No one around here can complain about our recent weather. It has been simply beautiful.

There is so much to do in the outdoors, it is hard to pick and choose which direction to take.

Two of the big choices for sportsmen are wild turkey hunting or fishing. Both seasons are kicking into high gear.

The season for the wild turkeys began last Saturday, April 14, and runs through May 12.

On a trip up north last weekend, we saw many trucks parked down long paths.

There were a good number of hunters in the field.

There was a special youth day for wild turkey hunting again this year. That date was April 7.

It was good to see 15 year old Tristan Macky’s picture in the paper last Sunday with a fine wild turkey he harvested on his very first trip.

The bird weighed 22 pounds and sported a 10-inch beard.

This warm weather has brought an onslaught of bugs much earlier this year.

When you are sitting beside an old stump in the woods trying to call up a big gobbler, you better not take along a can of wimpy bug spray.

Since turkeys love to roost above water for protection, swampy places are the best locations to hunt.

Unfortunately mosquitoes thrive in the same environment, and this year, they prove to be really big and plenty hungry. So are the dang gnats!

Wild turkeys seem plentiful this year as we travel up and down the Roanoke and Tar Rivers.

Last weekend, we heard a turkey flying across the Roanoke before we actually saw the big bird.

My friend and I saw that turkey at the same time. I remember he commented that he had much rather see a wild turkey than to kill one. I guess that is why we went rock fishing as opposed to turkey hunting last weekend.

We had a wonderful trip on the Roanoke just north of the town of Scotland Neck. It was a picture-perfect morning, and the rockfish thought so as well.

We rode by fields where my grandfather and I hunted deer some 40 years ago. As we passed, I called the names of these special tracts of land to my friend.

Looking Glass, Hancock, the Beaver Dam, Railroad Line, Beehive, and the Graveyard all came back from a distant memory.

We have just about completed the cycle of fishing for the rockfish as they migrate up our coastal rivers.

We have caught them in the Albemarle Sound, the lower Tar River, Plymouth, Jamesville, Williamston, Hamilton, and now near Scotland Neck.

It is time for salt water trips much farther down east in search of elusive trout, flounder and puppy drum.

Finding bait for the rockfish has become a problem.

This is very little water and current in the Tar River in Rocky Mount, and the shad refuse to bite.

The only downside to this perfect weather is we need some beneficial rain falls.

King