ENSO-Nada-- The Turkey Dead Zone

[Happy]

Anyone want to bet me I dont kill a turkey this year?

[Ihuntoldschool]

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself what's more logical.

A. ENSO NADA caused warmer and wetter conditions which caused turkeys to leave your farm.

Or

B. The warmer, wetter conditions led to less gobbling. Turkeys were less vocal, harder to hear in the rain, less active and harder to locate. In addition to this Hunters at Turkey Camp logged fewer hours hunting during hot, rainy weather.

Weather can certainly impact harvest #s but mostly due to the impact it has on hunters not the game animals.

Turkeys still out there being Turkeys despite wet warm weather.

[crow]

I'm buying an E-bike and driving to a non enso-zone

[Fullfan]

I have been hunting and killing gobblers since 1976, yep I'm old. Every spring for the past 34 I have been hunting the midwestern states and Texas.  In every weather condition from snow to blistering heat. Have not failed to fill my tags due to weather. Gobblers will gobblers every spring.  I don't buy the weather would keep anyone from killing gobblers.

[GobbleNut]

I have been hunting and killing gobblers since 1976, yep I'm old. Every spring for the past 34 I have been hunting the midwestern states and Texas.  In every weather condition from snow to blistering heat. Have not failed to fill my tags due to weather. Gobblers will gobblers every spring.  I don't buy the weather would keep anyone from killing gobblers.

I, too, have found that a guy can kill a gobbler in just about any kind of weather. Back when I was a young'un, I killed a few when I probably should have had enough sense to not even be hunting. Now that significant time has passed, somehow that "sense" has penetrated my thick skull.

For me now, the debate I have with myself about going out in "no fun" conditions has switched from "I'm goin' after that gobbler come hell or high water" to "uhhh, I think I'll wait until the conditions are a little nicer"...that is, if time allows.

...But yeah, if it's that important to kill one, you can definitely kill them in conditions where you think you can't. On the other hand, in those times I didn't find that gobbler that was willing to play in those conditions (which quite honestly, was a lot more often), and got back to the truck soaked, beat, or worse, I found myself asking..."What the heck were you thinking going out there?"   

[shaman]

I've been wracking my brain on this.  So far, here's what I've come up with.

2020 was COVID. The governor decided to suspend non-resident tag sales. The season never happened for us.

There was one year where I had two gobblers surprise me from behind within an hour of each other on The Opener.  I didn't get a shot at either.  After that, I didn't see a gobbler for the rest of the season.

There were a couple of years in there where the neighbors were poaching heavily.  We didn't see any deer or turkey.  They were eventually evicted and the game came back.

The rest?  I will admit that I'll stay in if it's pouring rain.  However, I'll be out as soon as it shows clearing.  Some of the better hunts I've had have gone down that way.  Cold causes adjustments, but it generally doesn't cause me to stay home. 

I never remember a season where weather blew up the whole season.  However, I do remember seasons where turkeys never quite made it up on our ridge.  If you heard them at flydown, they were waaaay off. 

What this ENSO-NADA thing has pointed out to me is a deficiency in my record keeping.  I've got two means of recording my hunts.  The first is my weblog.  I make a post in that about every 6 days year round.  However, it's about stuff that I think folks would want to read.  It's not a diary.  The second is the camp's log.  I've got a record of every gobbler that's been taken at our camp going back to its founding.  However, it does not have info about the hunts where nothing happened and no near misses.  Up until 2022, my memory seemed good enough, but then I had chemo and . . .

Chemo did a real tapdance on my memory.  Three years on, and I'm just fine. However,the chemo wiped out a lot of peripheral stuff. I used to be a walking encyclopedia of what happened at the farm for the past 20-some years, but now the mundane stuff from way back is just gone.

[Dtrkyman]

You can kill turkeys in any weather but "pretty" weather puts them and us in a much better mood!

If you think you can kill as many turkeys in crappy weather as pretty weather, well, good luck!


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[Vintage]

Turkeys are Turkeys. They will be out there in any weather.