Vermont
Talking (Wild) Turkey, Vermont's Second-Most Hunted Species
My inaugural turkey-hunting foray began promisingly on October 27 with a tailgate brunch in the Windsor park and ride off Interstate 91. Hartland hunter Brett Ladeau had cooked a spread of wild turkey dishes using harvests from previous outings, including a 12-pound hen he’d shot the day before.
From a cooler in his truck bed, the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Vermont chapter president served up barbecue-sauced, pulled turkey leg sandwiches and ladled hunks of dark meat with vegetables and broth into mugs decorated with turkey tracks. His bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers stuffed with Creole-spiced nuggets of turkey breast would’ve made a solid sports-bar menu item.
“The bacon doesn’t hurt,” Brett, 56, quipped.
The slow-cooked leg and thigh meat in the soup and sandwich was tender and not stringy, as I’d been warned it could be. Brett’s two daughters, who were tasting with me, agreed that both dishes could have used more seasoning.
“Salt at every step,” Whitney, a line cook, admonished her father teasingly.
The 20-year-old was sitting in the parking lot wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe over sweatpants. Her sister, Sydney, 22, was dressed in full camo.
Of the four Ladeau kids, Sydney is the only regular hunter. Under her dad’s tutelage, she shot her first turkey at age 9. Following in his footsteps, she has also competed successfully in turkey calling contests, during which hunters demonstrate their skills mimicking the birds’ vocalizations to draw them closer.
Calling is not unique to turkey hunting, but the extent to which hunters engage in back-and-forth “conversation” with the birds makes it an especially interactive experience, the Ladeaus explained.
Over the years, I’ve tagged along on deer, grouse and squirrel hunts, but turkey hunting sounded intriguingly different. I planned the Upper Valley trip with the goal of eavesdropping on a hunter-turkey chat and tasting wild turkey for the first time. I’d been advised to wear head-to-toe camo to fool the sharp-eyed birds and been cautioned that the native eastern wild turkey, while good eating, is not suited to become a Thanksgiving centerpiece roast.
Spoiler alert: The eating part went better than the hunting part.
The fact that Vermonters can hunt turkeys at all is a conservation success story. By the mid-19th century, the once-plentiful eastern wild turkey had disappeared from Vermont due to deforestation and unregulated hunting. After being reintroduced in the late 1960s, the species rebounded exceptionally well. The statewide population hovers around 45,000, kept in check by controlled hunting.
Vermont’s hunting heritage is still firmly rooted in the deer camp, but the Fish & Wildlife Department reports that turkey ranks second in popularity. In 2023, 24,430 licensed turkey hunters — about 40 percent of the number who hunt deer — harvested 6,972 birds during the short fall archery and shotgun seasons and monthlong spring season. From late October to early November, hunters can shoot one turkey of either sex; in May, after mating season, they can take two bearded turkeys, which are generally male.
The fall season is well timed to land a Thanksgiving bird, but even devotees of wild turkey warn against roasting one whole.
“Everyone’s used to going to the store at Thanksgiving and getting their Butterball,” said Bella Kline, a former chef who now works as a Randolph-based state game warden and happened to be passing through the Windsor park and ride on the morning of October 27.
In a follow-up phone call, Kline emphasized that lean, muscular wild turkey requires a different cooking approach and will not taste like the buxom, grain-fed Broad-Breasted Whites on most holiday tables. The dark meat, particularly, “takes a little bit more care,” she advised. (See Kline’s recommended wild turkey cooking method.)
The legs and thighs of a wild turkey are active: The birds use them to forage for acorns and other nuts, seeds and insects, as well as escape from predators, including hunters. “They can be tough, but if you cook them right, it’s a rich flavor,” Brett said as he packed up the food before we headed into the hills.
While we drove the back roads, scanning for turkeys in open fields, Sydney said she prefers breast meat, especially nuggets, rolled in seasoned flour and fried.
Whether it’s light or dark meat, Sydney said, she likes knowing where it came from and taking responsibility for killing it herself. Growing up hunting, she continued, helped her see the cycle of life and value meat in a society she called “highly disconnected” from its food sources.
“Hunting connects us a little more to nature and to our roots as human beings, to our primal instincts,” she said. “It’s not just a game.”
The father-daughter pair said they love hunting together, but Sydney takes pride in knowing she could do it alone. “It’s not something a lot of women do by themselves,” she said.
Brett grew up deer hunting in Norwich. Unlike his daughter, he didn’t see his first wild turkey until he was 17, after the population had rebounded.
As soon as he tried turkey hunting, he was hooked. “I respect turkeys. I study turkeys. I think like a turkey,” he said. “I’m a little silly about turkey hunting.”
