So, you have a gobbler coming right in and he stops just outside of range and will not come any closer. Every turkey hunter has or will experience these moments. But the hunt isn’t over, you can still get that turkey, but it might require a change of approach. On this episode I cover several strategies for successfully hunting hung up gobblers.
Why do gobblers get hung up? People often think there is some mystical reason why a turkey would come in hot and then stall out just beyond your range. But this is actually very normal turkey behavior. Typically, the hen turkey comes to the gobbler when he calls or when she sees him. So, the gobbler may be coming in quickly to close the distance to get close enough to be seen and heard by the hen. And once he makes visual contact or comes within audio range, he will begin to call and strut to get the hen’s attention. He is trying to impress the lady bird.
Trying to get the gobbler to come right to the obvious hen is a little bit against nature, it certainly works sometimes, but it can be very problematic other times.
So, when a turkey is moving in quickly to your position and he sees your decoy 80 yards away, he may assume the hen can see him and he has gotten close enough to be seen and heard so he will start gobbling and strutting to win over the hen, expecting her to come to him. The same thing can happen when he gets in close, and the hunter continues calling. He may not see the hen, but he can hear that she is close, so assuming she is behind a nearby tree, the tom will start to gobble and strut trying to get her to pop out and come over.
When the turkey hunter goes quiet and has no decoy, the gobbler continues to come closer trying to close the distance and figure out what direction the hen has moved off to, he often comes to the last place he heard the calling from in order to try and figure out which direction to search next. So just by ceasing to call and not having a decoy you can prevent some hang ups.
But what do you do after the tom has hung up? There are numerous strategies you can employ to change things up and get the turkey to commit and cover the last few yards worth of ground to come into range.
Listen to this podcast episode to hear all about it!
Does all of the best turkey hunting happen early in the morning? Some professionals say yes, but others say no. The bottom line is that there is still good turkey to be had all day long IF you know how to take advantage of it. On this episode, I give strategies to successfully hunt spring gobblers later in the morning after many hunters have already left for breakfast.
Turkeys are indeed the most vocal early in the morning, you can often figure out where they are roosting and hear some very exciting gobbling. This is fun and exhilarating but that still does not guarantee success, even when you have the perfect spot, and you are surrounded by turkeys. It can still be hard to connect when everything is working perfectly because the turkeys have their own plans, and we cannot always get them to do what we want.
As the morning wears on, turkeys get less vocal and are harder to locate. Many hunters get bored with this and head out of the woods, but the truth is, the odds of a turkey coming in later in the morning may increase. Once gobblers have bred the hens they were with at first light, they often find themselves alone and are more likely to take action when they hear you calling. But they may gobble little or not at all. They make quietly and slowly sneak in to find you.
If you make some adjustments to your hunting style and strategy you can have very successful hunts after sleeping in and lazily strolling into the woods at 9:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. The big key here is stealth, moving slowly, quietly, and with cover whenever possible. You are more likely to spook gobblers because you won’t hear them to know where they are, so you have to move quietly.
There are several ways you can hunt birds this time of day, such as stealthy sits with infrequent calling hoping to ambush a quiet gobbler as he stalks his ways into you or running and gunning to cover ground and create more opportunities. This kind of hunting can be very productive but too often people mess it up and hurt their chances because they make a few simple and easy to avoid mistakes. Taking a little more care can help a lot, especially if you have limited acres to hunt or limited energy to cover lots and lots of ground.
Listen to the podcast episode to learn more about how to hunt turkeys late, lazy, and quietly.
When is the right time to upgrade to a dedicated turkey hunting shotgun, and should you? Much of what dedicated turkey guns offer is ergonomic in nature, they provide little functional advantage. However, they do you give you one very important benefit that may be worth the price alone.
Turkey hunting typically involves a single shot, which means any shotgun with the proper choke can provide optimal performance. So upgrading to a pump action shotgun or a semi-automatic shotgun does not give you much of an advantage. Adding camouflage to the gun provides only a slight benefit, and while a shorter barrel may be helpful, you can always buy a shorter barrel for your current shotgun.
The biggest reason you may want to upgrade to a dedicated turkey gun is the benefit of optics. A good red dot or low power scope can provide you with a massive benefit that regular shotgun sights do not provide. They enable you to hit your target even if your shooting form is compromised due to sitting on the ground in an awkward position.
