Downriver Outdoors: What's a Snood?

There were many questions that Mrs. Kopera's class had and I tried to answer them all. A snood though? This was last spring when I visited Mrs. Kopera's class at Allendale School in Melvindale.

I was there to do a turkey hunting demo. The students were really interested in turkeys and why would that be. Mrs. Kopera was selected as a teacher of the year from the National Wild Turkey Federation for her work in using the turkey as a focus of 3rd grade education. You may have seen the article about her accomplishment in the News Herald last year as I did. This led me to volunteer to do a demo on turkey hunting and as luck would have it use my experience last season with "A Hot Blond" to explain some turkey genetics.

I showed the students how I use a pop up blind when I get to a spot or locate a gobbler by using calls.

A blind is essential for hunting turkeys since they can spot movent like no other game animal. This was proven to me while hunting with my cousin Jojo who usually talks while we're hunting and uses his hands to do so. I've read where a human can see the second hand moving on a clock fairly easy while a turkey can see the minute hand moving just as easily. Another aid in tricking these birds are decoys.

Calling to the toms can bring them close but the right decoy can bring them into shotgun range which for me is about 35 yards. Sometimes it's hard to judge the range in the wild so the closer the better. This year the range was right, the gun shot straght and I got a tom. I almost didn't shoot him because at first it looked like he had a small beard.

As you can see this is a very light colored beard, blond as I would call it. One of the reasons for this could be a genetic disorder due to overcrowding, which was being covered in class. I also showed a picture of a smoke phase turkey which has a lot of white colorings. Because they don't blend in well to their suroundings they usually are the first ones to be caught by a predator. If there is overcrowding then their genes can be passed on because of safety in numbers.

It was a great time with all the students getting hands on time with the beards and my calls, right Kyle. With help from Ray's Prime Meats in Taylor all that wanted a taste of wild turkey sausage got it.