After crisscrossing Windsor, Hartland and Brownsville for more than an hour with only one distant glimpse of a flock, we headed for the wooded hillside where Brett had shot his turkey the day before. He strapped on a backpack of gear, including the tools known as calls used to converse with turkeys. Sydney carefully loaded her shotgun and slung it over her shoulder while I slipped on a roomy, borrowed camo jacket.
Hiking up through the woods, we crunched through leaves, ducked under sap lines and navigated around stone walls. A white deer tail flashed a few hundred feet away, but the turkeys remained elusive.
We sat quietly at the foot of two trees while Brett tested a few calls using a round pot call. He deployed a wooden striker, which looks like a thick chopstick, to agitate the aluminum surface of the call. It emitted a string of purrs, clucks and high-pitched yelps that mean something like, “I’m here, and I’m ready to socialize,” Brett told me later.
After a couple of tries with no response, he popped a small, flat semicircular mouth, or diaphragm, call into his mouth and used it to make soft clucks and coos that aim to sound like a contented hen saying, “I’m relaxed over here. Come see what I’m doing.”
Neither seemed to do the trick there or at a second spot where Brett showed me several examples of what is called “turkey sign”: feathers and scat near dust bowls where the birds roll to dislodge mites.
After he made a round of calls rubbing the lid on the base of a box call, I asked what he was saying.
“Today,” he replied ruefully, “it’s apparently, ‘Don’t come here.’”
Before we parted, Brett gave me some breast meat that he’d ground with a little bacon, which became delicious meatballs simmered in my last garden tomatoes.
The trip had convinced me that wild turkey makes good eating, but I still yearned to witness a hunter-turkey conversation.
A few days later, I drove to meet hunter Ron Lafreniere at another park and ride closer to home and much earlier in the day.
It was barely light when we got to a hunting spot in Richmond, not far from where Lafreniere lives in Bolton, on the road where he grew up on a dairy farm. The 66-year-old lifelong hunter said his family eats more wild game than supermarket meat.
Lafreniere started turkey hunting in the 1990s and runs the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Chittenden County chapter. His truck license plate used to be “Gobblers.” Like Brett Ladeau, Lafreniere volunteers to take out a lot of newbies.
His advice: “Look like a tree; act like a tree.”
As the sky lightened, the low whoosh of cars from Interstate 89 floated up from below. Lafreniere used his pot call to no avail, despite seeing some dust bowls along with abundant acorns, a prized food.
Back in the truck, we headed down River Road through Duxbury toward Waterbury. As he drove, Lafreniere scanned the landscape until he exclaimed, “There’s turkeys up that hill, baby!” and took a sharp turn onto a dirt road.
Lafreniere uses a phone app called onX to log game and track his route. It also has land ownership details. Technically, hunters in Vermont can hunt on land that is not posted, but Lafreniere prefers to have permission, especially if he’s close to a house. He hoped that the turkeys he’d seen were moving toward a property on which he has permission to hunt.
We scrambled up a steep bank and navigated to a spot with a clear view down on the field where Lafreniere had spotted the birds. He crouched and pulled his camo face mask up, indicating I do the same. “Stay still as you can,” he whispered.
One turkey soon appeared, head down, pecking, followed by another 10. Lafreniere used a pot call to get the attention of the flock, which was about 50 to 60 yards away, moving slowly across the field. One hen clearly heard him, pulling her long neck up and gyrating like a periscope seeking the call’s source, but she didn’t reply.
We watched quietly for a few minutes as the flock drifted further away from the land Lafreniere has permission to hunt and closer to another house.
Reluctantly, we retreated. Lafreniere didn’t want to get more involved with the flock given their proximity to houses. He offered to take me turkey hunting again in the spring when, he promised, the birds are chattier.
Learn more at vtfishandwildlife.com and on the NWTF-Vermont Facebook page.
NBA draft prospects to watch in the March Madness tournament
USAT’s Mackenzie Salmon gives you four players to keep your eye on in March Madness that will most likely be heading to the NBA next year.
Sports Pulse
Day 2 of the Round of 64 for the women’s NCAA Tournament is nearly underway, and among the games on tap is a battle between No. 2 NC State and No. 15 Vermont.
The NC State Wolfpack finished the regular season with a 26-6 record, ranking seventh in the nation in RPI, and fifth in strength of schedule. The Vermont Catamounts, meanwhile, finished 90th in RPI and were 13-3 in America East play. Vermont won their conference with a 62-55 win over Albany in the America East conference finals.
Here’s how our experts see Saturday’s Round of 64 clash playing out. Be sure to check out USA TODAY’s complete March Madness bracket predictions to see our team’s picks for every game. While you’re at it, don’t forget to read our tournament bold predictions and upset picks.