I believe that most turkeys which are missed, are missed because the hunter did not mount their shotgun properly due to the rigors associated with hunting from the ground and shooting from an awkward sitting position. They had their front bead on the turkey, but their eye was far enough at an angle that their pattern missed the turkey or only scored a marginal hit. They then blame the gun, the choke, the ammo, and everything else except the real cause, they shouldered the shotgun in an awkward position.
A good optic can give you a fixed aiming aid that can help you hit the target even if you are somewhat out of alignment. If you miss alot of turkeys, they can be a game changer for you. In truth a good hunter with proper form does not gain much from adding an optic but turkey hunting often compromises our shooting form. Here my full article that goes deeper into this subject: How To Fit A Shotgun To You – Length of Pull, Comb Height, & Cast
If your turkey hunting shotgun setup works good for you and you are consistently hitting turkeys then there is no reason to consider a dedicated turkey hunting shotgun. But if a gun that is better tailored to this pursuit appeals to you, and adding an optic may be helpful, then this could be a good purchase decision.
Also keep in mind that if you only use the shotgun for turkey hunting, you can sight it in for your favorite turkey load once and save money vs. having to do it every season when you put an optic back onto an all purchase shotgun. And if you are shooting TSS, that can save you alot of money every year.
Some of the saddest stories in turkey hunting happen after you pull the trigger. And they are nearly 100% preventable. On this episode I am going to talk about what you should do immediately after shooting a turkey to make sure you take the bird home, and you make it home safe. This is about much more than the obvious.
There are two big concerns that present themselves immediately after pulling the trigger on a turkey.
The first one is staying focused and on task until you can 100% confirm a clean ethical kill and the bird is not just stunned or wounded and about to run or fly away.
The second one is safety for yourself and other people or property. So many things awful things have happened when people let their guard down and begin to celebrate a successful turkey hunt. Adrenaline is pumping, excitement is soaring, and we can easily make bad and unsafe decisions, and I am talking about a lot more than firearms accidents.
You will want to celebrate a successful turkey hunt, and you should. It is a great accomplishment. But many birds have been lost because people celebrated prematurely, and life and limb have been lost because hunters celebrated recklessly. YOU MUST take responsible action immediately to confirm the kill and then set a handful of events in order to assure safety. Yes, shotgun safety is paramount, but there are other serious injuries that can occur beyond firearms accidents.
When a turkey goes down, even with the cleanest possible kill, it will still often thrash and flail on the ground. Kind of like a chicken with its head cut off. The bird is dead. It is not suffering, but the nervous system of the creature is in shock and muscles will continue to spam, sometimes off and on for a few minutes. It is easy to forget that turkeys are armed with brutal spurs that can cause serious damage to people. Children are especially at risk for being injured as a result of moving too quickly.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is that the hunt is not over until you have confirmed the bird is not breathing and tagged the turkey, and you are not out of danger until you are in your vehicle. Some of the worst accidents happen while walking out of the woods with a dead turkey. You all of these issues are largely preventable.
If the first thing you do is stop and pull out your cell phone to take photos and text people, you may find no bird to take photos of and have no idea where the bird went. You may also find yourself moments away from a terrible injury that you will likely not see coming.
In this podcast episode I share several real-life events from new hunters, professional hunters, and youth hunters where the simple steps I outline were not known or not followed. Taking very simple, obvious precautions can help you make sure you fill your tag with a spring gobbler and get you home in one piece to tell the story.
Turkey vests have a lot of pockets, but what should we put in them? You might be surprised how little you really NEED to take with you hunt turkeys effectively. On this episode I talk about the top 5 things you must keep in your turkey hunting vest at all times!
What should you pack in your turkey vest? This is an often-asked question. But first and foremost, we need to recognize what a turkey vest is and is not. It is not a backpack, but it can give you some of the function of one. It is not a coat, but it can give you some warmth and handy front pockets. It is a very specific and specialized system.
I am a fan of turkey vests because they are a combination backpack, seat, and front pockets. They give you everything you need in a small light package. They can take the place of a backpack and do more, if you use them properly.
The turkey hunting vest is a very specialized and versatile tool. Some have so many pouches, pockets, and folds, that you could bring enough gear to camp with. I recommend a more minimalist approach, only taking a handful of core necessities. Why? Because I want to travel light. Light is easy, light is fast, light is quiet. All things that are important to turkey hunting.
