With a spring that is bringing rainy and chilly topsy-turvy weather, turkey hunters in Ohio and Michigan nevertheless have fought the elements and found success.
One Michigan hunter who I know through an online community found a surprise with her hulk of a bird: three beards.
Heidi Bambach, 62, got excited as she saw two of them while walking up to her downed prize on her family’s farmland outside of Port Austin. It wasn’t until she was processing the turkey later that she discovered the third beard.
Biologists say about 2 percent of turkeys will have multiple beards. The beard is a rope-like strand — actually modified feathers — that hangs from the neck area and makes the bird legal during the spring season.
That she got out to hunt this spring is amazing in itself because the mother of six, grandmother, and now great-grandmother had a trying year in 2023 after losing two close family members and then having a stroke.
“Last year was the toughest of my life, I’m not going to lie,” she told me. “Thankfully I have suffered very minimal long-term effects and feel blessed to be alive! I already have chronic Lyme disease, so this is just one more battle I’ll win.”
The battle she had on the hunt is a typical one for turkey hunters, and that’s an old hen.
“We got to the blind about 5:30 a.m. on the second day [of the season],” she said. “It was very cold, the wind had died down from the day prior. I was hoping that would allow us to hear any gobblers nearby.”
She had noted with her hunting partner husband, Ron, that there were toms gobbling all around them as dawn was approaching the day.
“Soon after legal light, we had three hens fly down into the worked cornfield in front of us at about 30 yards,” she said.
They had placed three decoys out in front of their position earlier that morning but the hens took no interest in them and moved along.
“Meanwhile, we could still hear two toms in our woods and I used my slate [call] to try and get them interested,” she went on. “Suddenly the worst thing happened, I heard a hen back in the woods near them and I knew they’d follow her.”
Heidi worked a mouth diaphragm call into mix as well, to “get her agitated.”
“It worked apparently as we could hear them get closer and closer to the edge of the woods,” she said.
Almost textbook, two gobblers were in tow with the “mouthy” hen, and they all walked toward the decoys. The toms soon began gobbling at the male decoy.
She told her husband to “glass beards,” and he reported both were nice birds but the second one was the better of the two. Heidi took aim once he stopped displaying his fan, pulled the trigger on her 12-gauge shotgun, and that was that.
Her gobbler ended up weighing 23 pounds with 1-inch spurs and its beards were 10 inches, 5 inches, and 3 inches for a total length of 18 inches.
It was the 11th turkey for the self-taught hunter. She has been “plinking” with a .22 since she was a child in New Hampshire. However, it wasn’t until she moved to the Thumb region 30 years ago that Heidi became serious about big game hunting, specifically deer and turkey.
“A family friend took me out deer hunting, and from my first deer — a doe — I was addicted,” she said.
Ron was successful on opening day. He was more than happy with the jake Heidi called in for him because “he is a farmer and time to hunt is precious so he cares less about beards and spurs.”
Mainly, Heidi added, “he just loves my turkey alfredo.”
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Ohio wild turkey hunters again found great success on the first weekend of the spring season, which was April 20-21.
Hunters bagged 4,367 birds, which was nearly 300 more than in 2023 over the first two days, when 4,078 were checked in, according to a news release Monday by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.
The top counties for birds tallied were in the usual spot of the state from the southeastern region: Belmont (146); Tuscarawas (139); Carroll, Meigs, and Washington, all with (128); and Adams (127).
As for our northwest region, Williams County hunters checked in 61, Defiance (46), Fulton (44), Lucas (28), and Henry (16).
The northeast counties — Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, and Trumbull — opened this weekend on Saturday.
For the first nine days of season for both the south and northeast zones, the legal hunting hours are from 30 minutes before sunrise until noon. Then afterward hours run from half hour before sunrise until sunset.
The south zone runs until May 19 and the northeast goes until May 26. Hunters are limited to one bird.
In Michigan, I was told the DNR doesn’t currently track the numbers of turkeys taken but “there is a surprise coming for fall.”
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