Turkey Hunting.....Tips/Techniques/Stories

Spring gobbler comes in tomorrow morning here in VA. Sunny with a high of 65. gonna be perfect!

 

^Have fun Tanner and I hope you do well. Youth hunt is next weekend for my kids and I can't wait!!

 

I'll be in the woods too!!! I'm getting ready to head up to our hunting cabin and try to put a bird to roost tonight.

 

^

 

well went out this afternoon to do some last minute scouting and apparently in the last 3 days the forest service decided to burn half the effing forest down and ruined my best spot. looks like im going in blind tomorrow morning

 

There was no activity at my main spot when I checked it out last night so I went in to another location this morning "blind" as well.

I had a gobbler answer my call from the roost. When he flew down I called him in to within 45 yards of me but the mountain laurel was so thick I could never get a clean shot at his head. He was in full strut and drumming like crazy....I eventually tried to shift my shotgun to get a better shooting lane but he caught the movement of my barrel and it was all over. He didn't spook but he knew something wasn't "quite right" and turned around and walked away. I almost took my hen decoy with me this morning but decided to keep it back at camp to try and save some room in my vest...hind sight is always 20/20 I guess

 

Oh man you guys are making me get the fever for some gobblers. I dont leave til the 14th

 

Well, the kids blew the tarnation out of some targets with their bantams yesterday and now we are ready for the youth hunt next weekend. Sounds like the action has begun up above. Let the stories continue.

 

got out saturday morning and sat down and had a gobbler answer my calls. he was moving towards me when suddenly he quit gobbling and never showed up. i guess he found him some closer hens. then had another one gobble about 150 yards out but he was up on top of the hill that i was going up and i guess he saw me and scedadled or something. goin out tomorrow before classes to try it again

 

^hens prolly cut him off, but the girls will be on the nest before long and then he's all yours.

 

figured i would update anyone who is curious about my most recent turkey hunting experience. i would like to start this with a phrase i came up with today. "Screw that hen. she needs to die and rot in hell"

basically i was out there at 5 30 waitin to start callin and nothing was happening. at about 8 i decided to switch locations and try again. well i moved and i walk about 3 miles when i hit the call again and not 200 yards away i hear "gobblegobblegobblegobblegobble" im pumped. i find a nice shady tree to sit under and start callin again. once again i hear him goin at it, but he is much closer. Here is the setup at this point. im near the top of a ridge with about 100 yards in front of me then it drops over. the tom is on the other side coming to me like nothin else. im callin and he is answering every time. suddenly he comes strutting over the crest like the badass he is. he moves closer. about 80 yards now. he hasnt spotted me and i am covered from about 60 to 30 yards by lots of brambles and such. all of a sudden he stops. a hen walks out from behind a big old oak tree and starts messin with him. then the two of them turn around and go back over the ridge. i start gettin on the call like the world is ending tryin to get him to come back. alas they disappeared never to be seen again. so close!!!! aghhhh this is aggravating me. but it was exciting and i had one of the best morning i have had in a long time so oh well. try again thursday!

 

^Good story Tanner. If you killed that bird first time out, you wouldn't have enjoyed that hunt. When that happens, start into a fighting hen/purr sequence and see if you can tick off the hen and bring her in with him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxtJX9Ksijk

look at the mad hen in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6vPhoZ_oAk

 

thanks for the advice. i will be sure to try that next time. and i did have a lot of fun today even though i didn't shoot anything. if i get the same bird it will be that much sweeter

 

After calling in that bird last Saturday I can't take it anymore- I am taking off this Friday and hitting the woods. Hopefully between hunting on Friday and Saturday I can connect with a nice gobbler..and I'll make sure to have my hen decoy with me this time

 

the very first bird I harvested outsmarted me 4 days in a row. It became one of my best memories and I developed a tremendous respect for them.

oh the joys of turkey hunting......it's quite fowl how they force us into burning vacation days.

