Turkey road trips are pure fun. Unlike big game hunts that require expensive licenses, tons of gear, extensive hikes into remote country and horses to pack out meat, wild turkey hunts are loaded with excitement and challenge, yet without the backbreaking work. Don’t get me wrong, you can still burn tons of calories as you climb mountains, slosh through swamps and hunt from dark to dark, yet when success happens, you can throw ole tom over your shoulder and hike back to camp.
Think Slam
Turkey hunting becomes especially exciting when you ad multiple species to the quest. Although the four subspecies are located in the four corners of the USA, there are places where you can bag two and possibly three species in the same state. For Osceola, hunt south of Orlando and chase Eastern birds north of Disney Country. Sections of Texas have Rio Grande and Merriam’s’ as does Oklahoma and South Dakota. Indian reservations often have one or two species and frequently have over-the-counter licenses that can be purchased inexpensively.
Align Geography
The ultimate grand slam of turkeys will include the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians, the Rio Grande, and Florida’s deep swamp country, however, that involves a lot of traveling and probably more expense than most hunters can justify. Instead, consider states that have close proximity, like the region I live in. A person can begin their season in Northern Virginia, pass into Western Maryland, drop South into West Virginia and end up in Southern Pennsylvania and barely travel 100 miles. Additionally, Virginia opens their season in early April while the Keystone season opens on May 1, providing lots of time to explore or just hunt a few days in each state. West Virginia has the advantage of a calendar hunting year which allows you to hunt this spring and the upcoming fall on the same license. If this sounds like a lot of juggling state rules and regulations, Jim Spencer smooths out the bumps with this post from the Realtree website:
Boy, do we travel. In 2016, we hunted turkeys (in this order) in Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Oklahoma again, Missouri, Ohio and Michigan. If you count Oklahoma twice, that’s eight states. This spring it’ll be Mississippi-Oklahoma-Arkansas-Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska-Montana-South Dakota. Again, eight states.
… <a href=”http://www.realtree.com/turkey-hunting/articles/6-ways-for-turkey-hunting-multiple-states-on-the-road?mc_cid=0f191a37d4&mc_eid=8fe2237aad” target=”_blank”>[continued]</a></blockquote>
