Early Season: March madness!
First gobbler of the season, a nice 22 ½-pounder with 10 ½-inch beard.
Neal Herrman
Early Season: March madness!
As the calendar turns to a new year the thoughts of turkey hunting become even more pressing and the wait is close to being over. The pacing of the floor in March seeing turkeys killed in the southern states was more than I could handle, hence my March Madness. With the pushing of my wife to go somewhere in March to turkey hunt (I guess I get a little annoying), I decided to take up an invitation for an early season draw only/any weapon hunt in Eastern Nebraska on non-state land.
The invitation to hunt with outdoor writers and be filmed put a little extra pressure on, but I certainly was up for the challenge. Being that it was March yet, of course I’d go and get a jump start on the season!
On Easter Sunday 2016 the hunt began. I picked up Shane Simpson with callingallturkeys.com, which would be filming one of my hunts. We arrived early afternoon and after picking up our tags, we headed straight to the woods. The anxiety of hearing the first gobble of the year with a gun in my hand was all I could handle.
After a few hours of sitting over a jake decoy, that long-awaited gobble finally came. Albeit a distant gobble, it was a gobble nonetheless. After some coaxing from my Hooks slate call, he had closed the distance to a point we could hear the spitting and drumming. Up over the hill came the top of a tail fan strutting right to our decoy—the sight I’d been waiting months for. As he closed the distance right to the decoy, I got the O.K. from Shane to pull the trigger. I did just that easily making a 10-yard shot with my newly customized Benelli from Rob Roberts Custom Gun Works. The bird fell in his tracks and my Easter gift was in hand: my first gobbler of 2016.
On My Own
The next few days Shane would be filming other guys in camp, so with another tag in my pocket I struck out on my own. The first full day brought no gobbling in the morning, but being persistent and patient as I am I stuck with it and was able to call up a nice bird around 6:00 that evening, putting my second one on the ground.
With the option to buy more tags and a few days before we’d head home, I did just that. The following morning I headed out to a spot I had found and felt would hold some gobbling birds. Though a long trek through some rather large hills, I was able to walk the 3.5 miles round trip, tag a gobbler after calling him and his hen in, and was back to the truck in two hours.
Now what to do? Buy another tag, of course! That tag proved a little tougher to fill. After missing a bird and killing a tree, a late morning hunt produced my fourth gobbler in four days, another nice long beard in the 22-pound range.
All in all a trip that will never be forgotten and helped me realize that there is a cure for March Madness. It just may be a little different type of Madness than most people deal with.
Neal Herrman has been turkey hunting for 17 years. He has harvested birds in seven states and has two grand slams. Neal won calling titles in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and placed top 15 in the nation. He is on the Hooks Custom Calls pro staff and designed their strikers. Neal is an active member of the NWTF.