Nebraska Merriams, looking for help

[Hoytman 88]

gentlemen I am looking for any help I can get on Nebraska Merriam's spot.
I would greatly appreciate any help you might offer.

thanks

 

[LongWayAround]

Anywhere in the west/northwest with trees will have turkeys. East of Valentine will have more hybrid birds, west of there will be more pure Merriams. I've only hunted north of the Platte River so I can't say about the southwest part of the state.

 

[elkdog]

Ponderosa wildlife area has a good population of birds and lots of public land.
I took two gobblers there 2010 2013. It's in the northwest corner, close to Chardrin.

 

[Hoytman 88]

thank you, i hunted south west this year and it was a mix. i saw only 1 merriam. id like to hunt where the bulk of the toms are M's or at least look like em

 

[KJH]

Hunt the northwest/northcentral area... There are plenty that way. Even though there is public land available, just start calling and knocking on doors and your success will increase big time.

Concentrate from Valentine to Chadron. That's what I would do.

 

[hobbes]

If you were SW, you may have thought that you saw a Merriams, but there is no way it wasnt a hybrid. A hen cant produce some rios and some Merriam's, but instead all hybrids with some maybe exhibiting characteristics of one or the other. The SW birds should primarily be Rios with a little Merriam's mixed in.

Go NW to have any chance at a pure Merriam's and even then some folks will question it. You also need to realize that pure Merriam's still have a color range from buff to white.

 

[Jimss]

I agree with Hobbes. I've hunted SW Nebraska and seen color phases of both rios and merriams in the same flocks. I'm sure they are all mixed because they live in the same area. I also harvested what I thought were 2 pure merriams this year that had a lot of buff color in their tail feathers here in Colo that were in the mountains (separate areas) where I thought there were only 100% pure merriams.