Furnas County, Neb. – On a late-April journey east along U.S 34, turkey-hunting hopefuls watched the countryside turn progressively greener, creek bottoms thick with leafy cottonwoods like sprouts from a crystal garden.
It didn’t take long to know they weren’t in Colorado anymore.
So it was with the population of wild turkeys.
“If you spend the day driving around, you’ll see three or four dozen turkeys,” said Kit Hams, Nebraska’s big-game program manager.
Actually, a trio of hunters from Colorado’s Front Range could count only half that many, but for a reason. They had spent only a brief time scouting various back roads that parallel water courses winding through farm country.
The rest of the time, they lay hidden beneath leaf and limb trying to persuade some of these toms to strut within range of a No. 4 shotshell. You don’t see large numbers of turkeys that way, but one will do the trick nicely.
Bill Jones of Denver found his tom inside a half-hour the previous morning. Now, with a second over-the-counter license obtained under Nebraska’s liberal allotment, he wanted a bigger bird.
The area offered plenty to choose from. Just past sunrise, three large gobblers strutted for an audience of two hens in a field of corn stubble a hundred yards from a creek where two friends had bagged 25-pounders the previous weekend. Others had been sighted in a field of thick winter wheat, red heads bobbing warily out of the green.
Jerry LePlatt, who grew up hunting turkey west of Trinidad and moved to Nebraska six years ago, set three decoys where a narrow arm of alfalfa squeezed between the creek and a thicket of cottonwoods.
In the spring stillness, a woodpecker drummed noisily to fetch breakfast amid a full songbook of bird calls. Somewhere off in the distance, cattle conversed in sonorous tones.
A sorcerer with a diaphragm call, LePlatt crooned seductively, waited, then called again.
“There he is, just inside the trees,” LePlatt whispered, head tilted toward a place where the alfalfa melted into a thick stand of cottonwoods.
The big tom circled silently, strutting occasionally, but refused to budge toward the decoys. When he disappeared, quiet as a ghost, the bird unwittingly declared a preamble for two days of alternating excitement, frustration and just plain bad luck.
None of which had anything to do with a shortage of turkeys.
Nebraska numbers have doubled, perhaps tripled, over the past five years, Hams said.
“Twenty years ago, we thought all our turkey range had been filled and even said so in print,” said Hams, who manages the birds as part of his big-game program because, until last year, they were managed under a permit system. “Obviously, we were wrong. We have more turkeys than you can shake a stick at.”
The bounty is particularly evident in that southwest region where streams such as the Platte and Republican rivers, along with Frenchman, Beaver, Sappa, Red Willow and Medicine creeks, trace a meandering macrame of prime habitat through farm country that serves as a sort of year-round buffet.
Toss in a series of mild winters and dry springs, and you have the sort of population explosion of which hunters dream.
“Turkeys keep increasing every year,” LePlatt said. “They’re just taking over.”
While Colorado manages its riparian turkey habitat under a strict permit system that generally requires about four years to draw, a Nebraska visitor can, for the sum of $79 that includes a $13 habitat stamp applicable to pheasant season, grab a tag over the counter.
Success rate runs approximately 50 percent, about the same as for Colorado’s permit areas. The obvious difference is unlimited areas in Colorado generally encompass those boundless tracts of foothills and mountain valleys where turkeys, while somewhat plentiful, are maddeningly hard to locate – a fact substantiated in a rather anemic 18 percent connection.
Nebraska’s season runs through May 22, same as in Colorado. You get to choose.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” radio KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
