dawg2
AWOL ADMINISTRATOR
I was reading "Outdoor Alabama" about Fall season for turkeys in Alabama. They quoted Tom Kelly and I thought I would share as he is well known in the Turkey world and some of his comments were interesting...
"I like spring turkey hunting, but fall turkey hunting gives you something to do while you're waiting. I guess more than anything is it's tradition. All of the old hunters I grew up with - some of them hunted turkeys in the fall and never hunted them in the spring. We always wanted to go out and get a Thanksgiving or a Christmas turkey.
....I think the thing behind most of it is that all of a sudden everybody considers themselves too high class to kill anything but old gobblers...I never heard the word "jake" until 1960 or '65. You had old gobblers and young gobblers. There were very few turkeys until you got in the '60s and '70s. I don't know anybody back then who turned down young gobblers. You shot young gobblers and brought them home.
...There's a lot of walking involved. This business of going 100 yards, sitting down and yelping is not going to work, unless you do it over chufa patches....You don't run around and get your picture taken on the steps of the courthouse with a 12 pound yearling gobbler. You don't want to have to admit at the cocktail party that you shoot jakes. And with all that hard work involved in it, it just seems to be going away."
Outdoor Alabama
October 2010
Page 13
By David Rainer, Staff Writer
"I like spring turkey hunting, but fall turkey hunting gives you something to do while you're waiting. I guess more than anything is it's tradition. All of the old hunters I grew up with - some of them hunted turkeys in the fall and never hunted them in the spring. We always wanted to go out and get a Thanksgiving or a Christmas turkey.
....I think the thing behind most of it is that all of a sudden everybody considers themselves too high class to kill anything but old gobblers...I never heard the word "jake" until 1960 or '65. You had old gobblers and young gobblers. There were very few turkeys until you got in the '60s and '70s. I don't know anybody back then who turned down young gobblers. You shot young gobblers and brought them home.
...There's a lot of walking involved. This business of going 100 yards, sitting down and yelping is not going to work, unless you do it over chufa patches....You don't run around and get your picture taken on the steps of the courthouse with a 12 pound yearling gobbler. You don't want to have to admit at the cocktail party that you shoot jakes. And with all that hard work involved in it, it just seems to be going away."
Outdoor Alabama
October 2010
Page 13
By David Rainer, Staff Writer
