Young hunters target wild turkeys on LI

Young hunters headed into the wilds of Long Island with guns and bows Saturday. Among them was 15-year-old Peter Collorone Jr.

Before dawn, Collorone, of Bay Shore, and his father staked out their hunting spot. They sat on milk crates at the edge of the woods in the Rocky Point State Pine Barrens Preserve.

Just after dawn, in a light drizzle, the prey emerged. A wild turkey.

"I saw it out of the corner of my eye," Collorone said.

The teen turned, took aim with his 12-gauge shotgun and pulled the trigger.

Collorone walked out of the preserve victorious, a 12.7-pound turkey slung over his shoulder.

While youth turkey hunting weekends have long been a tradition upstate, the state Department of Environmental Conservation decided the local turkey population was big enough to allow hunting this weekend by 12- to 15-year-olds.

There was no count of how many youths set out Saturday after turkeys during the designated hunting period -- a half-hour before sunrise until noon. The hunt continues Sunday.

Since hunters don't have to report their kills immediately, it will be days before the agency knows how many turkeys were bagged. But throughout the morning, five youngsters at the Rocky Point preserve proudly carried freshly-killed turkeys into the house where DEC staff did the official weighing.

The turkey hunt was a first for Collorone, and a tad messy in the end.

"You got blood all over your pants," said his father, Peter Collorone Sr.

The teen looked at his camouflage pants and groaned.

"Oh, man."

The wet weather was on the turkeys' side, said Chip Hamilton, a senior state wildlife biologist who was working at the weigh station.

Turkeys usually don't like to move around when it's raining, he said. They rely on their hearing and vision to keep safe, and rain makes it hard to hear.

Still, hunters said turkeys seemed to be in abundance -- lured by a variety of calls, including one made by rubbing a paddle against a small wooden box. That makes a screech that's supposed to imitate the birds' invitation for romance.

"It was an awesome morning," said Collorone Sr., 44. "The turkeys were calling from all sides."

Hamilton put it this way: It's spring, and the birds are looking for love "in all the wrong places."

For Rich Freel, 51, who took his son hunting on private land in their hometown of Medford, the hunt was the easy part.

"The hardest thing about youth hunting is getting the kids out of bed," he said.

They got up at 4:30 a.m., and when the prey came into view, his son and a friend were dozing inside a camouflaged tent. His father roused them.

At the weigh station, Freel's son, 15, held his prize, a 21-pound turkey, by its legs. On the boy's cap was his well-suited first name: Hunter.

"I had two girls," Rich Freel said, "but I wouldn't stop until I had a son I could take hunting."

After Hunter shot the bird, he was worried about it suffering.

"There was a little remorse," his father said. "But he got over it quick."