I’m talking turkey. This is old news to any real turkey hunter, but I was still assuming the dates were about the same as they were back in the day – a couple of weeks long, starting in mid-October. But I checked the dates, and found that turkey season is actually the entire month of October, 1 – 31.
Now starkly aware of how grossly uninformed I am, I started looking over my other information on the deer and turkey season that my wife had brought home for me. Egads! There was a firearms deer season that opens this weekend, right at my backdoor. It’s an anterlerless only urban deer season, occurring in a few select urban areas of Missouri, southern Boone County being one of them.
But wait! Overlapping turkey and deer firearm seasons? Did this mean I could arm myself with two guns and hunt both simultaneously? Several years ago, when I first got into hand-gunning, I considered wearing a large caliber handgun in addition to carrying my rifle, and I would use the handgun for close deer, and the rifle for one that is far away. But when I consulted the manual, I found that carrying two firearms for hunting was prohibited.
But apparently now this rule has been relaxed, and there is no longer a prohibition on carrying two firearms. Should I also carrying my bow, in case I saw a buck? No, carrying a firearm while bow hunting is still prohibited, even when the seasons overlap as they do this weekend. I’d need to stick to my guns, and give the bucks a break.
If I rode my motorcycle to the go hunting with two guns, I would look somewhat like Randall “Tex” Cobb in his role as the bounty hunter in Raising Arizona, albeit I’m five inches shorter and about 70 pounds lighter. I should probably go with the truck. Plus it would be really hard to haul a deer on the Harley, although I’m sure it’s been done.
To prepare for the turkey side of things, I visited the shooting range to pattern my shotgun. It was warm, I was wearing a t-shirt, and sitting down, drawing a fine bead when I shot. Either I’ve gotten soft, or I’ve just forgotten what the recoil is like from a my little pump 12 gauge when you shot long brass, 3 inch magnum shells through it. In a word: punishing. Bring on the cooler weather, and let me put another layer or two of fabric between this butt stock and my shoulder.
While at the range, we met a very nice hand gunner, who let Ann and I each fire a clip full of 9 mm through his Czech pistol. He also offered to let us fire his other guns, which included a really nice stainless steel Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 magnum. But we needed to stick to business, and it was almost dinner time. We did, however, give Henry and Oliver an chance to fire several rounds through Henry’s .22 lever action Henry Golden Boy rifle.
Several rounds and an achy shoulder later, I felt I had achieved adequate data to take the field with my shotgun after a turkey. My deer rifle is ready to go, although a little more practice would never hurt. Bring on the weekend.
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