The Old Days are gone, at least for now….

[Tom007]

I starting hunting Turkey in the early 80's. The game was relatively new, no commercial camo, no TSS, fixed chokes, you get the picture. Late 80's, through the 90's, birds were plentiful. Mess up on one, walk a few hundred yards, strike up another. Fast forward to today, it's tough all over. I am not getting into why, lord knows all the threads lately are trying to determine this. I am by no means an expert Turkey hunter, in fact I will never be. One thing I can be sure of is I enjoy everything about it, including this great Forum. I have decided to accept the fact that this sport is now a real battle with not only nature and a diminishing resource, but a competition  between all of us in sharing the woods we chose to do battle in. It's like "survival of the fittest", the weak will give up, the strong will chose to stay in the game and adapt. I confess that the birds are much tougher to harvest, but I am ok with this. It's what it is. Harvesting a mature Tom now to me is way more rewarding than it was 20 years ago. I have become very humble now regarding Turkey hunting. We all have now joined, but in my opinion taken a back seat in the predator chain of the Wild Turkey, in fact we are ALL competing for this precious resource. Couple this with everything else we see in our threads, times have changed. I have accepted this, and will "motor on" with my favorite passion. Just thought I'd share my views here. Be safe, enjoy your season!

[Gooserbat]

Everything changes.  We as humans choose to either adapt and conserve or adapt and exploit.  History is full of examples of exploitation.  Wooly mammoth and passages pigeon come to mind.  We have to accept that there are more turkey hunters than before so in order to have more turkeys we have to look for ways to bring about a population increase instead of decline.  I know that here we've been trapping and shooting varmints hard and it seems to be working. Turkeys do well in open woods so prescribed fire is another tool we like to use.

[Greg Massey]

Agree, times have changed , and during these changing times i made some great memories with friends while chasing gobblers ... It's all about adapting and learning new and better strategies while hunting. Some days we are successful and some days it just doesn't work out but i still enjoy the time outdoors ...

[Wigsplitter]

Great post here- yes it's tougher in my book as well now but if I had to quit all hunting except for one thing it would be turkeys!  I enjoy the challenge and interaction and the spring woods - have many memorable hunts with great friends- I plan to continue on!! Good luck out there and be respectful and courteous in the woods!!

[the Ward]

I starting hunting Turkey in the early 80's. The game was relatively new, no commercial camo, no TSS, fixed chokes, you get the picture. Late 80's, through the 90's, birds were plentiful. Mess up on one, walk a few hundred yards, strike up another. Fast forward to today, it's tough all over. I am not getting into why, lord knows all the threads lately are trying to determine this. I am by no means an expert Turkey hunter, in fact I will never be. One thing I can be sure of is I enjoy everything about it, including this great Forum. I have decided to accept the fact that this sport is now a real battle with not only nature and a diminishing resource, but a competition  between all of us in sharing the woods we chose to do battle in. It's like "survival of the fittest", the weak will give up, the strong will chose to stay in the game and adapt. I confess that the birds are much tougher to harvest, but I am ok with this. It's what it is. Harvesting a mature Tom now to me is way more rewarding than it was 20 years ago. I have become very humble now regarding Turkey hunting. We all have now joined, but in my opinion taken a back seat in the predator chain of the Wild Turkey, in fact we are ALL competing for this precious resource. Couple this with everything else we see in our threads, times have changed. I have accepted this, and will "motor on" with my favorite passion. Just thought I'd share my views here. Be safe, enjoy your season!

x2. Your story mimics my own hunting journey chasing the big birds. Great post!

[Tom007]

Appreciate the kind words friends.....

[Mossyguy]

When I was a kid I'd grab the 'ol Model 12 with some high brass #6's and hit the woods without patterning, cleaning the barrel or any sort of optic-just bare bones. These days my guns are synthetic, have optics on them and are loaded with TSS. I could go back to the bare essentials at any point but what I miss most is the exclusivity. That's one thing you can't get back...

[quavers59]

Right 007.  Alot of competition  for a limited Resource  in North New Jersey.
   I started out in 1990. 1994 was my 1st year hunting in New Jersey. I remember  that the projected number of Turkeys in 1994 was 22,000. Today nearly 30 years later the numbers  are  20,000 to 23,000.
   Not much of a change??.
   

