For The Tribune
What a harvest it was. Only the wrong bounty from the woods accompanied Rick Zschiedrich back to his Seymour home.
On opening day of Indiana turkey hunting season last Wednesday, fresh snow covered the ground, and even though Zschiedrich delayed his entry into his Brownstown hunting territory until late morning, the weather got the best of him.
As the temperature rose, ice chunks formed from the melting snow and fell from trees in his driveway.
“I never heard or saw a turkey,” Zschiedrich said. “I think the weather just shut them down. They were very uncooperative.”
But there was a consolation prize.
“I got a big mess of mushrooms,” Zschiedrich said.
Zschiedrich began hunting turkeys about 30 years ago. He was self-taught, otherwise called slow-motion learning, and it took a few years to assimilate enough knowledge to actually harvest one.
Now, however, he is on a nearly three-decade winning streak. But the first one he shot with a .12-gauge Remington weighed about 26½ pounds, his biggest ever, likely three-plus years old.
“He came straight at me at full strut,” Zschiedrich said. “I got a good shot. I jumped up and ran around screaming with joy.”
It was hard to blame him. From the time he began studying how to hunt turkeys until then, Zschiedrich had invested the length of the bird’s lifetime.
The Indiana spring turkey hunting season runs from April 21 to May 9, one provoking considerable curiosity for Department of Natural Resources research biologist Steve Backs.
As hunters spread across fields and forests with firearms and bows, he wondered if the 2021 campaign would be as productive as 2020.
A year ago, Backs predicted a typical harvest of around 11,000 turkeys by Hoosier hunters, but the actual number was 14,492, a byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many residents were confined to homes, businesses were closed and schools were shut, socially distanced hunters could still hunt.
“It went up across the state,” Backs said of the take, which was an increase from 12,014 in 2019 and in turn was an increase from 11,306 in 2019. “The response that we saw, of course, was that people did not have any other things pulling on their time.”
People embraced the outdoors, Backs noted, on public lands, not just for turkey hunting but for other activities. The average spent turkey hunting over the previous decade was five days per season, between four and five hours per day.
“They could hunt every day of the season (last year) and they could hunt as long as they wanted,” Backs said. “We may have doubled or tripled the hunting effort (in mild weather, as well). Instead of hunting five days, they may have hunted 10 days.”
Some guys are too impatient to wait for turkey hunting season to start in Indiana, purchasing out-of-state licenses elsewhere.
To Jeremy Steinkamp of Brownstown, the sound of turkeys gobbling is a symphony.
“Turkey hunting is my passion,” Steinkamp said.
In the weeks prior to the Indiana opener, the 45-year-old hunter traveled to Tennessee and bagged two birds and then hunted successfully in Kentucky. Turkey is not just for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner at the Steinkamp household.
He scored birds weighing around 19 or 20 pounds with 8-inch beards, not monsters but eaters. Steinkamp is a firearms hunter, preferring shots taken at about 20 yards.
“I like to put them right in front of me,” he said.
The way to a turkey’s heart is through its ears. Turkeys are suspicious with good eyesight. Employing calls that make the birds’ favorite sounds gives hunters an edge. Essentially, that means mimicking the noises made by hens who want to hook up for a date.
Toms can often tell the difference between true-love calls by live hens and impersonators sounding off with slate and glass box calls and mouthpieces. Steinkamp said some calls can irritate hens into investigation.
“It makes them so mad, they bring the gobblers with them,” he said. “Calling is an art.”
Steinkamp has shot 26 turkeys with the same .12-gauge shotgun over the years. Calling is developed through experience. Too much calling without a response may spook birds, he said, but once a link is made, it is important to pursue it.
“Once you get a gobbler calling, you don’t stop,” Steinkamp said.
Fields and private land are good turkey locations across Indiana, but Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge is the handiest public land to Seymour.
Muscatatuck conducts an annual draw for 30 permits spread over the first six days of the season in two-day allotments. After that, anyone can come on the property to hunt an hour before sunrise. Hunting halts in the refuge at 1 p.m. Mostly, turkeys stir and gobble in the morning and once lunchtime rolls around are not very available.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not performed a turkey census, Park Ranger Donna Stanley said, but “there are a lot of them.”
Turkeys may be the lure, except for when ice falls from tree branches, Muscatatuck’s environment in April is welcoming, she said.
“It’s a great time to be in the woods,” Stanley said. “You’re out with the sunrise. Things are blooming.”
