoff photo)

The Writing Life

On any given morning--unless I'm away at some distant hunting camp or running my bird dog Radar or mailing stuff at the post office or filling out a slip at the Fed-Ex building to send something off--I sit down at this desk. This morning I drifted in at 5:30, and immediately commenced to working (that is, after I checked the ALDS and MNF scores, and weather for the day).

Today that work involved a destinations piece, queries for an online site I contribute to, a phone call from a writer bud, other e-notes to other writers and editors (including my wife), some tinkering with a project's book chapter, and time to fix a quick lunch before picking my daughter up at school.

On my return, with mail in hand, I addressed various issues that arrived in that metal box, then put this 'puter to sleep around 5 before helping my little girl with her homework. At 7 p.m., I checked back in, and here I am still an hour later.

Sports (my NFL/NCAA hoops/NBA fandom is not unlike a controlled substance) sometimes helps me re-enter the world, as all my other vices but coffee have been stashed and left behind in the long ago 20th Century.

"Do I have what it takes to be a writer?" students in seminars and others occasionally ask--innocently, for sure. For most, the answer is no, but I offer what encouragement I can. This is certainly the best kind of life for me--crafting articles to pay the bills, selling photos, tinkering with book chapters, teaching an evening or two a week . . . but for everyone? Sure, you'll do fine if you just want to publish something somewhere. Plenty of places for that.

But are you asking me if you can make a living at it? Don't quit your day job, the expression goes. Me, I do fine, but the ticket to the full-time freelance life is volume, quality, and speed of turnaround. My newspaper columns are due every week, and the magazine deadlines--along with the online material--have a broader window of conclusion. Books take longer, often a year, but surely four or five months at minimum.

Still, I make my own hours--so long as the work is done, in process, emerging into something I can sell to an editor.

--S.H.

Wild Turkey and Woodcock

If you made me sign off on a contract that only allowed for the hunting of one thing, I'd make my choice the wild turkey. After all, it's a gamebird you can actually talk to . . . c'mon, that's a slam-dunk decision.

If you asked me my second choice sometime in October, on a day I'm not hunting fall turkeys, it would likely be the woodcock, with a bird dog at my side of course. All this makes no sense to the person who bases value on size, as the former weighs far more, and the latter is lucky to go eight ounces wet. And yeah, I enjoy waterfowl hunting, and ruffed grouse, and many of the other options, especially if gun dogs or birds are involved. And yeah too, I know you can call to quackers and honkers, but don't tell me that's the same as working a spring gobbler or kee-keeing a fall turkey to your setup position.

In the end though there's something special about the here-and-gone quality of the so-called timberdoodle, their strange yet beautiful appearance, the twitter they make on flushing, the pleasant upland places we hunt them in (the "Junkyard Cover" where my Radar once pointed a dozen different birds in less than an hour notwithstanding), and the bird dogs we go afield with like my boy setter in such leaf-whispery October and early November northeastern locations.

I carry a little piece of paper in my wallet every fall listing the woodcock seasons in the states I hunt in road-trip mode. This year, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York all offer Oct. 6-Nov. 4 as inclusive start to finish dates. Only Maine is the exception, running their season from Oct. 1-Oct. 31 (no Sunday hunting). Daily take (3) and possession limits (6 per state) are the same.

Call me crazy, but I often stop one short of the 'doodle limit at a brace of birds, points and twittering flushes ongoing if we're lucky that day. Often we see none, just the chalk splatters left after their departure . . .

And if we're trying to find a turkey flock, I flat out ignore them.

--S.H.

(Woodcock photo/copyright Steve Hickoff)