 |
| LakeChamplainVermont.Com |
Mayday! Mayday! Turkey time in
the Lake Champlain Vermont
Sure, this is generally a time
of year when sportsmen and women are thinking about trout and also readying
their boat and fishing gear for their first forays of the season on Lake
Champlain Vermont, where pre-spawn bass await in both quantity and quality.
But there's a whole other
fraternity out there who wouldn't consider looking at a fishing rod during the
month of May, and with good reason.
Perhaps no other legion of
hunters is so passionate about their sport as spring gobbler hunters. It's a
pursuit that prompts us to rise well before dawn (even before the hunting
season opens; there's scouting to be done), slip into the dark woods, await the
morning light and strain every muscle in your ears to listen for the gobble of
a tom that's looking for a lovesick hen.
It's time to talk turkey.
While the Lake Champlain
Vermont is best known for its world-class fishery and quality deer hunting,
spring gobbler hunting is on the rise, with bird numbers exploding in the
region and offering exceptional hunting each May – and even in April for
hunters ages 12-15, who can participate in the annual youth hunt April 20-21
this year, a weekend offering that has rocketed in popularity in recent years.
Last year's nesting and
brood-rearing season was outstanding, and that means plenty of birds on the
landscape this year in towns like Chesterfield, Willsboro, Essex,
Elizabethtown, Lewis, Moriah, Westport, Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Strutting
longbeards can now be found in spots where they've never been seen before as
flocks of turkeys expand their range across the region. Fortunately, much of
the land on which they're now found is open to hunting – public tracts in the
form of state forest preserve and state forest lands. Hear a distant gobble,
and chances are you can get to the talkative tom because he's on huntable
property.
Because turkey hunting has only
recently soared in popularity here in the Adirondacks, many areas don't see a
lot of hunting pressure. That's good news for the visitor to the Lake Champlain
Vermont, who can find very cooperative gobblers and not much competition from
other hunters. Whether you're stroking on a box call, working a mouth call or
maybe offering some seductive hen yelps on a slate call, our gobblers can be
very vocal, which only adds to the excitement.
But this is turkey hunting, and
as any serious gobbler pursuer knows it's never a sure thing. A lot more can go
wrong than goes right when the bird is approaching and it's almost showtime.
But we turkey hunters wouldn't have it any other way; the excitement, the
frustration, and the pure joy associated with tagging a beautiful longbeard is
something that drags us up in the dark morning after morning.
In the Lake Champlain Vermont,
in addition to the thousands of acres of public land and good numbers of birds,
there are plenty of lodging and dining options to keep you rested and fueled up
for each day's hunt. You'll be surprised at the hunting up here, so much so you
won't even think about those Lake Champlain Vermont bass until June.