Maintaining balance: How turkey hunting and fishing season are timed by hatches

Bass fishermen, trout fishermen, and turkey hunters each have their seasons timed around specific hatches, each dependent upon the specie and only in a specified section of the particular animal's life cycle, organically linked with the climate.

In this way hunters and fishermen minimize impact on any particular specie, while at the same time enjoying the overabundance through working with nature to maintain balance.

By the end of May, in the northern latitudes, both Large and Smallmouth bass are on their beds and the males or "buck bass" are fiercely protective.

The Fish and Game departments have set the opening day of bass season to begin here in NY in the third week of June, fully three weeks after the high point of the bass spawn.

Male bass carve out nests in the shallow edges of the bottom of lakes, ponds, and rivers and bring egg-swollen females to their roughed out depression in the mud and bottom gravel to deposit their eggs.

Afterwards, the spent female cruises back to deeper water to "rest up." But it is up to the male to protect the tiny black ball of pinhead sized fry, the promise of the future.

Male bass are "Mr. Moms," making them very susceptible to lures, striking out of an instinct to protect, not feeding.

In a few weeks, the baby bass disperse into the weeds and aquatic cover and the "dad" bass return to the deeper water to hang out with their tribes. And then bass season opens.

While bass, both Large and Smallmouth, are doing their thing in May, a large group of aquatic insects are also at a high point.

There has never been a group of insects, other than maybe Honeybees, that has been so studied and pondered as has trout flies, mayflies, caddis flies, and stoneflies.

Trout fishermen for centuries have pontificated, replicated, and filled library shelves with books on these ubiquitous fluttering creatures, to the point of even making their replication into art.

Because in rivers and streams, aquatic insects are the trout’s main food.

As May gets ready to turn into June, the timing is right for the trout streams to show their best bug flights, highlighted by classic mayfly hatches.

So it is also the time of the fly fisher.

Aquatic insects really don't “hatch” in a traditional sense from an egg at this time.

Instead they undergo one more metamorphosis, a stage, like a butterfly, albeit their most dramatic. But we who pursue trout call it a "hatch."

In response to warming water temperatures and other environmental conditions, a bug’s life as a crawling or swimming multi-legged underwater critter ends abruptly.

The skin splits along their backs as they struggle to the surface. As the insects break through the meniscus, or surface tension, they pop out and unfold their brand new wings.

As their wings dry, and they rest for a while on the stream's surface, these recently hatched insects are selections on a moving buffet for hungry trout.

The lucky ones, those that aren't gobbled up by slashing and jumping trout and birds, fly off to metamorphize one more time to complete their cycle of life, then dancing in the mating ritual above their watery nursery.

As bass spawn and mayflies hatch, the last of the wild turkey gobbles ricochet off the hills and hollows in the uplands.

Turkey hunters can call in gobblers at the tail end of the month-long spring season. But it's tough to do.

Over a month earlier, back in April, the wild turkeys were at the peak of their breeding season, more excited and easier to call in.

And in similar fashion to the bass fishing season, the hunting season is timed to follow actual breeding to have only a minimal impact upon next year's turkey population.

Most hens are incubating eggs, or soon to be by the May 1 turkey opener.

In direct contrast to bass, the male turkey has nothing to do with the raising and protection of his get.

As May wanes, gobblers return to their bachelor groups, just like whitetail bucks, where they remain throughout the summer, fall, and winter, until the following spring.

Consummate bachelors all.

More: Setup position for toms can’t be ignored. Follow these tips to maximize your turkey hunt.

In late May, solitary hen turkey gather up each of their recently hatched poults and often move out of the woods to field edges where they can gorge on grasshoppers, which are ideally and coincidentally hatching too en masse.

The little turkey poults require immediate quantities of protein. The success of the turkey population is organically linked to the timing of the grasshopper hatch, one more thread in a network of interrelated hatches in springtime where the timing of seasons is so crucial.

-- Oak Duke writes a weekly column.

This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Turkey, fishing seasons are timed by hatches to maintain balance