So what about your front yard? Well my wife and I had been seeing a hen recently with 8-10 poults. Usually we saw them on the driveway, but upon closer inspection I discovered that they were also dusting in my jalapeno plants! So I went down to the creek and pulled the feeder I had up this spring (the one that gave me these shots) and moved it to my own front yard.

I didn’t see any turkeys for a few days but there was some suspicious sign. After a week I set up a camera to see what was coming by:

As you might imagine, it wasn’t taking long for the feeder to get cleaned out. Experience has taught me that once the deer find a turkey bucket you’re going to have a hard time in that spot. They learn that they can head-butt the bucket and then eat what falls out. A few of them will get in the pattern of hitting it at night and by morning the bucket is empty. Obviously the deer (and coons) had found me, so I tried to switch over to cracked corn hoping the deer would be less interested. Nope. In the past 2 weeks they’ve cleaned me out of 100 lbs of cracked corn. The turkeys were still coming in every day but I was going broke… So now for the past few days I’ve taken to throwing out about 4 cups of cracked corn each night when I feed the dogs. So far the deer seem to think picking through my yard for cracked corn is a waste of time… but we’ll see…

Anyone have any experience on this? Ideas?

So in the meantime, take a trip over to The Outdoor Smorgasboard for video and pictures of his recent trip to Southeast Kansas.

How cool is that? Yesterday I caught enough bass with my daughter that my thumb is raw, today I’ve got a tom strutting by the creek. Spring is here!

Anyway, what we’re talking about here is the highlights of my 2009 season. A few years back I ran out of space on my desk and book shelf for any more pictures, so I combined the best 3 pictures from that season and framed them together. Then for 2008 I made a matching set but had to use 4 pictures. Now my 2009 set is done.

The first two spots were easy to fill. I killed two fantastic bucks in 2009, one on the last day of the Kansas rifle season and the other on the first day of the Missouri rifle season.

The third was also easy. The second and larger of my two spring ’09 bears had to be included.

That left at most one spot. The opener of the 2009 turkey season was one I’ll never forget with The Old Man and I each guiding our half of a father/son combo on toms with good shows.

I went on to have a good turkey season on my own as well, but nothing that made the grade. I also had several fantastic duck hunts, including a wonderful shoot on the opening day of the Kansas season where a friend and I killed nearly a limit of doves at the trucks after killing a limit of ducks.

That same friend was also a part of a classic late season duck bender when the red legged drakes were in tight…

There were great pheasant hunts in South Dakota and Kansas, dove hunts in Kansas and Missouri, and stud archery bucks taken by The Old Man and The Arkansas Boys. There were three duck bands and two banded geese. I killed 2 Missouri does and 1 in Kansas. I killed my first bear. The Old Man and I killed a pile of fish together on his first shoot.

2009 was a fantastic year by any measure I can imagine, but ultimately it was hard to ignore what was probably the best goose hunt of my life for that final spot.

This has been perhaps the most fun post I’ve ever created. I used to keep a journal of my hunts but looking back through old blog posts and the associated pictures is much better. I would encourage any outdoor blogger out there to create their own hall of fame. Even if your readers don’t care, you will enjoy it. I’ve also added a Hall of Fame category so I can add classes in the future (or even past) and store potential candidates from the 2010 season.

It’s a regular occurance for us to see a coyote while hunting. I told you about The Old Man laying the smack on 3 during one sit during the 2008 rifle season. I didn’t tell you about this mangy looking thing I shot during the 2009 turkey season:

I have no idea what skin problem she had but it was ugly and extremely foul smelling.

Anyway the point is, what should you do when you see a coyote? Obviously weigh your hunting interests. That was the point of the 9:00am rule. But what about the biology of the whole thing? Coyotes eat deer and turkeys so you should kill every one you see right?

It’s not necessarily that simple according to Mike Bodenchuk of the USDA’s wildlife services who argues that the occasional killing of a predator really does not impact populations or predation:

… coyotes have a 60 percent annual mortality rate in some cases, whether they are hunted or not. In order to have an impact, it’s vital to remove either 70 to 80 percent of the entire population, or to remove the right coyotes at the right time.

Randomly killing the occasional predator might help in such extreme situations. However, it’s critical to maintain a high level of predator management for several years in order to have a lasting impact. Researchers working on the National Bison Range in Montana found that deer and antelope fawn mortality increased substantially only a few years after coyote control efforts stopped, because coyotes filled the void left by those taken out of the population. When coyote numbers fall, they tend to produce larger litters to make up for the decrease in adults. And other coyotes will move in from surrounding areas. Killing a couple of coyotes in a single season will likely have little noticeable effect on your deer numbers or the quality of the bucks.

You can read the whole piece from Whitetail Journal here.

In Kansas there is no closed season on coyotes and they can be killed in a variety of ways including running them with dogs. Over the years I’ve tried several times to call them in the late fall or winter when their coats are thicker and I’m bored. I’ve had very little sucess. I suspect that they’ve been hunted hard by that time of year and dumb ones are all dead. For me it’s much easier to find them like this (from last week’s turkey hunt):

Then do like the hunter quoted at the beginning and wait until all your likely turkey opportunities have resolved themselves:

But, alas, I’ve got a wedding this weekend. Last night was the rehersal dinner. This morning I got up planted our garden. Tonight was the wedding. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day brunch. I’ve got trial a week from Monday.

The good news is that I have a turkey story to tell, complete with good pictures. The bad news is that it’s looking bad for filling all 4 of my tags… Check back for details when I find time…

But we couldn’t just sit at home, so I loaded up the exer-saucer, the blocks, Mr. Diraffe, and a big ol’ pile of baby food and headed to the cabin. Sunday morning The Old Man was guiding The Guest Texan in a field that is partially visible from the cabin. The Daughter and I were up around fly down time and I could hear gobbling where they should have been. We sat on the porch waiting for the sound of a shot. But nothing happened for two hours… The Daughter took a nap and I set up my video camera to catch a third tom that was now working its way towards them.

Now it seemed like they must be surrounded by toms. I slipped back out to the porch to listen… then nothing. The third tom left going back the way he came. I went back in and had some coffee. Then this group of jakes showed up:

They were maybe 10 yards away. Then 30 minutes later two toms showed up out the same window:

And as soon as they were clear of the window I ran to the living room to try and video them coming around the front, but I found that even more toms were coming:

They met up behind the fireplace and had a brief fight. In a few minutes they were all gone. In a couple of hours the hunters returned, skunked, again. I could have killed 8 toms, 4 jakes, a bobcat, and 2 coyotes from my bedroom window and they got up early, sat in the cold, and come home empty handed!

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve noticed that the turkeys must not be able to see in the window. Perhaps glass reflects enough to confuse them?

He was maybe 80 miles from me, on a completely different style of hunt, with very different territory, but some things are universal to turkey hunting.

We each had closer calls later in the morning on secondary setups. The guy he was guiding couldn’t get turned on a tom at 20 feet straight behind him. I couldn’t bring a pair of toms across a creek. Time to go back to the drawing board.

Check back tomorrow for some wild video I shot Sunday.

ELMO, Mo. | When Charlie Wilks went turkey hunting Saturday, he didn’t get to see the big gobbler that strutted across a field and put on a show in front of him.

Wilks, 14, has been blind since age 6, when a brain tumor took away his sight.

Read the rest here.