Turkey Hunting

Few sounds raise a hunter’s heart rate like the gobble of a wild turkey. Few sights drop their jaws like a big gobbler coming to calls, tail a perfect half-circle, and the sun reflecting off the tips of hundreds of raised feathers like a prism the size of an Angus calf.

No place in the world is better to experience these amazing sights and sounds than in Kansas.

The relatively open ranch and farm country of central and western Kansas is home to the Rio Grande subspecies of turkeys. Dawn at communal roosts in riparian areas may have a dozen or more gobblers sounding their excitement back and forth like an avian version of “the wave.”

Nearer the Missouri border the turkeys are of the eastern subspecies, the same basic birds of the Appalachians and Ozarks, only larger and louder. Every spring many hunters come to Kansas to take one of each, Rio Grande and eastern, filling half of the coveted Grand Slam of America’s main four turkey subspecies.

Kansas also claims huge flocks of hybrid turkeys, Eastern/Rio Grande crosses that carry the best of both subspecies.

Kansas’ spring season runs a full two-months, with kids and archers getting first crack at gullible gobblers. Public hunting opportunities usually total over 700,000 acres. It all combines to give Kansas one of the highest hunter success rates in the wild turkey world.

If gobbles get your pulse racing – there’s no place like Kansas.

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