NC State vs. Vermont picks and predictions
Our experts from across the USA TODAY Network are unanimous (8-0) on who will win this game, No. 2 seed Wolf Pack or No. 15 seed Catamounts. NC State does have the edge in efficiency statistics. Take a look at their full bracket predictions.
NC State vs. Vermont date, start time, how to watch
- Game Day: Saturday, March 22, 2025
- Game Time: 2 p.m. ET
- Location: Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, North Carolina
- TV Channel: ESPN
- Live Stream: Fubo, Sling TV, YouTube TV
Watch UConn vs. Arkansas State on Fubo
NC State vs. Vermont odds
Odds via BetMGM as of Thursday, March 20.
- Spread: NC State (-20.5)
- Moneyline Favorite: -10000
- Moneyline Underdog: +1900
- Total: 124.5
We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn’t influence our coverage.
At Rutland Regional Medical Center, administrators have long wanted to combine two different parts of the hospital: the birthing center and the Women’s and Children’s Unit.
The two units are separated by a hallway, meaning that patients are moved to a new unit shortly after giving birth — “a setup for poor patient experience,” Jonathan Reynolds, the hospital’s vice president for clinical operations, told a Vermont House committee last month.
And, because having two separate units means that the hospital must maintain two different pools of practitioners with overlapping skill sets, combining them would save an estimated $1 million in labor costs annually.
But consolidating the two units will incur an additional expense: that of obtaining a certificate of need.
Under state statute, Vermont health care institutions are required to get a certificate of need — effectively, a legal permission slip — anytime they want to build, renovate or buy facilities or obtain medical equipment that are more expensive than certain threshold amounts.
But as prices for construction and medical equipment rise, more and more projects — including the consolidation of Rutland Regional’s two units — require such certificates, tying up health care facilities and state regulators in lengthy and expensive bureaucratic processes.
“Rutland Regional is handcuffed, and we are unable to take the initiative right now to decrease the cost of health care because of the CON process,” Reynolds told lawmakers.
Now, lawmakers are seeking to relax those requirements. Last week, Vermont’s House passed a bill, H.96, that would increase the monetary thresholds needed for a certificate of need — a move that supporters say will lower health care costs and make care more accessible to state residents.
“The dollar amounts that trigger the CON process are causing extraordinary burdens to hospitals, independent providers and other essential health care entities,” Rep. Mari Cordes, D-Lincoln, the bill’s lead sponsor, said on the House floor March 11.
Certificate of need regulations, which exist in most states, are intended to reduce unnecessary health care spending and avoid duplicative medical services.
The process “is intended to protect the public, and it does so by ensuring that projects that are built have sufficient need and are appropriately priced,” Owen Foster, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said in an interview.
In Vermont, certificates of need are required when a hospital or health care facility seeks to build a new facility, renovate an existing one, or purchase an expensive piece of equipment. If a project hits a certain dollar threshold, hospitals or other health facilities must apply to the Green Mountain Care Board for permission.
Currently, for hospital construction or renovation, a certificate of need is required for all projects that cost more than about $3.8 million. Approval is also needed for non-hospital construction or renovation over $1.9 million.
And certificates are also required for purchases or leases of single pieces of medical equipment that cost more than roughly $1.9 million for hospitals, or $1.3 million for non-hospitals.
Those limits increase annually by an inflationary factor. But the cost of construction and medical equipment has far outpaced those inflationary increases — something that the bill would address.
If passed, the proposed legislation would significantly raise those cost thresholds. Construction and renovation projects, both for hospitals and non-hospitals, would require a certificate of need only if costs run over $10 million. And the acquisition of new medical equipment, both by hospitals and non-hospitals, would only require certificates of need if the cost exceeded $5 million.
With little opposition, the bill has drawn support from health care entities that are often at odds with each other: advocates, regulators, and hospitals.
The certificate of need process eats up “resources, both in money and time, both for the Green Mountain Care Board and for hospitals,” Devon Green, a lobbyist for the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, said in an interview.
Reforming the process, as envisioned by H.96, would “reduce cost and burden for the board and for health care providers,” Foster, of the Green Mountain Care Board, said. “And it would increase competition, while still providing oversight” over more complex projects.
Getting a certificate of need can take months, or even, in the case of one recent construction project, over a year. And the process requires applicants to provide reams of documentation about their project’s benefits, costs, projected utilization and more. Other people, organizations or health care entities can weigh in too, and board members can pose multiple rounds of questions and attach conditions to their approval of an applicant’s project.
“In terms of the current certificate of need process right now, I think there’s a general feeling of, it can be administratively burdensome,” Green said.