The more you take the more problems you can have, the more things you can fiddle with and get busted with while moving. The more you have the more noise and the more time you need to get situated. A light vest without bulky noisy cargo is a much more practical tool.
Listen to this podcast episode to hear about the top things you MUST keep in your turkey vest.
Restuarant owners love to hear that the turkeys weren’t gobbling that day because they fill up around 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. with hunters looking for breakfast who gave up for the day. We can and MUST break this dependance on gobbling to hunt turkeys, and if you are hunting right, you never need to hear a gobble to hunt all morning and fill your tag. Listen to this podcast episode to hear it all!
Turkeys gobble for a number of reasons, it is not solely about mating. And they may gobble year-round. Likewise, turkeys can mate without gobbling, it is certainly not required. In fact, they will often not gobble while mating. Weather plays a part in gobbling as well, as do many various other factors, many of which are not fully understood. What we know for sure is that if we hear a turkey, we know one is there. But the opposite is hardly true. Not hearing a turkey only means you don’t hear a turkey.
First things first, you should not pick a hunting location based on gobbling, you should select it because of sign. Real, tangible evidence that turkeys are in that area. If you scout and do that, you will have something that very few turkey hunters have. Confidence. You can be confident that whether you hear them or not, gobblers are in that area, and you have a chance to call one it and take it home.
Most turkey hunters have no confidence, if they do not hear turkeys, they assume they do not exist and are not in their area. And without scouting, there is no reason to think they are in your area. So, the hunter who scouts well is not fazed by a lack of vocalizing toms, but the hunter who does not scout has no reason to stick it out if they do not hear any birds.
You can hunt and take turkeys no matter what sounds they make or do not make. It may require a change in strategy, it might take some different tactics, but you absolutely hunt them. And taking a turkey that never gobbled is no less fun! In fact, it is a great challenge, greater feat, and often feels like a greater accomplishment.
Turkey hunting is not birdwatching. If you work hard and do not take the easy way out, you will find turkey nuggets on your table again and again.
Most the time it is easy to tell the difference between male and female turkeys, but sometimes it is strangely difficult. Bearded hens can make things more complicated but a lot more can happen that makes it even harder to tell the difference between a hen and a gobbler.
People often ask, what percentage of hens have beards? The answer should be simple but data from researchers varies greatly between 3% and 20%. The most commonly accepted statistic I have found is around 10% of hens have beards. And hen beards tend to be shorter, thinner, and less pronounced than the beard of tom. However, what normally happens is not what always happens.
Hens and toms can share a lot of traits they aren’t supposed to have at times. Hens can have plumage similar to gobblers at times. Gobblers can have no spurs, lighter colors, and different head colorings. Some hens can be larger than normal and some toms can be smaller than usual.
At the end of the day some turkeys can be so mix-matched that it is not possible for even a trained hunter to properly identify them in the field, even if they have them in hand. You may think I’m joking, but occasionally a bird comes along that even biologists cannot identify without checking its reproductive parts.
The big thing hunters need to know is what are the laws for taking a bird. If a turkey is legal and you want to take it, you probably should. People often say that killing a bearded hen is the same as killing a whole hatch of poults. But the truth is that predation and winter kill more turkeys than anything else.
That bearded hen may get eaten by a coyote by the end of the day. The whole hatch may never last a week if foxes and crows find it. Very few of those birds will live long enough to see the winter and fewer still will survive to breed. Nature consumes many of the turkeys that hunters think they are saving.
But the bottom line is this, if as an seasoned turkey hunter you have come to a point where you prefer to pass on bearded hens for the chance it may help the population then you should. If you’ve never taken a turkey before and you see a legal bird, and you want to take it, you should. Each hunter needs to follow their heart and conscience, not the collective input of Facebook groups.
There are not many things we hunt where hearing matters more than it does for turkeys. Every gobble, cluck, purr, scratch, and footstep provides us with the strategic audio input we need to hunt these majestic birds. And yet the very practice of hunting turkeys damages our ears, both from gunshots but also loud calling. On this episode I interview Dr. Bill Dickinson, an audiologist and founder of Tetra Hearing, to talk about how important our hearing is and what we can do to protect and restore it.
