It has been a bountiful spring! As an obsessed turkey hunter, I just wrapped up my annual intense trek in pursuit of gobblers. This year my efforts were focused in the Midwest: Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. I was blessed to take birds in all those states.

Wild turkeys have lead me all over the world, but there’s certainly a powerful aura surrounding the Eastern subspecies. They’re the biggest—and generally hardest gobbling—of all turkeys that make up the Royal Slam, and they also tend to be the most difficult to hunt. I cut my teeth hunting Easterns, so it was rewarding to get back to my roots while collecting a solid pile of wild poultry for the table. As a result of a successful season, I’ve been experimenting with some new recipes including a killer poutine using turkey legs.

Speaking of getting back to my roots, I decided to turkey hunt on my family’s 130-year-old farm in central Minnesota. I’d been meaning to get up there to hunt spring gobblers for nearly a decade; finally, I penciled in a week to make it happen and shoot a very special short film for THE HUNGER (watch for it in the coming months). My ancestors must have been rooting for me, because I called in a dandy longbeard during the first morning of the hunt and plucked him for the smoker.

Right now my freezer is stocked pretty well with a variety of critters: whitetail, mule deer, elk, pronghorn, pheasant, black bear and wild turkey. In mid-June I’ll be heading to South Texas for a unique hunting opportunity—axis deer. It’ll be an adventure, no doubt, as they’ll be rutting and I’ll be donning a crossbow for the first time ever. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to Work Sharp and make meat.

Written by By Josh Dahlke