Red confirmed the brains of a terrific turkey canine.
Pete Lamar set the scene final weekend in Wisconsin, “We were hunting an ag field that was unharvested except for a few rows at the edges. We spotted a big rafter of turkeys in the open area but a long way away. If the dog had just charged at them, they would’ve moved off en masse and we might not have seen them again.
“Instead, he ducked into the unpicked corn and used it to hide his movements. He came out of the corn even with the turkeys and was able to get a good scatter and the human hunters went to work. Eventually four hunters got seven turkeys from this property.”
Turkey dogs have to be sensible.
“The thought process he was showing was something I didn’t expect to see,” Lamar stated. “Jon [Freis] said he didn’t train him to do that. Red learned it on his own.”
Last weekend in Wisconsin, Red, a dropper, some type of pointer x setter cross, proved to be the perfect turkey canine Pete Lamar has hunted behind.
Illinois’ nine-day fall firearm season for wild turkeys begins in the present day. It doesn’t embody use of turkey dogs and certain by no means will.
Nearby states permitting searching with turkey dogs embody Michigan, Kentucky and Wisconsin.
Turkeydog.org tracks using turkey dogs and currently 29 of the 43 states with a fall turkey season allow turkey dogs. Turkey searching is usually cut up into fall and spring seasons: Fall for basic turkey searching, spring for calling in tom turkeys besotted with lust.
Lamar would like to see turkey dogs in Illinois, saying, “Absolutely, but it would be so difficult to do, deer hunting dominates so much.”
That and the overwhelming majority of searching in Illinois is finished on non-public land, which limits choices for searching with turkey dogs.
Luke Garver, wild turkey venture supervisor for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, famous that turkey dogs are usually from areas with lengthy traditions of searching deer and turkey with dogs, not the case in Illinois.
“But I am open to considering anything that hunting public is interested in,” he stated. “If the public wanted it, we would certainly weigh all the options.”
Another challenge is that Illinois is climbing out of a decline in turkey numbers (that may shock suburbanites). But this 12 months the variety of poults per hen is the best since 2018.
I’ve hunted raccoons behind hounds as child. Growing up, I watched fox hunters run via Amish and Mennonite farms. I’ve hunted rabbits behind beagles and upland sport behind pointers and flushers. Twice I’ve witnessed John Rucker working his turtle dogs, Boykin spaniels, to seek out ornate field turtles. The wildest canine work I’ve seen was a coaching run for bear dogs in northern Wisconsin.
Turkey dogs sound like one thing I need to see. They’re not in regards to the breed, however the mind. An excellent rationalization of turkey dogs is at turkeydog.org/breeds.html.
Red, for instance, is “a typical dropper, some sort of pointer x setter cross.” Droppers are widespread turkey dogs. Boykin spaniels have been used as turkey dogs.
“Any dog that shows interest and has intelligence can be a turkey dog,” Lamar stated. “I hunted behind a purebred Vizsla and he did fine.”
He met Freis, the brains behind turkeydog.orgvia his advocacy work. Lamar contacted him and requested if he may observe. Freis stated to get a allow and are available alongside to hunt, which Lamar, who lives within the western suburbs, has performed for a number of years.
In the old days, barking helped monitor the dogs. Now it’s GPS, although turkey dogs reply to whistles and instructions if inside earshot.
Pete Lamar on the finish of a hunt in Wisconsin in 2022 with wild turkeys and turkey dogs.
“One reason so many out-of-state hunters travel to Wisconsin to hunt with Jon is for dog training,” Lamar stated. “It’s great experience for their young dogs. In Virginia, eastern Kentucky or Tennessee, for example, there may be plenty of turkeys around, but they can be spread out. One could walk all day without contacting a flock. It’s usually possible to find a few—or more—on some of the small parcels in Wisconsin that we typically hunt.
“It’s great for the dogs’ development to get as much contact as possible with turkeys just to see and learn how the turkeys respond to a dog coming at them. When Jon’s dogs were puppies, we’d take them out into fields where we’d just seen turkeys so they could learn the scent they leave and try to trail them. We saw turkeys in someone’s front yard once, stopped and explained to the homeowner that we were working with young dogs and asked if we could walk around where the birds had just been. `Go ahead,’ was the response.”
