Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 19, 1995 TAG: 9501190101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In between these grand events, Clay spends time talking turkey, both in English and in an assortment of yelps, cackles, clucks, whines and gobbles that leap out of the latex, wood and slate of the calls he makes.
Clay and Tom Duvall, his business partner, are the talent behind Perfection Turkey Calls, a major maker of turkey hunting gear located in Stephenson.
The other day, Clay stood before a couple hundred turkey hunters gathered for a seminar in a local auditorium and talked about spring gobbler hunting. The fall season had ended a week earlier and the spring season was an embryo three months from hatching, yet the gray, January day was balmy enough to give hunters their first, 1995 dose of spring gobbler fever.
Clay knows he can gather a crowd when he talks about spring hunting. Long ago, the wild turkey became something more than just a bird of Thanksgiving. Spring hunting is of huge and growing interest. It is a money maker, too. At last count, 95.5 percent of Perfection's nationwide business centered around it.
Yet, in the hallway, after the seminar, Clay was eager to talk about fall turkey hunting. While spring hunting is the big attraction, fall hunting is the tradition in Virginia. Clay wonders if it is a tradition in trouble.
``I like the fall season, because that's how I got started when I was 15,'' he said. ``If you forced me to say which I liked best, my answer probably would be, `It's 50-50'. For most people, it probably is 90 [for the spring season] and 10 [for the fall season].''
Clay hopes he never will be forced to choose between the two. But he wonders, considering the squeeze fall hunting is getting.
For a time, turkey hunters had the autumn woods mostly to themselves, but for the past two years they've had to share the early season with deer hunters bearing muzzleloading guns.
Now there is talk of requiring muzzleloading hunters to wear blaze orange. Turkey hunters would have to do the same, because of the overlap of the two seasons.
``Ask the turkey hunters in Pennsylvania about blaze orange,'' Clay said. ``It just ruined the fall turkey seasons for them.''
Once blaze orange becomes mandatory for black-powder hunters, turkey hunting dates will have to be separated from the muzzleloading season, Clay believes.
But where do you put them? There's even talk about extending the muzzleloading season from two to three weeks.
``The muzzleloading lobby is spending a bunch of money,'' Clay said. ``They want to get that third week. There already are places I wouldn't take a turkey dog during the muzzleloading season, because there are people who would shoot him for running lose in the woods.''
When fall hunting regulations are set for the 1995-96 season, Clay hopes to see at least a week of turkey hunting coming in before the muzzleloading season.
``I am really concerned about the direction fall turkey hunting is taking,'' he said. ``Not just in Virginia, but in West Virginia and some of the adjoining states where it has been a strong tradition.''
Not only is the fall season being pushed around by other seasons, but there are some biologists and newcomers to spring hunting who believe hunting turkeys in the fall is a detriment to the turkey population, Clay said.
It would be OK to shorten Virginia's two-month fall season, Clay said, but hunters shouldn't be banished from the woods by deceptive means, such as forcing them into situations where blaze orange is required or convincing them that fall hunting is harmful to turkey populations when that's not the case.
by CNB