Brian Schlenger sent this good photograph of a fanned tom turkey from Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.
“Those public land birds are smart,” he tweeted.
Midewin is a nearly 20,000-acre U.S. Forest Service site in Will County near Wilmington. The deer and turkey hunting is administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources through the usual IDNR drawings for permits.
I noted the good photograph, because I appreciate good photos for any of the “Of The Week” shorts. It takes time, skill and luck to bag a spring turkey. Give the bird its due with a good photo.
Spring turkey hunting in Illinois ends Thursday in the south zone and May 13 in the north.
TOTW, the celebration of hunting wild turkeys in Illinois and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows), runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times as warranted. The online posting here at https://chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.
To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), Twitter (@BowmanOutside) or Instagram (@BowmanOutside).
