After a pretty intense game of cat-and-mouse this past weekend, Clint Gray and Eric Templet teamed up and eventually put down a six-bearded gobbler Sunday morning in West Feliciana Parish that, once officially certified by the National Wild Turkey Federation, will become Louisiana’s No. 2-ranked atypical gobbler in the all-time record books.
Louisiana’s 2018 spring gobbler season will begin on April 7 in all three turkey hunting areas.
Area A, which includes the majority of the state’s turkey hunting habitat, will remain open for hunting through May 6.
• Gobble
• Box calls
Enforcement agents with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries were busy when turkey seasoned opened in all three of the state’s hunting areas on April 7.
The delay of the 2018 turkey season until April 7 has no doubt been an agonizing wait for members of the Tenth Legion, but now this elite group of hunters are in action. I suspect many got things started on March 30 with the opening of the youth weekend. My 7-year-old grandson worked the squirrels over in February, and is ready to be in the turkey blind on that day.
The Pearl River Wildlife Management Area is located between the Pearl River at the Louisiana-Mississippi state boundary, and the West Pearl river from the east end of the Rigolets by the Mississippi Sound to a point where I-59 crosses its boundary.
During a recent hunt in the Homochitto hardwoods of Franklin County, my hunting partner Shane McCullough and I weren’t having any luck luring in a tom. We heard several on the limb, but they were quickly joined by hens and went silent.
Hugh McLaurin of Big Lake Outdoor Products has been making game calls out of a variety of woods for years, and he knows that dymond wood, a laminate that isn’t easy to come by, is one of the hardest, most-dense woods around, often used in the handles of custom knives. […]
It’s no small feat to actually come home with a wily, old gobbler. The bird’s eyesight alone makes it formidable quarry. Even when you’re covered head to toe in camouflage, the slightest mishap can ruin an otherwise solid hunt.
“The target area you’re aiming for is about the size of a grape fruit,” Lafleur said. For that reason, shot placement is everything. A heart and lung shot is ideal, but one that disables the bird due with an arrow in the body so that it can’t fly away is also lethal.
Yes, that’s right — for the first time in the lifetime of this author there is no turkey hunting in Louisiana in March. Of course, I grew up hunting in North Louisiana in the 60s and there were no turkeys to hunt in those days. LDWF was trying to restock birds in that area but for various reasons, the restocking effort was not working.
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