Here is the Tetra discount code that you can use to get 10% off your order. Go to Tetra’s website and use the code: NHG2410 at checkout for a 10% discount.
Most people do not think that one or two shotgun shots a year hunting turkey is enough to damage their hearing. The truth is, one shot, the next shot, could be the one that changes your hearing forever. And if it’s not, it can take a just a little bit more of your hearing away. Most people lose a little here and there until all of a sudden, they realize they have a real problem.
But perhaps even more harmful than shotgun noise is loud calling. A box call or glass call can easily exceed the safe hearing threshold and cause you hearing damage every day you walk into the woods whether you pull the trigger or not.
But if people do not protect their hearing hunting turkeys, they likely do not protect it hunting pheasants, deer, ducks, doves and other game. And every day you walk into the woods you are hurting your hearing for next season. You are also hurting your hearing for work, family, and everything else you will do for the rest of your life.
Hearing protection is not just important, it is crucial. And thankfully we have more amazing options available today than ever before in history to protect our hearing and even help us hunt better. Tetra Hearing has created the most sophisticated hearing protection and augmentation technology ever seen.
This is not just technology that prevents hearing loss, but it compensates for hearing loss and then enables you to hear the game that you are hunting from further away than you could normally, even with perfect hearing. Dr. Bill has created something truly amazing and special that is bringing back the joy of hunting for so many who were no longer able to hear turkeys gobble. And it is enabling a generation to protect their hearing and enabling them to hunt for a lifetime without sacrificing one of their senses every day spent afield.
On this episode Dr. Bill breaks down some of the complexities of the human hear and how it works, the technology that goes into protecting it and enhancing our hunting. But more than that he shares how important hearing is at all levels of life. His work truly celebrates this amazing sense God has given us and all of the great things that flow out of it into our lives.
Listen to full podcast episode to hear the interview, stories, tech, and much more. And you can watch my review of the AlphaShield’s below.
When it comes to hunting spring turkeys, there is one thing that trumps gear, strategy, calling, ammo, stealth, and everything else. And that is SIGN. You could be the greatest turkey hunter in the world, a championship winning caller, with the best equipment that money can buy, shooting gold platted TSS shells accurate to 100 yards and none of it will matter at all if there are no turkeys there. Finding and hunting over sign is the single most important part of turkey hunting.
You can make a lot of mistakes chasing gobblers and still get opportunities, still get seemingly “lucky” and take birds home. You can sp0ok birds day after day, you can miss birds, bump them, call badly, and worse, and still occasionally find success IF there are turkeys there to be hunted. It happens all the time.
But you can also waste days, weeks, and entire seasons hunting in places where there are no turkeys to be found. Sometimes they are areas that look like they should hold turkeys, sometimes they are areas with perfect food and habitat, and sometimes they are just traditional or convenient hunting areas. But none of that matters to the turkeys and will give them any reason to be there. We need to find them and go to the places where they are.
Scouting is an unending part of turkey hunting. We should scout before the season, during the season, and after the season if we want to find areas that have turkeys this year and may have turkeys again in future hunting seasons. Turkeys are sometimes drawn to specific areas and habitat year-after-year because in the spring it is quality turkey habitat. And if you can find a few of those honey holes, then current and past scouting can pay off by providing future benefit. But every year we need to be on the lookout for sign.
Sign comes in many forms and in this episode, I talk about numerous ways to find it and make good turkey hunting strategy decisions. Listen to the full podcast episode for more!
Hunting spring turkey is one of the most fun and unique hunting experiences in the world. These are majestic birds, large, powerful, cunning, and a culinary delight for those who know how to unlock their potential.
I was completely hooked after my first turkey hunt, there was no going back. The sights and sounds, the thrill, the challenge, were all like nothing I had ever experienced. And the truth is, you can experience all of this and have success by just following a few realistic principles.
There is no shortage of books and articles on how to hunt spring turkeys, but I have found that very few of them are practical for people brand new to the sport. People who want to get into the woods and taste turkey hunting without devoting hundreds of hours to study and practice. No, this article will not make up for a lifetime of experience in a few minutes, but it will enable you to pursue spring turkeys with a fair chance at filling your tags!
