Disappointing Scouting Trip

I originally wrote this last Monday after my first weekend of scouting for the KY Spring Gobbler Season. Since then, I’m hearing back from folks that the general consensus around these parts is that the turkeys are out there, just not up on the ridges and they’re not hot and vocal as they usually are this time of year:

March 22, 2010

This is my second weekend down at turkey camp this year. We’re in SW Bracken County, KY, up in the Trans-Bluegrass between Cynthiana and the Ohio River. I spent two fruitless mornings– only a few gobblers sounding off and no sign of hens. Normally my fields are full of turkeys this time of year. The neighbor said he’d only seen a couple since the snow left.

Saturday afternoon, I went out driving. We had to go into town to pick up a few things, and I took the long way, figuring we’d see turkeys along the way– nada.

It wasn’t until we were on the way home, again out riding a back road, that we finally spied a flock– 5 hens and a gobbler. He was strutting up a a storm down in the bottoms of Snag Creek.

So here are my questions:

1) What’s happened to all the turkeys? I’m on a ridge. The roads are mostly on ridges. Are the turkeys hiding in the bottoms or what?
2) This isn’t a die-off, is it? I mean, they’re still out there, right?
3) Are other folks seeing this, or is this a fairly local thing? It felt like somebody had wound the clock back to 1990.

My one theory on this is that we did not have a good acorn crop last Fall. If the turkeys did not have food, they would have gone somewhere else and that would probably be the bottoms. We’re only 2 miles from the Licking River. However, I hope they make up their minds to come back up on my ridge before seasons starts; it could be a long lonely Spring otherwise.

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