Not Turkey Hunting Experts
We, the staff, at MAHA do not consider ourselves experts. We do enjoy spring turkey season and hunt each year, however that alone does not make us experts.
What our turkey hunting experience (not expertise) provides the do it yourself turkey hunter is first hand boots on the ground knowledge with the land, the habitat and the birds. The intent of this experience is to ensure more of our wild turkey hunters have success to ensure their membership renewal through knowledgeable recommendations of where to hunt.
Recognizing Requirements
Turkey hunting involves more than just mature toms and we take an inclusive view that good turkey hunting results from year round observation of turkey behavior and hunting styles applicable to our terrain.
This is only a hen - there is more to the wild turkey hunting story and our leases behind the picture.
Throughout this web site the reader will find many live and harvest pictures. The live pictures mostly come from the two full time Association staff as they are on the land 12 months of the year with far more opportunities to capture in a picture the wildlife that is seen. Pictures are not the top priority when on land runs. The owner/operator Jon Nee and land runner John Wenzel both take a lot of pictures as part of the enjoyment of the day. In this case it was a lease renewal and part of the renewal process is physically going to to the lease land to confirm its usage, talking to the landowner and in person signing the contract. In this case on this land run all we saw was this hen, however it has been a long time productive property. By the way, before we even stop by the land we first stop at the county courthouse to ensure all the land is owned by the one claiming so with the legal descriptions he provided. We have much land lease experience and know what protects our effort and budget.
Through MAHA we have association with several true turkey hunting experts. These are the kind of hunters that amaze us with their abilities that we cannot match. Such hunters show themselves quickly through how they talk, mostly humble, and what they produce. Their production is not so much in numbers, but method and the pure enjoyment of turkey hunting.
12 year old Leland with a mature tom from the Missouri Youth Season.
Two examples will suffice to illustrate this method distinction between the average turkey hunters (most of us) and this small group of true turkey hunting experts. The first is the hunter that found out about the Association through a friend, joined at noon over lunch on Wednesday the last week of the spring season, was turkey hunting by 3 PM on a property he never saw before and was back at the office just before dark with a fine mature tom.
This turkey hunter took no decoys, had no call, and told how he stalked the bird. That day was a long time ago and he was the first of the exceptional skill level turkey hunters that we recognized. He filled the second tag the next day, again in the late afternoon after work on a property he never before hunted.
The next example is a member that can call with only his own lung power and without the aid of any mechanical call. He is able to gobble, purr, cut and putt as well or better than most with a call. He also had a tattered wing that he used in several ways the most interesting was to simulate two toms fighting.
An early April picture along a wooded creek bottom on last year's wheat now well into spring volunteer weed green up. The gobbling start in mid March, early April find the toms trying to court and the hens ignoring them. The jakes by now have been pushed aside by the toms.
On the same land run as the picture above this one. These birds were found on this year's wheat.
His approach on this technique was to simulate the toms in battle and he uses hen decoys to attract the other toms that would come attracted first by the sound and then the lonely hen decoy.
We have never seen this and would not attempt it ourselves and this turkey hunting member's credibility came through with a picture of his home office with a simple tail mount and a board underneath it with an uncountable number of long beards over a couple of rows.
Turkey hunting a skill intensive discipline is best understood by fellow turkey hunters and the MAHA staff turkey hunts each spring making them a good starting point for the better turkey hunting we offer. They are also motivated to get each hunter to return each year.
While the expert level of wild turkey hunter may amaze us, the reality for most of us is we are acceptable or average at turkey hunting, are able to harvest one to 4 toms each spring and are happy using every call, decoy, blind as well as any other turkey hunting tool we think would work. Most of us take up to a week to get our first bird and those that harvest faster credit luck or a bit of pre season scouting.
We recognize that many of our hunters are not able to scout and that is where our experience added to the fact we are on the land 12 months of the year comes to benefit the MAHA hunter. When we recommend a lease it is based on our personal observation of that land and the birds as well as the location in the state where we know there does exist an above average level of production.
The interest in this hen and brood picture is that it was taken in late September and appears to be of a very late hatch.
This was seen in Iowa while on the road to one of our current hunting lease holdings up for renewal.
While riding in the truck seat is not scouting, seeing such sightings does contribute to our knowledge of the area. It is from this level of year round being out and about on and around the land we lease that results in our recommendations to firt year memerbs where to hunt for what they are after.
From one of our dedicated spring season hunters.
Few of us actually trophy turkey hunt. Those that do, do so more when the opportunity presents itself. Many hunters will find in any reasonably sized flock one tom or more that will stand out due to body or beard size. To actively and solely hunt such toms of notable size will frequently mean unfilled tags. What we offer is simply turkey hunts without any additions to the state regulations and while few harvest jakes, most will find mature turkey enough that toms are the standard.
If there is a definition of what an expert is, part of that definition must include the ability to pass on this specialized skill to another. In this case Jon Nee Senior (the association owner, operator and turkey hunter), he has done just so with Jon Junior.
After several seasons of mentoring Jon junior is able to successfully scout, setup, call in and shoot his own toms without dad being present. Now Jon Junior has the potential to become a great turkey hunter and knowing how his dad is the title of turkey hunting expert will not enter Jon Junior's mentality.
We know turkey hunting is hard and as soon as any of us think we have it figured out we will be reminded the bird has a mind and behavior of its own. And, we believe being a recurring successful hunter is not enough to be an expert.
While we are not experts ourselves, we simply work hard at getting our self guided hunters as good of a hunt as it is possible to make happen. That is our promise and that is the only promise we make. Our hunts are as challenging as anywhere else. We just try to give our hunters a jump start as to where to park their truck. Once there they hunt on their own.
The product we provide is the right habitat in the right region of the state that has a good history of flock production. We essentially have completed the research most hunters would have done on their own and added to that the place to park their truck and go hunt. We take turkey hunting and make it better by managing hunter pressure.