[Spring Creek Calls]

I started turkey hunting in the mid 1970's, early days of Michigan turkey hunting. Great memories but today's hunting opportunities are far greater than my early experience. It was tough back then.

[FL-Boss]

How many more hunters are now chasing these birds vs 30 years ago.... ??

Right 007.  Alot of competition  for a limited Resource  in North New Jersey.
   I started out in 1990. 1994 was my 1st year hunting in New Jersey. I remember  that the projected number of Turkeys in 1994 was 22,000. Today nearly 30 years later the numbers  are  20,000 to 23,000.
   Not much of a change??.

[jhoward11]

We encourage, take a youngster hunting. Now we got what we wanted. More hunters and with that goes less hunting ground, over populated public ground. These youngsters do it different with videos, and tech savvy info. We didn't have that back then. It's like comparing Jack to Tiger. As Gooserbat said. we can either change and adapt or wallow in our pity. We don't have to change everything, just adapt some.

[Archivist13]

We encourage, take a youngster hunting. Now we got what we wanted. More hunters and with that goes less hunting ground, over populated public ground. These youngsters do it different with videos, and tech savvy info. We didn't have that back then. It's like comparing Jack to Tiger. As Gooserbat said. we can either change and adapt or wallow in our pity. We don't have to change everything, just adapt some.

Well said. I bet that a lot of the folks that complain about YT and such would have also done the same thing if it was available back in the day. I started in the late 80's and it was too cumbersome to carry around a vhs recorder while hunting. With today's technology, who knows if I would have gotten into the filming scene, but I bet a lot of people that discourage it now would have.

[Yoder409]

Kinda hard to fathom.........

I don't THINK of myself as being "old".  But I definitely DID get into turkey hunting in this area on the ground floor.

When I started hunting, there were no turkeys where I lived.  You had to travel to bigger woods to find them.  We used to drive close to 100 miles to an area in the vicinity of Penn State University to hunt spring birds.

ALSO, when I started.......a whole lot of things hunters today take for granted did not even exist.  Things like:

Realtree
Mossy Oak
Primos
Cody
shotgun shells designated "Turkey"
shotgun chokes designated "Turkey"
turkey decoys

Crazy how the sport has "evolved" in such a short span of time.

[callmakerman]

Just my two cents. I started hunting turkeys in the late 80's and enjoyed seeing the birds take hold and expand the size of the flocks. At one time it was like there was a bird behind every tree to gobble at my calls no matter how bad I sounded and yes now the numbers are down in certain areas that I hunt. In the end I'm getting older but nowhere near out of the game. At 62 I've kept myself in shape and still love every day I can get out in the woods and if I'm lucky work some birds. I agree that it's frustrating on the days when the woods are way to quiet. Someday this will end as the mind may be willing, but the body says no or any other combination of things. When it's said and done, I'll still get up at 3 am and head out to woods hoping this is the day that he wants to play for a while and if not it's still the best time of the year to be out in the woods and I don't want to miss it. Maybe if there's nothing happening, I'll find some mushrooms or pick a few Ramps to cook up for dinner and I've been known to dig up ferns or flowers to put in my garden at home. But I'm out there any enjoying every minute of it and wouldn't have it any other way for as long as it will last.

[Greg Massey]

Just my two cents. I started hunting turkeys in the late 80's and enjoyed seeing the birds take hold and expand the size of the flocks. At one time it was like there was a bird behind every tree to gobble at my calls no matter how bad I sounded and yes now the numbers are down in certain areas that I hunt. In the end I'm getting older but nowhere near out of the game. At 62 I've kept myself in shape and still love every day I can get out in the woods and if I'm lucky work some birds. I agree that it's frustrating on the days when the woods are way to quiet. Someday this will end as the mind may be willing, but the body says no or any other combination of things. When it's said and done, I'll still get up at 3 am and head out to woods hoping this is the day that he wants to play for a while and if not it's still the best time of the year to be out in the woods and I don't want to miss it. Maybe if there's nothing happening, I'll find some mushrooms or pick a few Ramps to cook up for dinner and I've been known to dig up ferns or flowers to put in my garden at home. But I'm out there any enjoying every minute of it and wouldn't have it any other way for as long as it will last.

Great post... I agree and those sunrises are some of the best you will ever see and if your fortunate a gobble in the distance.