That’s the case at Rutland Regional Medical Center. The consolidation of the birthing unit with the women’s and children’s unit is projected to cost between $5.5 million and $6 million — enough to require a certificate of need under current law, but not under the proposed reforms.
As it currently exists, “I would wager that the CON process would delay our start of this consolidation of two units by at least a year, if not longer,” Reynolds, the hospital vice president, said last month.
But if signed into law, he said, H. 96 “gives us the breathing room to perform these types of projects.”
Vermont
Final Reading: US Sen. Peter Welch tells state budget-writers to brace for uncertainty – VTDigger
U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., was back in his old digs.
Vermont’s junior senator, who spent more than a dozen years in the state Senate — including stints as president pro tempore — paid a visit to the Statehouse Thursday to give his take to the Senate Appropriations Committee on, well, everything going on down in Washington, D.C.
“It’s so good to see you guys,” Welch said, taking a seat in the committee’s witness chair. He started to tell the senators he had “such fond memories of serving” with them, though quickly cut himself off. “Well, I never made it to this committee. I was across the hall,” Welch corrected, drawing laughs as he pointed toward the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee’s room.
Welch told Senate Approps that, along with many other proposals, he’s deeply worried about the downstream impacts that cuts to Medicaid — which Republican leaders in D.C. have been weighing to fund President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda, including major tax cuts — could have on state budgets in Vermont and elsewhere.
Recent Trump-led cuts to other federal programs and grant funding could also leave states scrambling to make up the difference, he said, adding that he wished he could give legislators a clearer picture of what to expect. Trump adviser Elon Musk, and Musk’s “government efficiency” department, have seemed to make sweeping cuts almost entirely at random, Welch said.
“There’s going to be a level of uncertainty that you’re just going to have to deal with,” he said in response to a question from Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille, whom he called “Richie.” “We can give you the information we have as soon as we have it — but it’s not as soon as you need it.”
Vermont’s House and Senate budget writers are in the process of drafting the state’s spending plan for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in July, with the House Appropriations Committee expected to take a preliminary vote on their version on Friday. (Meanwhile, lawmakers are still working out a sharp dispute with Gov. Phil Scott’s administration over how to adjust spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends in June.)
Welch also took a spin around the building Thursday, shaking hands and slapping backs with some of his former colleagues. Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden-Southeast, suggested the cordiality was a far cry from the nation’s capital — though Welch joked about at least one distinction he has noticed.
On the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which Welch sits on, “the chair is not as tough on me as Ann Cummings was,” he said, referring to the Washington County senator and longtime chair of Vermont’s finance panel.
— Shaun Robinson
In the know
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.
What exactly that means for the country — and Vermont — is an open question.
Through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the state receives more than $68 million annually from the feds, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides another $37.5 million for Vermont’s schools, Anne Bordonaro, who leads the Vermont Agency of Education’s work on federal education programs, told lawmakers last week. Overall, the agency received about $490 million in federal dollars in fiscal year 2024, more than 90% of which it passed on as grants.
Read more about what we know and don’t know yet here.
— Ethan Weinstein
On the move
The Senate on Thursday passed S.59, a bill that would make a handful of tweaks to the state’s laws on open meetings. Among other changes, the bill would require officials to include “sufficient details” about matters they discussed during a meeting in their minutes and add a new reason to the list of why officials could enter into an executive session — to discuss “interest rates for publicly financed loans.”
The bill now heads to the House for its consideration.
— Shaun Robinson
Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
SD Voter Defense Association encourages Gov. Rhoden to veto House Bill 1169
Doctors say ‘mini epidemic’ is possible after measles case confirmed in Middle Tennessee
North Texas moms fight against fentanyl overdoses, share stories of loss
Utah Jazz vs Boston Celtics: recap and final score
NC State vs. Vermont predictions, picks for 2025 women’s NCAA Tournament first round
-
World1 week agoUkraine accepts 30-day ceasefire in US talks: What it means for Russia war
-
News1 week agoUnruly Passenger Swallows Rosary Beads on American Airlines Flight
-
News1 week agoEducation Department's major cuts to its staff. And, a proposed Ukraine peace deal
-
Technology1 week agoI outsourced my memory to an AI pin and all I got was fanfiction
-
San Francisco, CA1 week agoSan Francisco Muni stabbing victim, suspect both ID'd as minors
-
World1 week agoTurkey should play key role in peace in Ukraine, says Polish PM
-
News1 week agoSudiksha Konanki’s disappearance echoes Natalee Holloway case. Is it affecting travel?
-
Lifestyle1 week agoNBA Stars Like Jalen Brunson Enlist Social Media Surrogates to Expand Reach in China