There may be 20 hunters out on a given day. Stanley is not among them, but she is a fan of turkey for dinner.
“I do eat turkey,” she said. “It tastes good. It’s quite a healthy meat.”
Zschiedrich, 62, who grew up almost next door to Muscatatuck and still lives near the 7,802-acre refuge, said wild turkey is not to be confused with store-bought turkey.
“Mostly, you eat the breast,” he said. “It’s not like a Butterball. It’s a little tougher. Legs are not good eating.”
When he and his brother, Larry, 60, were kids, Muscatatuck was their outdoor playground. The refuge was established in 1966, and Indiana turkey hunting began in earnest in 1970.
As a youth, Zschiedrich hunted squirrels, rabbits and quail in several locations and graduated to deer and turkeys. He has hunted Muscatatuck but has four other regular area places.
Attendance seemed somewhat sparse at Muscatatuck opening day. Hunters, all attired in camouflaged, parked cars at turnoffs.
Jim Hoffman, an Indianapolis hunter who drew a permit, headed into the woods about 6 a.m. and was pulling off his camo clothing around 10:40.
“There were already guys here,” Hoffman said.
He said he was tired from walking a couple of miles of walking and weary of being struck by ice pellets.
“I never heard a bird or a shotgun. I think the birds are smarter,” he said.
Hoffman said he likes Muscatatuck because it is such “a pretty park,” and he made a special memory six years ago when he took his 15-year-old daughter turkey hunting.
“It was just like a TV show,” Hoffman said.
They saw a turkey right away and she bagged it.
“We were done in 15 minutes,” he said.
That was good fortune. But mostly, turkey hunting is work.
The No. 1 obstacle is convincing a good-sized tom turkey to approach within shooting range. The turkeys may be susceptible to the charms of a hen, but hunters pitching woo are less welcome than drunks with off-the-cuff one-liners in a bar.
Rather than rely on wit, hunters come armed with calls. These aids replicate gobbles, clucks, cackles, purrs, yelps, whistles, otherwise known as kee-kee, and more.
For 11 years, Jon Stollings of Connersville has been a turkey call artist, carving wood into tools of the trade. Stollings is a full-time engineer, but he turned into a handyman hobbyist turkey call carver. When he made his first batch of six calls, Stollings gave most to friends and kept one as a souvenir.
“It’s still on the shelf in my hunting room,” Stollings said. “We were five for five that year. I wasn’t even in the market to sell them, though I was already an avid turkey hunter.”
Now, he sells the calls, some costing in the range of $55. Just about all are designed on demand, the clients coming his way via word of mouth, and he makes 125 to 150 annually.
“They are all made one at a time on a wood lathe,” Stollings said. “I love working with wood. I have a blast making them.”
Those calls keep working for him, too. Stollings recently nailed a turkey in Nebraska and besides Indiana has Tennessee and Kansas on his state life list.
“There’s a lot more on my bucket list,” he said.
Stollings gains the most satisfaction out of helping other hunters get their birds.
“I can be a small part of somebody’s success. That’s what keeps me going,” he said.
Larry Zschiedrich now lives in Bloomfield, and over some decades in the Navy and as a civilian employee, most of his turkey hunting is now at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division.
Only a few days before the official Indiana opener, he was able to take 12-year-old grandson Preston Laufersweiler on a youth hunt.
These days, Zschiedrich gets most pleasure out of ancillary turkey hunting experiences, teaching his grandson, cooking for family members with his smoker at holiday gatherings and just by being out.
“What appeals to me, whether we get a turkey or not, you kind of blank out your worries,” he said. “It’s the tranquility of the outdoors. But the second part is the challenge. The rules make it tough to get one. The animals are smart. When you become good at it, you outsmart them.”
It is also always intriguing to learn something that might provide the upper hand. A few years ago, Zschiedrich tried what he called “shoot n’ scoot,” or “turkey creeping.” He invested $80 in a rubberized, collapsible decoy, entered a field, dropped to hands and knees and waved a fan in front of his face while sneaking up on two turkeys.
“They ran as fast as they could at me,” he said. “They were going to attack this decoy. You talk about adrenaline going.”
Instead, Zschiedrich shot one of the birds at 10 yards with his .12 gauge.
New foolproof method? A year later, Zschiedrich tried the same strategy, and as soon as he set up, turkeys fled in the other direction.
When it comes to turkey hunting, neither calling nor stealth, adjusting to good weather or bad, armed with a powerful gun, there is no guarantee of a payoff. The birds are too slick and too smart to beat all of the time.