Spring turkey season has a strong start at Big Cypress
The opening weekend of the spring turkey season in South Florida could not have gone any better for “Alligator” Ron Bergeron.
Hunting at Green Glades West, his ranch in Hendry County just north of the Big Cypress National Preserve, Bergeron guided his grandson and his great-grandson to their first Osceola wild turkeys.
It didn’t take long for 18-year-old Wyatt Bergeron to get his gobbler — he shot his bird as the sun was rising, 30 minutes into opening day.
“That was exciting for me to see Wyatt get his first bird,” said Bergeron, who hunted from a blind with his grandson, his ranch manager Billy Culligan and ranch hand Matt Parrish.
Four birds gobbled from the woods behind the blind, then flew down. Three of them stayed together, but the fourth couldn’t resist Bergeron’s imitation of a hen turkey calling and branched off, coming within 20 yards of the blind.
“And boy, he nailed it,” said Bergeron of his grandson’s shot with a 12-gauge shotgun, which dropped the bird where it stood.
The next day, 10-year-old Hero Hojara had to work for his gobbler. After hearing birds that gobbled along the western boundary of Bergeron’s ranch but traveled onto the adjoining property, Hero walked through forests of cypress trees with his great-grandfather, his father, Brenden, and Parrish searching for a gobbler.
“We had to walk through the cypress for like two miles,” Hero said.
By late morning, they had nearly reached the eastern boundary of the sprawling property when Bergeron was able to spot and call in what turned out to be the biggest bird of the weekend. The 3-year-old gobbler had a 10-inch beard, which is the bristly hair that dangles from the chest of a male turkey, and 1-inch spurs, which are the sharp, bony projections above a gobbler’s feet that he uses when fighting other males to see which bird is dominant.
Dustin Perez, another Bergeron grandson who has killed numerous gobblers, witnessed an impressive, but ultimately fatal display of dominance Saturday morning.
Perez and I were hunting from a blind on a distant part of the ranch while Bergeron’s longtime friends Chris Tate and Robert “RC” Callaway were hunting from another blind on that piece of land.
All four of us heard gobbles near and far before the sun rose and throughout the morning. For the first couple of hours, Perez and I saw a handful of hen turkeys, a few white-tailed deer, and 14 wild hogs rooting in the field in front of us, using their snouts to dig up and eat plants, grubs and insects.
Suddenly, Perez spotted the jet-black body and white head of a mature gobbler walking out of the woods to our left. When the bird spotted my decoy of a jake, which is a 1-year-old, immature gobbler, standing amidst some hen decoys, he became enraged.
Spring is the breeding season for wild turkeys, with gobblers gobbling to attract hens. Hunters try to reverse nature by imitating hen calls and having males go to the females. When a dominant gobbler sees a lowly jake flirting with hens, he will often try to chase away the jake.
This gobbler headed straight for George, the name given to my jake decoy by a friend’s granddaughter. Standing right behind the decoy, the bird cautiously sized up George, pecked him on the head, then jumped and used his spurs to knock George to the ground.
Almost as if he was worried about what he’d done, the gobbler started to run away, but Perez dropped him with one shot at 20 yards.
“He thought he got the best of George,” Perez said. “But he didn’t know that George had backup.”
Over at the other blind, Callaway called in two gobblers, but they hung up at a little over 50 yards away, which is too far for a lethal shot. He and Tate watched the birds walk off, and when it was clear that they weren’t coming back, the two men cut through the woods in the hopes that they’d locate the gobblers.
Standing on the edge of the woods, they spotted one of the gobblers and Callaway did some calling. A hen turkey came within 15 yards of them, apparently saw something she didn’t like and gave an alarm call.
That putt call attracted other hens, who also started putting. That noise attracted the gobbler, who walked over to see what was going on. When the gobbler got within 50 yards, Tate, leaning against a tree, dropped him with one shot to make it a perfect opening day:
Three hunters, three 2-year-old birds with nice beards, with the most rewarding bird to come the next day.
