Best weather conditions to hunt turkeys
If you're a hunter in Mid-Missouri, you're probably pretty fired up for this upcoming turkey season. All hunters know the weather can be either miserable or comfortable depending on the conditions, but that weather can also impact the actual turkey habits.
I talked to multiple biologists and hunters to find out what weather you should be out in for the most success. John Burk is a regional biologist with the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) and explains the best conditions to be out in, "As turkey hunters we obviously want high pressure days that are clear and calm." Nick Oakley is a turkey biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation and explains his weather preference for days to hunt, "My perfect weather day, I would say it's partly cloudy."
Some research suggests that male turkeys gobble less on windy days, but one thing is for certain, less gobbles are actually heard on high wind event days. Nick Oakley recalls, "You just have trouble hearing them and your calls are less likely to travel to them as well."
On top of this, more sunshine than cloud cover is also beneficial to help with hunter's camouflage. "The sun helps to create shadows, which helps to to mask movement, and then also the clouds, uh, create a little bit of movement as well, so that helps. Turkeys are very visual animals" - Nick Oakley.
Additionally, rainy weather can lead to less active turkeys making for harder hunting conditions, as highlighted by local turkey hunter, Miles Morris. "I haven't had the best luck in rainier conditions and stormy stuff. You're looking at, you know, quieter birds."
Getting out ahead of storms can actually lead to peak and gobbling activity through shock gobbling, which is reactive gobbling turkeys do after hearing thunder. Nick Oakley explains some of the science behind the likely reason for this reactive gobbling, "It's likely that those sounds that they're responding to are in a similar wavelength to other turkey gobbles." John Burk describes what he has observed in the field, "Because you go from, hearing 2 or 3 utill you hear maybe 10 or 20 on a on a day when thunderstorms are coming through."
It's important to stay safe when hunting ahead of approaching thunderstorms, so make sure you have a plan to safely exit the woods once storms begin. All in all, you can successfully harvest birds during any type of weather, but these conditions could give you increased chances of success. The key factor though is getting into the woods to allow for that opportunity.
If you get outdoors and harvest a turkey or maybe catch a trophy fish, make sure to share with us at ABC 17 by clicking on the shared tab in the upper right-handed corner of this page. You might even be featured on a future ABC 17 Stormtrack Insider Outdoors installment.
