What Is the Chasing 49 Team Doing to Prepare for Spring Turkey Season?

Turkey season may still be months away, but preparation for next spring has already started for the Chasing 49 team. A lot of what makes a successful spring happen takes place long before opening day.

This time of year gives us a chance to look back at what we learned last season, get organized, and start preparing for another spring on the road.

Planning for the Cost of the Road

One thing we continue to learn is just how expensive traveling across the country can be. Fuel is one of our biggest expenses during turkey season, and gas prices continue to make that more noticeable every year.

Instead of waiting until spring to account for it, we are already putting a little more money aside than we normally would for fuel. When you're trying to hunt multiple states in a short period of time, thousands of miles on the road add up quickly.

Planning for those expenses now gives us one less thing to worry about once the season starts.

Scouting Starts Long Before We Get There

We are also spending a lot of time with our mapping resources now.

Rather than arriving in a new state and scrambling to figure out where we want to hunt, we are doing as much research as possible ahead of time. We are looking at access, terrain, public and private land opportunities, and the areas that make the most sense based on our travel schedule.

That preparation becomes especially important when we're hunting a state that is completely new to someone on the team.

The goal is to arrive with several options already identified instead of wasting valuable hunting time trying to figure everything out once we're there.

Staying Sharp With Turkey Calls

Calling is another thing we're continuing to work on throughout the off-season.

Nobody wants opening morning to be the first time they've picked up a call in months. We continue practicing with mouth calls, trumpets, pot calls, and the other calls we plan on carrying during the spring.

That becomes even more important when you're heading into an unfamiliar state. The more prepared we can be before opening day, the more we can focus on hunting once we're there.

Getting the Gear Ready

Most of our turkey gear has already been organized, cleaned up, and stored for the off-season.

We also removed the batteries from our shotgun optics before putting everything away. Small things like that are easy to overlook after a long spring, but taking care of equipment now prevents unnecessary problems when it's time to pull everything back out.

As spring gets closer, we'll go back through everything again, replace what needs replacing, and make sure our gear is ready before the first trip.

Building the Most Efficient Route Possible

Logistics are a huge part of what we do.

We are already looking at season dates, geography, travel distances, and the most efficient way to hunt as many states as possible without wasting days driving back and forth across the country.

When you're trying to cover multiple states during a relatively short turkey season, the order you hunt them can make a major difference.

A good route means more time hunting and less time unnecessarily sitting behind the steering wheel.

Staying Physically Ready

We're also continuing to work out and walk throughout the off-season.

Turkey hunting across the country can mean anything from relatively flat ground one week to steep mountain country the next. Long days, little sleep, and miles on foot are part of it.

There isn't much benefit in having everything else prepared if your body isn't ready when the season starts.

Putting More Focus on Conservation

One area Chasing 49 is putting more emphasis on going into next spring is conservation.

Traveling and hunting across so many different states gives us an opportunity to see the differences in wild turkey habitat, populations, management, and the challenges facing the resource.

We want to become more intentional about using our platform to talk about those issues.

Going into next spring, we plan to produce more conservation-focused content and share practical information that hunters can use to better understand and help protect wild turkeys and their habitat.

Spring Starts Now

Opening day might still feel a long way off, but a lot of next season is being built right now.

Saving for the road, scouting from maps, practicing calls, organizing gear, planning routes, staying physically ready, and becoming more involved in wild turkey conservation are all part of preparing for another spring with Chasing 49.

When the first season opens, we want the preparation to already be finished.

Document. Protect. Conserve.