If you want to take the plunge and go in all the way, check out my archive ofturkey hunting podcast episodeswhere I have years’ worth of free turkey hunting content organized and sorted by subject matter. I will also use this article as an outline to organize videos, articles, and podcast episodes so you can do deeper in many of these areas. Use this resource, bookmark it, and study it to learn everything you can!
How To Find Good Turkey Habitat
Turkey habitat often shifts year-round. Where you saw birds in the fall or winter is not always indicative of where they will be in the spring. In the springtime turkeys are mating and they flock to habitat that is ideal for that mission. I have found that some areas hold few turkeys year-round but, in the springtime, they are turkey magnets, every year. The reason is they have the perfect blend of cover, open areas, food, roosting trees, and hiding places.
Turkeys are ground birds, but they sleep, or roost, in trees for protection. Every morning they fly down and begin to eat, socialize, and mate. So, this time of year they look for a unique mix of habitat features. They need big trees to roost in and they also need ground cover for safety, both so they can hide and so they cay nest and lay their eggs.
But cover alone is not enough, they need space. Birds want large open areas where they can see predators from afar, where they can see other turkeys from afar, and where they can easily move and forage.
Groves of hardwoods are frequented by turkeys in the spring, clearings and empty fields are often used, but as vegetation begins to get too high as the season progresses, they may shift to other areas. You see in addition to making it easier to spot predators and food, turkeys need to see each other.
The tom, AKA gobbler, the male turkey will gobble, puff out his feathers, and strut to attract mates. Those hens, the female turkeys, need to be able to see these displays to be attracted to them. If all the vegetation is four feet high, this is not likely to happen. So, they search out open areas.
The single largest mistake that turkey hunters of all ages and experience levels make is they do not scout for turkeys before they hunt. There is no greater thing you can do to succeed hunting spring gobblers than scout for birds and hunt where they are.
Whether it is public land or private property, you MUST first determine if there are turkeys around. Spending money on high end gear or becoming a master caller will do nothing to help you unless there are birds around to hunt.
You do not need to scout for weeks and weeks either. Often just a few outings into the woods is all you need to find an area with turkey activity. Now scouting is its own discipline that you will grow in over the course of your life but there are a few main things to look for.
Tukey tracks – Tracks are maybe the most distinguishable sign you can search out. It is ideal to go looking for tracks 1-2 days after a good soaking rain. This can wash away old tracks and soften the ground, so new footprints are easy to see. Look in moist areas and places you can see bare dirt or mud; puddles are also a good place to find tracks. Nothing leaves a track quite like a turkey. Do not worry so much about trying to identify tracks as male or female, if you have one nearby you will likely have both.
Turkey gobbles – If you go in early to mid-morning, you may very well hear turkeys gobbling, especially a few weeks before the season. The gobble tells you everything you need to know, yes there are male turkeys here, and they are in that direction.
Turkey droppings – If the weather is dry and the ground is too hard for tracks, droppings can tell you what you need to know and can be found in the same places. The dry weather that makes it hard to leaves tracks actually enables droppings to stay visible longer. Logging roads, gas line roads, potential feeding or strutting zones can be good spots to look.
Turkey scratches – Turkeys spend a lot of the day eating, and often scratch up the leaves looking for old mast, bugs, grubs, or anything else they can scrounge up on the forest floor. If they spend a lot of time in an area you should be able to find patches of leaves that have been disturbed.
Turkey feathers & strut zones – Sometimes turkeys just lose feathers going about their business, but strut zones are prime places for feathers to wear loose while toms are puffed out and strutting their stuff. If you find feathers you know there were turkeys, there.
Turkey images – Trail cameras can be a hunter’s best friend for scouting. Set these on trails, clearings, or food sources to see if you can locate any turkey activity. The best thing is you can see what time of day the birds were there.
I scout year-round in a sense but practically speaking it is most efficient to head out starting maybe three weeks before the season begins. It is the last week before the season starts that matters the most. For more info on scouting, check out these podcast episodes that I created for you.
I say it all the time, the best shotgun for a new turkey hunter to use is the one they already have, can easily borrow, or buy used and cheap. The reason is you need to get into the woods and actually hunt to learn if you like turkey hunting and to learn what kind of gun features really matter to you. Spending a lot of money your first year on a turkey gun could easily get you a shotgun that is not a good fit for your style and preferences.
