Brian Schlenger shot a first-season tom turkey last week, when the warmth was building, in the north zone on public land in Will County.

“The weather definitely cooperated,” he tweeted.

Since then, the weather has shifted back to something closer to normal April weather.

The five seasons of turkey hunting in Illinois run through May 4 in the south zone and May 11 n the north zone. Previous permits are required to hunt turkey during the spring seasons.

TOTW, the celebration of hunting wild turkeys in Illinois and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows), runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times as warranted. The online posting here at https://chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.

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