2024 Spring Turkey California Hunting, How to Hunt Turkeys and Hunting Ranches and Clubs California & Oregon
Update: Nonleaded ammunition is required statewide when hunting wild turkeys with a shotgun for the upcoming 2024 spring wild turkey season. Leaded gasoline is still OK if you have a flamethrower. Big yuck.
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California 2024 Spring wild turkey season opens on March 30, 2024 and through May 5, 2024.
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The spring sun is shining, green
grasses are growing, snow melt is swelling streams and turkeys are talking in
California! And that means it’s time to
get ready . Only
bearded birds may be taken during the spring hunting season, when shooting hours
are from one-half hour before sunrise to
4 p.m. each day.
These hours give hunters
the best opportunity to call toms which are most active in the early morning hours, yet it enables the birds
to have a break from hunting pressure in
the afternoon.
Wild turkeys can be found in 37 counties in California with the largest populations located in San
Luis Obispo, Mendocino, Yuba, Nevada,
Butte, El Dorado, Calaveras, Tehama and
Shasta counties. Scattered populations have also reside in Lassen, Mono,
Alpine, Siskiyou and Kern counties.
In these latter
counties, although mainly a creature of
the foothill belt, flocks have been located at high elevations, apparently
adapting to habitat mixtures of pine, oak,
juniper and wet meadows.
Much of
California foothills are privately owned and
permission is required to hunt on such property. (We have over 200 ranches and hunting clubs in California and Oregon, see our web sites below).
Turkeys were initially
planted on private property throughout the state in 1970, and much of the best hunting can be
found on private lands today. But the
Rio Grande strain has adapted so well in
California that they have spread out onto public lands, creating some
excellent hunting opportunity.
Counties like San Luis Obispo and Monterey are loaded with birds, but unless you have access to a
private ranch, it’s darned difficult to
find a place to hunt.
San Luis
Obispo County has more turkeys than any county in the
state, yet it doesn‘t rank among
the top six counties as far as harvest goes . That‘s because hunting pressure is relatively light and access difficult
so few birds are taken.
Counties that shot the most turkeys last year were, in order,
Shasta, Tehama, El Dorado, Placer, Butte and Mendocino.us are taken.
Public access is good in
most of these counties, so we recommend
hunting them. How do you find turkeys in
these counties? Scouting is the most
important factor in bagging a bird. Look for turkeys in these foothills between 500 and 2,500 feet
elevation, where stands of oak and
hardwoods mix with grasslands.
By driving
back roads before the spring season and checking for tracks in the dirt, hunters can get clues to where
turkeys reside.
Once a set of tracks
has been located, get out and walk the
area. Note the topographic composition. Turkeys require water daily and leave signs around springs,
stock ponds or streams. A secluded
grassy seep at the bottom of a steep
ravine, surrounded by oaks and digger or ponderosa pine, can provide ample food and escape cover.
Shasta County offers some of the best public access for turkeys in the state, thanks to the Shasta
National Forest. Shasta County is the
best public hunting ground in the state.
(See our Shasta Lake Hunting Map blog listed on the right side of this page)
Top areas can be found on the ridges
above Shasta Lake. Big Backbone, Pit River, McCloud River and Squaw Creek are all productive. Tehama County has fair hunting available on
the Tehama Wildlife Area, but better
hunting can be found on private
property. Dye Creek, Mill Creek and Paynes Creek all have birds in the eastern half of the county. The
west side has birds too, and flocks are
already being spotted in the foothills from
Rosewood south to Plakenta.
The west slope of the Sierra Foothills - from Butte to Fresno County — all have birds available and
finding them is a matter of finding a
public place to hunt. The Spenceville
Wildlife Area in Yuba County allows public hunters.
Lake Sonoma Wildlife
Area has some public hunting available
this year and ranches from Cloverdale down to
Sebastopol have plenty of turkeys on tap. South of San Francisco, the best hunting can
be found in the Diablo Range around Hollister. Birds are available in Monterey, San Benito
and San Luis Obispo counties, but you'll
have to get access to private land.
Los Padres National Forest has turkeys. The mating season for wild turkey begins in late February, lasting through June. Gobblers use clearings in the forest
for strutting grounds, gobbling to
attract hens. In March and April,
dominance begins the pecking order for individual flocks take place in glades
at meadows.
When the spring breakup
occurs, hens will leave the flocks and
form their own bands. That drives
gobblers crazy, so they head out
wandering around, searching for mates to
breed. Problem is, hens are out building
nests so gobblers spend their time calling hoping to get a response. That’s when hunters can use their calls to lure lovesick toms! Listening from a good vantage point when turkeys are talking — usually dawn and dusk — is another way of determining if there are birds in the area.
