I was tooling around the NWTF website and looked at the turkey hunting season dates around the nation. Florida will be the first to kick off the festivities of Thunder Chicken feather fluffing. The Sunshine State’s youth hunt falls on the last week of February and the season opens to everyone March 3. Then the fun spreads north!

Most of the turkey hunting seasons of Southeast States fall around the middle of March. If Mother Nature cooperates and the season opens up in sync with breeding patterns we should find that the gobblers are anticipating breeding season, but the hens usually aren't quite ready yet.

If this is the case come opening day, a lot of the Toms will not be “henned up” and if you like lots of loud and aggressive calling, the early season is the time to play this card. The gobblers are also sorting out dominance and hierarchy and are not yet wise to the calling pressure soon to be bombarded upon them. These birds will be very vulnerable to calling! Which means feathers should fly!

We will go more into early season tactics in a few weeks, but first we have some scouting to do. That will be the topic of next week’s blog. A lot of y’all asked for scouting to be discussed in the responses to last week’s blog, so we will start there.

The early season is a great time to beat the jokers who show up with five different calls and hammer on them until every bird in the county knows what’s up.  Take advantage.
This being said, who is planning to do a little traveling this year to get an early start to the season? Share your plans for your turkey adventures on Facebook and any early season tips you may have for The Brotherhood.