Dentry: No time like the present for turkeys in Nebraska

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

CULBERTSON, Neb. - By most accounts, the turkeys along the Republican River in western Nebraska are hot to trot this spring, to say nothing of abundant.

"We have three times more turkeys now than we did in 2000," Kit Hams, big-game manager for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said in a statement to hunters.

Nebraska is so flush with turkeys that game managers dropped the zone system this year and are selling statewide licenses. For the first time, spring turkey hunters can buy two licenses and bag one gobbler for each license.

Hams said 2006 is the best year ever for turkey hunters in the Cornhusker State.

And right now, at the peak of the gobbling and breeding season, would be the best time to hunt them.

"These turkeys are really horny this year, and this is perfect timing," said Ted Rippen, who farms western Nebraska and used to know every wild turkey by name and serial number.

He doesn't know them anymore because there are so many turkeys, it's impossible to sort them.

"We need to thin them out," he said. "We have too many turkeys. I'm afraid they'll get a disease."

Rippen says he routinely sees 300 or 400 turkeys in the fields when they are congregated in winter flocks.

With breeding under way, the massive flocks have broken up. Each dominant gobbler has acquired a harem of hens and staked claim to his own strutting territory, according to a rough and tumble ritual of bluffs and fisticuffs.

The best turf goes to the big guys - boss gobblers with long beards and mean attitudes. The younger toms and jakes wander on the fringes, seeking an eager hen but afraid of being severely spurred and beaten.

Brock and Bubba Kastanek are hunters who would agree with the official state of turkeys. The brothers traveled here from eastern Nebraska and, in three days of hunting on farms up and down the Republican River, bagged two birds each.

The big turkey Brock donated for a superb farm dinner Saturday had been sporting a 10-inch beard. It came gobbling and strutting to his calls and decoys that morning.

"It came nice and easy," he said. "We had two jakes walk right by the decoys. Then a bunch of big guys stood off about 80 yards. They strutted and gobbled, and two of them came in."

A pair of glum turkey hunters I visited farther upstream earlier, at the South Fork of the Republican on the state line in Colorado, wished they had it so good. Munching a tailgate lunch, they said the curse of the silent gobbler had fallen on Hale Ponds State Wildlife Area.

"They gobbled on the roost, but they didn't make a sound after they flew down," one hunter said.

That would be a typical dilemma with gobbler hunting these days.

Some days they sound off, but on more days they stay quiet enough to give hunters the willies, or at least a severe greener pastures complex.

Wishing he were somewhere else, the hunter said, "I'll bet they are gobbling in Kansas." Although he could see Kansas, he had no license to hunt there.

I wouldn't know about Kansas, but everyone said the turkeys on private land in western Nebraska were in fine voice. Bubba said the woods along the Republican River had been alive with gobbling.

"All four of our turkeys strutted and gobbled all the way in," he said.

Rippen promised we would hear gobblers singing a half-mile away from the porch, where we gathered to dine on one of their brethren Saturday.

The birds roost in cottonwoods along the river, within earshot, and gobble their heads off when they fly up at dusk.

Rippen made that promise as he pulled Brock's plucked gobbler from a deep fryer bubbling with peanut oil and Cajun spices.

The golden bird charmed 10 people on a mild April night with its exquisite flavor, and leftovers were scarce.

The turkeys in the woods didn't gobble after all, at least not within earshot. But there would be tomorrow. People who have spring turkey-hunting fever went to bed hearing triple gobbles in their dreams.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com