Turkey Hunting?

[Brian_Bailey]

Andy - Your right, it takes a lot of work to train a dog for what-ever purpose you might have for it.  

Here in NY you can only hunting turkeys with a dog in the fall. Your bag limit for the fall season is 1 turkey.  This year the state made an exception and allowed 2 birds of either sex to be taken because of the increased number of turkeys.

To spend all that time training a dog to bag maybe 2 birds a year seems to most people that I've talked to a waste of time.

But like they say," different strokes for different folks."

[Bro. Noble]

Andy and Brian,

In the past few years there are two guys that were on our milk route that quit milking and went to training and trading dogs full time.  They say they make about the same income as when they milked.  Of course there is another guy who quit milking and plays pitch pretty much full time.  He claims the same thing :D.

Noble

[Tom]

Well they can train their dog to hunt turkey if they want but they aren't welcome on my property to do it.  I would take to it about the same as a chicken farmer with a dog in the hen  house.  

My unerstanding of the "sport" is that they turn the dogs loose to charge a flock of turkeys, not to hunt and point like dogs on qail.

[Minnesota_boy]

They can come hunt turkeys on my land.  Of course iI've only seen one wild turkey here in 50 years, but that just adds to the challenge.

[Brian_Bailey]

We have several issues involved concerning using dogs in my area.

1) The traditional turkey hunter objects to using dogs because he has spent considerable time in locating and learning the habits of a particular flock or flocks of turkeys that he wishes to hunt. He knows where they roost and their feeding range is. When it comes time to actually hunt, He has a pretty good idea where he wants to be to bag the prize bird.

Now along comes the dog hunter, driving around looking for a good spot to let his dog do his foot-work.  He stops his truck, gets out and lets his dog loose.  If there are any turkeys in the nearby woods, brush or field, the dog flushes the flock and returns to the dog handler and is put back in its cage. The dog hunter smiles and grab his hunting gear. He then goes to where the dog had just flushed out the turkeys and starts calling the birds back.  Never mind the traditional hunter, who had just spent most of the morning calling the birds in-in the first place.  

2) Trespass - It seems that some of the dog hunters are using their dogs to drive game off of posted property against the wishes of the landowners.

It's too bad because a lot of the landowners don't object to hunting their property as long as you ask first.  It only takes a few to ruin it for the rest.