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Mark Freeman's Commentary Quirk in schedule tests faith of hunters This is not a year for serious turkey hunters to have religion. The opening of Oregon�s premiere game-bird hunting season happens to fall on Easter Sunday this year. This calendar quirk pits passion against faith and family for those who worship the big, wary tom turkeys as well as a higher power. "It�s going to be a boon for all those guys without kids and wives," says Paul Schultz, a Medford man who puts his turkey hunting above his eye-surgery profession but a notch below his family. "If I went (Sunday)," he says, "I�d be divorced." Opening Day of turkey hunting is often wed to success and can be the best and most well-attended day of the season because the first chance to coax a big tom turkey into a shotgunner�s range is often the best. Turkeys are no feather-brains. They quickly become wise to the ways of camouflaged men with funny-sounding calls meant to imitate their pick-up lines. The patriarchs to the various flocks are so in tune to the annual tax-day barrage that they seem to begin lying low at sunrise every April 15 � national holiday and religious feast be damned. "Turkeys know everything about calendars," says turkey-hunting expert Marc Bayliss of Medford. "But they know nothing about religion." Nor do they care much about Easter dresses, chocolate bunnies and egg hunts on Grandma�s front lawn. So pastors around Southern Oregon can expect to see quite a bit of camo among the congregations as hunters likely will spend early morning among the feathered flocks then scamper back to their families for regular holiday traditions. "Rest assured," Bayliss says, "they�ll also be a lot of tired people sitting around the Easter ham as well." But more of these tired souls could be successful hunters this April 15-May 31 tom-turkey season. With mild weather creating excellent survival rates among young turkeys, Southern Oregon is sporting gobs of gobblers throughout the region�s scrub-oak savannas, brushy canyons and tree-dotted hillsides. Hens that normally lay claim to a half-dozen infant turkeys, called poults, found themselves mothering a baker�s dozen much of last year. Those little drumstick-sized male poults are now year-old "jakes" that while plentiful, may not be as desirable as the long-bearded toms to turkey hunters. "I�ve heard people telling me they�ve seen turkeys everywhere this year. Everywhere," says John Thiebes, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and a turkey junkie himself. The flocks are so thick that Trail-area resident Guy Parker�s daily trips to his Lewis Road mailbox are sometimes interrupted by a flock of 40 turkeys � with more than a third of them males � in the roadway or on his property. "We�ve got so many of them, they�re scratching and digging up the ground so much that I have to run them off," Parker says. "I don�t hunt them. To me, there wouldn�t be any sport in it. They�re so close, I could hit them with a slingshot." Turkeys have been a hit among Oregon�s big-hunting public since they were first introduced in the state 33 years ago. Southern Oregon�s first birds came in 1975, when Bayliss and others released 20 adults on a private ranch near Lake Creek. Flocks have since grown to more than 27,000 birds statewide, supporting vibrant spring and fall hunting seasons. The birds are prized because success comes only by outsmarting one of the smartest and most skittish critters in the woods. Last year, close to 2,600 birds were shot and tagged by hunters, who must lure them into close range with a series of calls imitating a hen ready to mate. Jackson and Douglas counties are the two best and most popular locations for turkeys and hunters. In these areas, hunters can buy up to three turkey tags each spring. Turkeys love the area�s oak savannas, roosting in trees and feeding in the grasses. But the fields will be a bit barren of hunters Sunday because people like Schultz and Thiebes will be tending to their families and their faiths instead of filling their turkey tags. "The guys out there without wives and kids will be cheering their lungs out because there will be less competition from guys like me this year," Schultz says. Forcing hunters like Schultz to choose is no conspiracy, just a rare scheduling fluke that surfaced for the first time this year since Oregon set April 15 as the annual start of spring turkey season in the early 1990s. The April 15 date was chosen because it�s a point in spring when most of the hens have either mated and nested or are about to nest. At this time, hunters can still take advantage of the sex-crazed toms without likely thinning their numbers enough to hamper spring mating. "Biologically, it definitely makes some sense," Bayliss says. "It�s just this year, there are some upset hunters." But there will be fewer upset wives and pastors like Rick Booye of Trail Christian Fellowship, who expects to see a full flock at his Sunday service. "Most of the guys I know," Booye says, "will figure the Lord will give them a turkey later." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.