Keep in mind, most turkeys are taken with the first shot. Rarely does a second shot bring home a turkey. And the third shot only serves to let every other hunter in the woods know that you missed with the first two shots. Almost any shotgun can be a good turkey gun.
I am partial to semi-automatic shotguns and recently upgraded to a Mossberg 940 Pro Turkey with a Holosun 507k red dot,full shotgun and optic review here. But you can use anything to great effect, a single shot, and over-under, a pump action, even a bolt action shotgun will work just fine. You only really need one shot.
People ask maybe the most questions about ammo and what they should use. For me it is simple. Start with lead, specifically theWinchester Long Beard XR. There is no better lead turkey load on the market, there is no close second place either. It is the best.
Then once you have your bearings, upgrading to TSS #9 shot can help give you some extended range if you are taking far shots. I have done reviews on BOSS Tom and APEX Turkey. Both are great. But start with lead, it is much cheaper and frees up budget and focus for other things you need to get started.
Gearing Up For Turkey Hunting
One of my favorite things about turkey hunting is that you do not need much gear at all to get started. If you have arms and ammo covered, you can get by with one call, some camo and piece of foam to sit on. That is it. Granted, some additional gear can certainly help and I recommend more gear, but you have to start where your budget allows.
However, I do really like how you can be a minimalist turkey hunter and carry very little in and out of the woods with you. Here is a video I did going over the bare bones of gear.
To go further still, here is a podcast episode I did on the subject:Turkey Hunting Gear – Beginners Guide. Like every other kind of hunting, you can buy more than you need. Just focus on the core components of turkey hunting, you need to stay warm, stay dry, sit for periods of time, call to turkeys, and be concealed. I’ll talk about decoys and calls more in coming sections, but do not over think this. Less is more!
How Turkeys Are Hunted
Turkeys are hunted during the spring breeding season, a time of year where their patterns and behavior change drastically, making them much more fun to hunt.
To make a long story short, toms are trying to attract mates in the spring. So they gobble to let hens know they are around. When they gobble they expect the hens that want to breed to come to them.
To take it further, they will puff out their feathers, spread out their tail fan and strut to display their size and strength to entice hens and demonstrate their place in the pecking order. The tom expects the female turkeys to come when they call or at least come for a look and the strutting works to seal the deal. Turkey hunters make hen calls to try and entice the toms to come to them. This tactic goes against nature, yet it still often works.
A lonely tom is likely to come find a mate if he can hear her. The challenge comes when he gobbles and then expects the hen to come to him. The hunter often calls back repeatedly trying to get the tom to gobble more because it is exciting. However, this often causes problems.
If the hen is very eager, she should go to the tom, or she may entice the tom to stop his advance and begin strutting instead. Over calling has caused many problems for many turkey hunters. More on that later.
The goal is to call just as much as is needed to get the tom to come into shotgun range, no more no less. Though that can take a lifetime to perfect. But the bottom line here is call as needed and be stealthy and shoot the bird when it comes into range. That is how the game is usually played.
Basic Turkey Hunting Strategy
There are three turkey hunting strategies that are probably the most used. They include sitting, running and gunning, and active recon. There is no right and wrong way, there is no best and worst way. Often it depends on the situation, the land, the conditions, and the opportunities and limitations you have to pick the best option for you.
Sitting. There are many ways to determine when and how to sit but let’s keep it simple. You decided based on scouting that an area is good for turkey hunting, so you come in before dawn and lean up against a big tree or setup a hunting blind. You then wait to hear gobbling or for legal shooting light and work to call the turkeys into your position.
Running and gunning. This involves actively covering ground and stopping every few hundred yards to call and see if there are any close by turkeys that will answer you. Then you take up a good position and ambush them as they come in. This works, it can be fun, but you need to have a lot of land you can cover, and it can take a lot of energy out of you.
Active recon. This hunting style involves getting into the woods early and trying to find a listening post. Somewhere with some elevation and you can hear a long way off. You wait until you hear the first gobbles, even as far as half a mile away, and then move into position for the most promising prospect. You want to get within maybe 200 yards or less of where the turkey is roosted or loafing and then try to call the bird in.
Many people begin the morning hunting one way and then finish the hunt another way. This can work great to break things up and give you some variety, if you have enough land and opportunities to do so. I have talked alot about turkey hunting strategy on my podcast, here is a great episode to get started with:4 Strategies To Hunt Spring Turkey.