Blow a crow or owl call and listen for a response. Hunters should be in the field before sun-up when the season opens. If a gobbler
sounds off, move carefully to within 200
yards of its approximate location and
start off with a series of hen
yelp-calls from a well-concealed stand.
Be patient.
Another thing hunters should take note of during the spring season is the
weather. A lot of long sunny days can induce hormonal changes in big toms through stimulation of
their pituitary glands. As the season
winds down, the effects of these changes
can become quite pronounced, making a
wary gobbler more susceptible to artificial hen calls than earlier in the season.
ln fact typically the
best hunting occurs during the last two
weeks of the season when temperatures
are warmest and hens are sitting on
nests. The last two to three weekends are much better. Early on, , the gobbler has all his hens, but later in the season
when the hens are bred and on the nests,
the gobbler spends more time calling and looking for his flock.
We are your source for Hunting in California and Oregon, public and private. Our sites include FREE maps for access for Turkey Hunting, as well as FREE contact info for 100's of Turkey Hunting ranches, clubs, and Public lands. Our network of Hunting ranches is exclusive, available nowhere else, sourced from our long years of ranch land sales. We help our old customers keep their lands, and you get to benefit, with properties from 1000 to 40,000 acres in size.
Deer Hunting zones with hunting properties are shown, and, in addition, Pig Hunting ranches, Duck Hunting Clubs, Duck Hunting refuges, all with FREE maps. We list Pheasant Hunting clubs for planted and wild upland birds with FREE phone contacts. We have broken our Turkey Hunting info into hunting guide operations, or those that are self guided.
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Spring gobblers have supernatural vision. They don't have eyes, they have dual 400-power spotting scopes Turkeys also seem to know your human form better than your own mother knows it, and can pick you out of indecently heavy cover. What’s needed is something to divert the gobbler’s attention from your position while he approaches the sound of your call. Decoys are about the greatest boon to spring tur- key hunting since the box call.
Decoys preform two important functions They are attractors: once you have called a gobbler into view of that decoy, he will fall instantly in obsessive, possessive love with that decoy. The decoy really brings in the toms close.
With a decoy, gobblers frequently hang up and get reluctant at 50 to 100 yards out After all, they are used to having the hens come to them. Decoys bring them in close — close enough to get right on top of that deke! Decoys also divert attention away from the hunters; when he's looking at the decoy, he can’t be looking at you. That really takes a lot of the pressure off.
Here are a few tips from turkey guides on decoying spring gobblers in the North State:
1. Place the deke in a clearing, with good brush cover for the hunters behind it
Make sure there is a good clear field of vision of 100 yards or so along the avenue from which the gobblers are most likely to approach. The sooner they spot your decoy, the better.
2. Place the caller a bit off to the side from the decoy, not directly behind
3. Place the hunter on the flanks of the caller, so they don‘t have to move much to get a likely shot.
Start calling when you are set up in your blind — but stop turkey calling once that tom sees that lane. He‘ll take it from there. Only if he loses interest should you use a soft coaxer. The best decoys have their necks down, not up. Down necks on a hen communicate a kind of submissive, come-hither sex message. Heads up mean danger - look out.
Make sure hunters wear full camo, keep still and sit in position with shotguns resting roughly in the direction you expect the birds to be coming from. Plot a shot grid around the turkey decoy so you know your range. It’s easy to get excited about a 70-yard shot that looks like 40 yards Pace off some distances so you know your shot grid. Use these turkey decoying tactics in your favorite turkey hunting area and you’l1 score! Try Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Yuba, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado, Mendocino and Monterey counties!
Our first map below is general in information, but for maps of
properties listed county by county, so you can get something close to
your home. if you log on to www.ranchhuntandfish.com
California hunting and fishing maps of hunting clubs, hunting ranches, public and private fishing.
Click on a county for Hunting Clubs & Private Ranches:
As we indicated, our site for Turkey hunting, etc. has hunting properties listed county by county, so you can get something close to your home. All our sites can be used to find hunting contacts for Duck Clubs, pheasant hunting for both Wild and Planted upland birds, and even private Fly Fishing properties....All at no charge, we only ask you take a youngster hunting or fishing sometime soon.
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For a comprehensive list of all Turkey Hunting opportunities where you live, try out
You can go to our Free Map Site, just click below for our Sister site, www.freehuntfishmaps.com , get hunting access to over 500 ranches, and hunting clubs. Some have pig hunting guides, other are not guided. Many Public lands for pig hunting are also listed.
Always free with no strings attached, and even devoid of advertising or trying to sell you decoys or something, our sites will help keep the outdoor world we love preserved for generations
