Even though we’re rolling into spring planting season and the Eagle Seed beans will be hitting the dirt soon, turkeys are still on the brain for the GrowingDeer team! It’s been a great season for us so far, and the season isn’t even over yet! Overall, it’s been a relatively strange year here in southern Missouri due to the late spring. Typically during Missouri turkey season the leaves are popped and almost fully developed, the dogwood blooms are in their final days, and the Redbud trees have lost almost all their blooms. The biggest difference between past seasons and this current turkey season is the amount of hens staying with toms throughout the morning. I’ve heard numerous people talk about the number of hens being with toms. They all mention the silence right after fly down, the unresponsive gobblers, and the overall tough hunting they’ve experienced.

Adam Brooke, GrowingDeer Pro Staff, and Adam Keith enjoyed some mid-morning success by finding this lovesick tom.

The good news I’ll share with you is these turkeys will still respond to your calling and maybe even come into shotgun range, depending on your approach. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s been a great season for us thus far, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t shifted our game plan to adjust to these “henned up” toms. If we find ourselves hunting a tom that has hens with him first thing in the morning, but he’s still responding to our calls, we’ll wait him out! At some point during the morning the hens will begin to fade off and that’s when our tom will start gobbling more and become more susceptible to our calling. That’s why the mid-morning hunts can have such a high success rate during this period of the hunting season. We’ve had some great success this spring during the mid-morning hunts! One of the most exciting parts about mid-morning turkey hunting is that if a tom gobbles at your call, there’s a good chance he will come check you out!

I hope this helps you in your pursuit of the weary toms and you’re able to capitalize on a mid-morning tom!

Daydreaming of long beards and long spurs,

Adam