Basic Turkey Calls & Calling
There are many different kinds of turkey calls you can buy, build, or improvise. Slate calls, glass calls, mouth calls, box calls, push pull calls, wing bone calls, and dozens more. You do not need to be a good caller with all of them, in fact you only really need to learn how to use one or two to be effective.
I believe that the box call is the best one for new hunters to learn, it is one of the easier calls and you will use it your entire turkey hunting career. Fancy calls do look pretty and can have nice tones, but I’ve called in plenty of birds witha simple cheap box call just like this one.
Turkey calling is a lifelong pursuit, a skill that you continually develop and refine season after season. That said, you can gain 80% of the benefits from 20% of the skills. Which is a great thing for new hunters. There are three main calls you need to learn.
The Yelp – This is the main turkey call that hens make when trying to locate a gobbler. If you know nothing else, you can still kill turkeys with this one.
The Cluck – This is a short loud note often used for locating other turkeys but also by excited hens.
The Purr – These are low soft tones used to put other turkeys at ease and to let gobblers know there is a hen around here somewhere.
Typing long paragraphs about how to call makes difficult writing and even more difficult reading, so here is a video to help you learn more.
Decoys or No Decoys?
The question of whether or not you should use decoys to hunt turkeys is not an age-old question. It is a very modern question. Only in the last few decades have decoys become both popular and accessible.
Decoys do bring some advantages under certain hunting conditions. However, they also have some significant disadvantages under other hunting conditions. Personally, I do not believe the new hunter needs to use decoys, in fact I recommend against it.
You are more likely to hurt your chances of success than help them if you are new to the sport of turkey hunting. However, this is a lot behind that recommendation, alot of experience, science, and perspective. Which is why I wrote an entire article on the subject. Check it out to learn more: How To Hunt Turkeys Without Decoys & Be Even More Successful.
The 3 Big Mistakes To Avoid
I think there are three things that cost hunters more turkeys than every other common or uncommon mistake combined. These are problems that can change the course of your turkey hunting career if you can fix them now. And you can absolutely fix them, it may require a little bit of effort, but it is doable.
Not stealthy enough. This is the biggest issue. Turkey hunters are too noisy and move too much. Lack of stealth does not just cost you the birds you see running away, it costs you birds that you never knew where there. They snuck in at 100 yards out of view, heard or saw you and melted away without leaving a trace. Practice walking quietly, sitting quietly, doing everything with the upmost attention to sound and motion, and you will see and shoot more turkeys.
Over calling. This is the easiest problem to fix. All you have to do is nothing. Just call less. And stop calling when the bird starts to come in. Calling nonstop all morning is not natural, hens do not do it. You must call less often, and even when you do get a gobbler excited, you can get and keep him too excited, and he may stop at 100 yards and strut and never get close enough. Soft calling is maybe the most underestimated turkey hunting skill. I did a whole podcast episode on the subject: The Art Of Soft Calling – The Turkey Hunting Advice Of Sages.
Underestimating range. Almost all new turkey hunters will underestimate how far away a turkey is. They figure it’s 30 yards and it’s really about 50. They assume 40 yards and its closer to 80. We have all been there and have most all taken shots at hopeless distances only to scare the birds away, or worst wound them to die slowly and painfully over the next few days or weeks.
Learning to judge your distance is not only better for hunting but it ensures that birds do not suffer needlessly. Get a cheap range finder and just practice estimating and checking distances when you are scouting. If you need to, get higher grade ammo like TSS shot that will give you more margin to ethically take longer range shots.
Conclusions
So, what are the big conclusions for those who have read this far? First and foremost, this is not just an article packed with information, it is also filled with resources. This guide is an outline that links you to the in-depth information you need to become an effective turkey hunter and I will add more resources and links to it over time.
Be attentive to the podcast episodes, videos, and other articles and resources that I linked to. I created and organized all of these resources over the course of years. Use them to become a great turkey hunter and send me pictures of your first couple birds!
Till next time. God bless you, and go get em in the woods!
George Konetes Ph.D. – Founder and Host of the New Hunters Guide.
The New Hunters Guide is simply what George wishes he would have had when learning how to hunt; a single place to get practical hands on knowledge about different kinds of hunting, gear, strategy, and tips that can improve your comfort and fun factor in the woods.
