Stevens County Report

[skagit]

Any reports from hunter coming back from Stevens County?  I am wondering how the turkeys are behaving.   Are they finally starting to act like spring turkeys?

[bearpaw]

Birds are gobbling in the morning, shut up when they come off the roost, they start talking again late morning when hens leave them to lay. Some are goobling when they go to roost at night, but pretty tight lipped at night.

[PA BEN]

Very slow around Chewelah last week. Did get my two birds but I lived there and have hunted turkeys there for 20 years. Didn't even look like any breeding was going on. With the nicer weather coming it should be heating up.

[skinzner]

We have been in Chewelah the last three days and have heard a total of four gobbles and covered a lot of ground. Spots we always get into birds not a peep. Talk about frustrating hunting private and public with no luck. Well theres always tonight and tomorrow morning but we are running out of optimism.

[PA BEN]

We have been in Chewelah the last three days and have heard a total of four gobbles and covered a lot of ground. Spots we always get into birds not a peep. Talk about frustrating hunting private and public with no luck. Well theres always tonight and tomorrow morning but we are running out of optimism.

Theres places where I could always find birds and fields I always see birds and there gone this year. Got no idea whats going on.

[bearpaw]

There are a number of flocks that no longer exist. You have to get in the right locations, keep covering ground until you find birds. There are still birds out there, you just have to find them.

[Wayne1]

Opening day I had 14 jakes and 5 toms in my lower field...all together, and no hens. Last Sturday I took out 2 friends, we had 6 jakes within 6 yards, but let them walk..  that afternoon 3 toms and 2 jakes came by...  They tagged 1 Tom. since then I have'nt seen a single jake or tom, a few hens came in during the week, cept today, nothing at all. It's been strange, generally I have them roosting just below, and above the house....  this year nothing.

[Birdguy]

We talked to several land owner this year that are not seeing the birds they are used to  . We hunted real hard for ours and we came home with 2 of 4. I was thinking about heading back over in a couple weeks but the reports do not seem to be improving at all. Good luck to all who are out or headed out  .

[Phantom Gobbler]

One of my hunting partners that lives in Stevens County got out mid week and heard several toms gobbling later in the day.  He called one down a ridge and was able to make the shot after he was discovered!   Like Dale's report, the birds were gobbling on the roost and then shut up immediately after fly down.  The woods were then silent for a least a couple of hours.  We ran into more than one hunting party that was heading back to town and giving up before the action really started.  Hang in there the season is far from over.

[turkeydancer]

I found much the same ... but since I knew some places they liked to go to after fly down, I headed there before they could get there ... as I slowly approached I could hear light turkey talk, and would set up and call lightly and sparingly like them... they started moving my way, but slowly ... when they started getting a bit louder, I would up it a bit too.  It also seemed to help that another gobbler started to fire up from about 1/3 mile below.  I would only answer his gobbles and not the one up by me. Seemed to piss him off and he started coming in faster.  That made it even more fun ...

Five toms and multiple hens, ajkes, & jennies were also roosting in the same general place 2 nights in a row and using the sdame approach ... so my last night, I made a long and steep climb up into there return path ... as I could hear them approaching, a "blizzard" (snow and high winds)  started and they retreated back down into the valley and a more protected area on private land. 

[smartazz171]

I know I spent from the 15th to the 20th up on Stevens and ferry county land. In 10 years we have only been skunked once but this year we did again. My brother missed one bird we brought in for him, (second time being out) and We had group of jakes that kept skirting us. Other than that the talk was almost non existent! We had no birds in places were we always have them. We'd see lone groups of hens with no gobblers. Then we'd see groups of 7 to 22 jakes on private land where we were the only ones hunting and we couldn't get them to respond. Crazy year! But what do you expect when the high is 46 and the low 26 with intermixed snow and rain. Seemed more like elk hunting weather to me...

[millertime89]

like most of you have said its been fairly quiet most days but with this nasty weather i wouldn't feel like strutting around making noise either 
i think that some warmer weather will make a world of difference.. till then, you've just gotta get out and cover some ground, glass a lot possibly get a little lucky 

[baldopepper]

Just my opinion, but I've been hunting the Stevens County area since 1995 and bottom line, I think there are just a lot fewer birds!!  I managed to get birds, but most areas that have held birds in the past were empty and the birds I did see all seemed to be much more "skittish" this year. I suspect they'll start talking a little more as the season progresses, but I just don't think there are as many to talk.  Maybe time to start looking hard at the fall and winter hunts in that area.  As Bearpaw said, several flocks in the area are now non-existstent.  Might be just a cyclical thing, but I don't think so. Very unuusal weather year, and hopefully I'm just jumping to a quick conclusion. 

[bearpaw]

We still have birds scattered throughout the county, but I think overall numbers are about equal to 2000 to 2003 numbers.

Our Colville Chapter of NWTF used to do some transect counts of birds for WDFW in late winter when they are all flocked up at local ranches. I don't think those counts are being done anymore. This winter I traveled some of the routes and noticed that the number of birds seemed to be about 30% of what it used to be. Several flocks seemed non-existant, so this is the reason for my concern. We don't have the birds we used to have and I don't think the WDFW is following the numbers very close. This is potentially a very dangerous situation for a state that is hunting turkeys harder than most other states in the entire country. 

At the end of season I am going to post a poll so everyone can vote on what they saw for birds and what they think this state should be doing for management. In the meantime, we need as many of you to join WFW (free membership) as possible. When we reach a consensus on what the membership has seen and how they feel, the greater number of members we have, the stronger our voice will be.

Join Free Here: http://hunt.info/join.html

Sorry for hijacking your thread. 

[Wayne1]

Tried to join Dale...  but all I got was an error