TURKEY FANNING & REAPING, NOT LEGAL IN ALL STATES

[mookyj]

Turkey Fanning & Reaping, Not Legal In All States - Turkey Talk Blog

http://www.turkey-talk.com/tblog/?p=1501





Five states now have an outright ban on the practice with corresponding violation statutes and penalties. Nearly a third of all US states either ban or ...

[Spitten and drummen]

Good. I hope the other states follow until its completely banned. That is my opinion wether anyone else likes it or not.

[crow]

You don't have to worry about me anymore.

last year on a hunt, I left my strutter fan in my mirror ghost blind when going out for lunch.
came back into the woods and couldn't find the blind, I never replaced either of them.

now I rely on my ozonics  (I use 2 of them) and face painting.

[eggshell]

Good news and article. I hope all the states make it illegal. As many of you know I can testify what happens when some one abandons
all rules of safe hunting just for a chance to shoot a turkey or if they make a bad choice another hunter. A damn turkey isn't worth dying, injuring
or killing someone over. I will live the rest of my life with the results of a bad choice, I hope you never do.

[Happy]

I got me a HECS suit, turkey scent and a 22-250. Failure ain't likely.

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[LaLongbeard]

This just grinds my gears. You should be able to kill a dang Turkey anyway you want to without someone telling you how to do it!
What difference does it make as long as the turkey is dead isn't that the whole point? Legal or not immoral, unsportsmanlike as long as you kill something it's ok in my book!

[Ranger]

This just grinds my gears. You should be able to kill a dang Turkey anyway you want to without someone telling you how to do it!
What difference does it make as long as the turkey is dead isn't that the whole point? Legal or not immoral, unsportsmanlike as long as you kill something it's ok in my book!

Seems to be a popular theme for the last few years.  With this however I'll be glad when the turkey community admits and accepts this isn't strategy and it isn't a tactic, this is leveraging the kill and using turkey biology against him to a level that's no longer sport.  And sure shouldn't be considered sport by someone who supposedly cares about Wild Turkeys and their hunting and conservation.  Friends don't let friends reap turkeys

[GobbleNut]

First off, I am not a reaper, but I have mixed feelings about the whole fan thing.  I am most certainly against hunters using unsafe tactics to kill turkeys,...and reaping, without the proper precautions, falls into that category for sure.  However, fan use covers a whole spectrum from reaping all the way to using a strutter decoy. Are we prepared to outlaw the use of those,...as well as jake decoys?  If so, fine,...and if not, why not? 

If it's the safety issue, from what I have seen there are a lot more folks using strutter dekes in an unsafe manner than there are reapers.  At least reapers generally are using that tactic in situations where they are in pretty wide-open areas.  Strutter users seem to often set out a decoy without any consideration that a hunter could sneak in from the opposite side of their set-up and shoot right into them.  Having said that, I don't believe either tactic is any more dangerous than using turkey calls in many set-up situations.  To my knowledge regarding turkey hunting accidents, I believe most have involved people being mistaken for turkeys by someone sneaking up on them while they were set up calling.

All that aside, my main concern about reaping is that it is so effective right now (I also believe turkeys will learn to avoid a fan just like they have learned to avoid calling and other tactics) that turkey hunters are possibly killing too large a percentage of the mature gobbler population in some places.  If that is indeed the case, reaping (and strutter/jake decoy use) might well need to be regulated.  In the meantime, my personal verdict is still out on whether I want to jump on the "let's outlaw fan use" bandwagon. 

[tomstopper]

I got me a HECS suit, turkey scent and a 22-250. Failure ain't likely.

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[Hobbes]

I've no interest in killing turkeys this way, whatever it's called, but...........holy smokes are these threads painful to watch.  It's a subject that is polarizing as heck and seldom if ever accomplishes anything.  It's hard not to watch.

[JLH]

Next thing you know they'll want to ban spotlighting turkeys.