 

alright here is the latest turkey hunting story. today was quite the wild day. got in there about 5 30 and stood around with my buddy just bsing quietly until it was time to start calling. when it was time he hit his owl hoot a few times with no response. we started to think maybe we had the wrong spot and the turkeys had moved to another location but figured we were there and may as well wait till light to see if anything happened. about 6:00 we were just sittin there watchin the sun come up and i hit the box call real quick. well, guess what. a big ol' tom was roosted not 25 yards from us. we set up the decoys real ninja like and scooted off about 10 yards and sat down in a little ditch thing and started calling the tom. we called him for about 40 minutes. he was giving use 3 or 4 gobbles in a row between our calls and we could see him on the limb stretchin his legs and gettin ready to fly down. finally after almost an hour he flew down towards the decoys to where we couldnt see him anymore. got about 3 more gobbles from him and then a few hens walked right by us and he decided to follow them. well we kept callin and another one started gobblin back from the other side of the ridge. he started coming in and then we heard a hen start yelping at him. so he turned around and went to her. then we kept calling and he came back to us. this continued for almost half an hour before he decided to go with the other one. they too disappeared. then we went ridin down the road a little and what do we see walkin up the road? another big ol' tom! we reach back and grab the shotgun and load one into it and jump out right as he starts runnin off. took a shot at him but i guess i missed and he escaped too. then we went back to school and got breakfast. quite the wild and exciting morning but got outsmarted again a few times. try again saturday i guess

 

don't forget about a fly down cackle. It is one of my favorite and very successfull calls. The most effective way to use it imo, is to use a mouth call and either a hat or a turkey wing to mimick the sound of wings flapping. Use the mouth call like in the video and about the time you get aggresive, take the hat/wing and flap it like a real bird. After you have 'flown down', finish it off by scratching around in the leaves like a real turkey and that 'ol tom will go crazy. (scartch, scratch, scratch, pause, scratch, scratch, scratch, pause....watching a chicken eat will help you know the proper technique to sounding like a turkey scratching in the leaves for food) Part of the trick is to make sure he can't see any of your movement from the roost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEZAhm723o

 

Just got back into town from turkey hunting. It was a tough but successful hunt, I ended up setting about 200 yards from the roosting tree and they were gobbling their heads off. After a hour wait they flew down and began working their way twords me I was just giving little puts and fits of hen calling. There was 4 toms in the group and I had two tags, they came to about 35 yards and started strutting. I pulled up on one and BAM!! one tom down, pulled up on the other that was now running and BAM!! I was limited out. Then we worked our way up the mountain and heard putting stopped found another group of birds about a mile from where I shot mine and my grandfather harvested a nice 9'' tom. My birds were 9 1/2'' and 9''. Very fun hunt

 

Well...

I think I managed to figure out where every hen in the state is . I tried to roost a gobbler Thursday night but couldn't even get to where I wanted to go b/c there were several hens roosted in the trees along the trail that I was on. I ended up flushing one of them by accident and then backed out of the woods. On Friday morning I ran into more hens at another spot, and sure enough about an hour later a gobbler showed up. He was hen-pecked and (obviously) wouldn't come to my calls. I tried to challenge the hen he was with to get her to come to me (and bring him along ) be she wouldn't have any of it and moved him off away from my calls.

This morning was so freaking windy I don't think I could have even heard myself fart. I decided to leave the woods and went trout fishing instead....I caught my limit of trout and my wife is going to be cooking us some nice fat brook trout for dinner tomorrow .

It's not Turkey...but they sure are tasty:

 

Congratulations Phil!!! Sure would like to see pics of those nice birds.

2 T- great looking trout, nice catch and some good eatin' for sure!

Well, took my 10 yr old out for the youth hunt yesterday. Had a great day together, heard several birds and seen quite a few. Ticked off some hens with that fighting purr.

We set up on two gobblers for over three hours, he took a nap on my lap, and when the wind picked up we used it for cover and snuck right up in their strutting area. I sweet talked them both to come in and my boy had them at just over 20 yards. He put the hammer down and missed. I think them turks are still flying west and should have arrived in Arizona by now for all my Arizona buddies out there. I don't know what happened, he wasn't shaking much, I think he just missed.

He has such an awesome attitutde and doesn't get mad, sad or frustrated. He just looked at me and smiled. I smiled and held back tears, not allowing him to know how bad I want him to make that first harvest. I'm determined to teach that the killing is not the main focus of why we enjoy to hunt, it's the blessing once we do make that harvest.

Regular season comes in a week from Wednesday, it's gonna be a long wait.................