The Pennsylvania Spring Gobbler season opens this weekend with the Mentored Youth Hunt for Junior hunters only.

This is one of the special hunting season openers set up by the PA Game Commission to encourage the hunting experiences for youth. Saturday April 29th officially marks the statewide season opening for bearded turkeys generally known as gobblers.

This season is very popular with those hunters that specialize in hunting wily old male turkeys by the use of calls and decoys. Stalking birds is not allowed and doing your preseason homework for turkey locations is a fundamental requirement for success.

Just because you might know where to find a turkey spot in your hunting area does not guarantee success.

Turkeys have excellent eyesight and hearing which means the slightest movement or something out of place will send them running! Practicing calling turkeys is always a great idea but once again calling wrong is like an alarm to a wise old gobbler and no call is better than a bad call.

Once I was walking out to a ridge where I thought I might see a lonely gobbler but I couldn’t even hear one gobbling let alone see one.

Walking back out at the end of the morning hunt I made a slight call with a box call by accident and the woods erupted with raucous gobbles nearby. Go figure …

Last year in 2016 around 36,000 gobblers were reported as harvest reports which is slightly down from the previous year totals of 2014 and 2015 when the numbers were around 41,200 each spring season.

Winter severity, early springs and nesting hens all play a large part in hunting success and turkey numbers. This year the mating season has begun early with the mild spring and warmer weather that we have been experiencing.

The PGC projects that we will have a good season with plenty of long beards making it through the winter months.

The harvest records in 2016 have shown that 67 percent of all the turkeys harvested were adult gobblers, while 23 percent were Jake turkeys which are the juvenile gobblers with visible beards. The beard of a turkey is not on their chin … rather it’s a tuft of long hairs protruding from the center of their breast area.

The thicker and longer the beard the more it is desired by turkey hunters.

True turkey hunting specialists look for t hick beards that nearly drag on the ground and also have a full fan of tail feathers when they are strutting and showing their stuff to the hens. Last but not least a serious Tom turkey will have long spurs on his feet/back of the leg area. These spurs are used for sparring with his rivals and can inflict some sharp cuts and damage in fighting with competitors or predators.

Sometimes a hen will sport a beard and are known as bearded hens. They are legal quarry but if you can contain your zest for a spring turkey it is better to let them walk away.

They are likely setting a nest just like their sister hens. For years, a bearded hen visited our property and she was very successful as a breeding hen and often brought her brood into the yard for an insect hunt.

She was likely responsible for adding 50 new turkey poults into the local flocks as adult turkeys. I don’t know what became of that hen but I have seen a few more since then and can’t help but to think of her.

Rules for the spring hunt are unchanged over years past. You do not have to wear orange but it is highly recommended! I don’t walk in or out of the woods without at least an orange cap.

Put your decoys in carrying bags and if you harvest a bird do not throw it over your shoulder without some orange covering. The spring hunt is a setup hunt, meaning that you pick a location and set up your vantage point. A tree to your back is a splendid choice for safety and a marker tape or ribbon nearby is even better for safety.

The use of blinds is legal but it needs to be one of the pop up tent kind, not one made of natural materials like logs and stones or branches. The PGC does not want your head popping over a brush pile. Avoid colors that resemble a gobbler in love … blue, white and red heads are common!

Shooting hours are one half-hour before sunrise and end at noon. You must be out of the woods by one p.m.

However, after May 15th through May 31st the hunting season extends to the entire day.

Extra spring gobbler tags are available to purchase but must be done before next Saturdays’ start.

Good luck with your hunt and remember safety first!