Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Realtree turkey hunting editor Steve Hickoff has chased gobblers all over the United States and Mexico. He was born and raised in northcentral Pennsylvania, and now makes his home in Maine. Hickoff was named the NWTF Tom Kelly Communicator of the Year for 2019, a prestigious award reflecting his longtime work promoting hunting and conservation as a turkey hunting writer, editor and book author.

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3 Offbeat Tactics for Fall Turkey Hunting

October 22, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Maybe you're in a bit of a rut. Sitting on the edge of a field day after day, waiting for a flock of turkeys to walk by, gets pretty old. These three tactics are more exciting, and they just might help you put a tag on your fall bird. 1...

What to Know About Hunting Fall Turkeys During Deer Season

October 8, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

In quite a few states, fall turkey seasons run concurrently with deer season. High up in a treestand — or comfortably passing time in a ground blind — some hunters like multigame options, combining their effort for both deer and autumn turkeys. When doing so, there are some choices to...

Pick a Fall Gobbler Fight

September 24, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Are you stuck in a rut making kee-kees and kee-kee runs to call in young turkeys of the year? Try reaching out to autumn gobblers with fighting purrs and other bad-boy tactics. Title Bout The hunt involved three guys, a turkey dog, and a gang of fall longbeards. A friend...

New Missouri GPS Study to Track Turkey Poult Mortality

September 10, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Wild turkey locations and movements are a mystery, adding to the bird’s appeal. As a result, biologists rely heavily on telemetry technology to understand the dynamics of wild turkey breeding, brooding, and mortality factors. Their conservation efforts ultimately benefit both the bird itself — and those of us who love...

Realtree Turkey Hunting News – August 2020 Edition

August 27, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

When we turkey hunters talk these days, the spring kill, hatch reports, and season regulation changes are in the mix … and other stuff only gobbler chasers like us love. Sooner State Changes The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) has executed changes to wild turkey bag limits. The reason?...

How to Find (and Bust) Fall Turkeys

August 13, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Fall turkey flocks start the day with so much racket you need to be there when it happens, because it fades into silence just as fast. Sure, if you sit on your back porch every morning and watch a distant gobbler gang ease into a green corner pasture on your...

Southeast Turkey Hatch Results

July 30, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Every day was a Saturday this recent turkey season. The ongoing pandemic sheltered folks in place. The result: more time to hunt. By many accounts, designated public-land parking areas looked like used-truck lots. Hunting license and turkey permit sales, state depending, increased. That’s a good thing for cash-strapped wildlife agencies...

Are You Seeing Any Poults?

July 16, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

The quail-sized poult, likely 3 weeks old or so, darted out into the road from where it had been bugging, followed by a lanky brood hen. While spotting just a single young bird indicates a tough run for that brood, one sighting is just that — no occasion for panic...

Multiple Turkey Harvest, License Sale Records Set in 2020

June 25, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Increased turkey hunting participation and permit sales during this past season of the pandemic has, in some states, resulted in a bigger spring kill. While increasing our ranks is a good thing, state agencies and turkey biologists are ever aware of the management challenges this presents, too. Has increased interest...

Seasons of the Turkey Hunter

June 9, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Maine, Opening Day, 2020 Pandemic, shelter-in-place advice kept some of us turkey hunters close to home this year. Me, I hit the Maine timber, softly padding over wet leaves from the prior day’s steady rain. Silence. I leaned against a big oak, far from my parked truck, and listened. Geese...

Here’s What Could Kill Turkey Hunting

May 22, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

The wild turkey’s comeback in the U.S. is one of modern conservation’s great success stories. In the mid- to late-1900s, intensive conservation efforts helped reverse severe population declines, including trap-and-transfer programs, habitat investment and pure sweat equity. Back then, we turkey hunters were part of a great movement. Turkey numbers...

The Top 10 Wild Turkey Recipe Countdown

May 21, 2020   |  Turkey Blog with Steve Hickoff

Yep, fried wild turkey is surely hard to beat for taste and ease of cooking. But there are other ways to prepare America’s greatest game bird. If you’re looking for new ideas, you’ve come to the right place. And yes – several recipes here still involve frying wild turkey, but...

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