[Sir-diealot]

I am not going to bother to get into the ethics of the whole thing, but to me I view it looks like an accident waiting to happen so I personally would not want to do it or hunt with anybody that is doing it when I was there.

[Loyalist84]

I'll start off by saying I have never reaped a bird, and for personal reasons of hunting according the prescribed methods (I'm a traditionalist - sue me) I never intend to reap a bird. However, I see this as overreach and basically akin to the issue of ground-sluicing grouse upland hunting. For me the issue of leveraging biology against a bird, while hunting, is of little consequence. Why else do we buy locator calls, pots and boxes to mimic hens in a breeding season, and place strutter or jake decoys, except to leverage a tom's biology - his urge to reproduce in a genetically hardwired mating season, against him in order to put him in a pot? To say that a decoy or a call to induce gobbling does not do the exact same thing is a matter of semantics.

I agree without hesitation that reaping is unsafe. However, if a person fires on a fan without seeing a head to aim at or even being able to realize that they are not within 40 yards of a live, moving and bearded (ie legal to take) turkey, then they should never be allowed to hunt anything in the first place and are the same trigger-happy bozos who give hunters in general such a terrible name. Always identify the target and be sure of what you are aiming at, especially in the context of a sport where lifelike decoys are part and parcel of the sport. Is it not as sporting as calling one along the edge of a cornfield with your back against a hard maple with a box call and watching the sunlight turn his fan orange as he come in to you? Not at all. But is it any MORE ethical than the overwhelming history of turkey hunting in this continent where they were potted with .22 Hornets or incidentally with deer rifles, or any other firearm that was at hand, because you didn't pass up on ANY game that could feed your family another day? The formative notions of this sport (to my understanding and I won't begrudge any education to the contrary) are relatively young and for a new method of take to be shunned because it's more effective or less arduous is a bit like a person who grew up with Porter Wagoner and Bluegrass denouncing Elvis as 'not really music'. It is still, at its core, hunting wild turkeys. Now as others have said, if it becomes too harmful to the population of birds, then sure, consider limiting its use. But while you're outlawing fans, why not outlaw decoys, .22-250s, 7, 8 & 9 shot, and anything below a 20 gauge and above a 10 (all regulations that I have hunted turkeys under since it became legal in my province). This is akin to Atlantic Salmon fishermen I know who will swing a wet fly pattern 200 years old, but turn their nose up at a bit of deer hair spun around a hook because it's too modern and too effective at catching the 1-3 fish they may otherwise expect in a week.

[fallhnt]

They should ban guns too.

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[MK M GOBL]

While I may personally not "reap" fan for a turkey, I have and do use decoys and yes a strutter, having come from goose and duck hunting in a field where you are using decoys, didn't seem that far a stretch that one may decoy turkeys. Beyond all that I would still go with if it's legal in the state you hunt then it comes down to your freedom of choice. We could make all kinds of comparisons in all forms of hunting and other advancements in what we do every day.

Fishing off the bank or and $80,000 Bass Boat with sonar, gps, and trolling motor beyond those 300 horses on the back of the boat.
Deer Hunting with a rifle or bowhunting only
Do you drive a truck to your hunting spot, better go back to Amish and hook up the horse to the buggy... hmmm wonder how those state to state turkey hunters would handle that one.

Like I said you can make comparisons in most any aspect of what we do daily and how you choose to do what you do. Yup those freedoms (with in the law)

Not to say it this way but putting a turkey on a pedestal and saying it should only be hunted in one manner is a little ridiculous. Now if your choice is to hunt a certain way that's what it is your choice.

I do see reaping as a safety issue, can't imagine sticking a "target" on my head and running around with it, guess those rules of firearm safety come in play.

Not trying to sound all preachy but when we break down in our ranks this is how we lose in the end.


By some of the posts I've seen looks like we all need to just go back to those first turkey hunters ways...



MK M GOBL