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. 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.
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. 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. Hens that normally lay claim to a half-dozen infant turkeys, called poults, found themselves mothering a baker s dozen much of last year.