I have learned many lessons in 19 years of turkey hunting, most of them doing something wrong. In fact, I must shyly admit that it took me 6 years of mistakes before connecting with my first devourer. Fortunately for me, I haven’t been blanked out since. But does luck really have something to do with it? Through a frustrating process of elimination, I found out the hard way that successful turkey hunting is a matter of avoiding some simple but very natural mistakes, and in doing so you create a story that ends up pulling the trigger, rather than a heavy foot sulk. To the truck.
1. Movement. Turkeys are not inherently intelligent creatures, but they were granted some blessed traits that help keep them alive. One of them is vision. I’ve gotten away with a shift here or a little further, but if you move, I promise you most of the time they will see you and the turkeys will be much more scarce. In fact, I think staying completely still is more important than camouflage. I’d bet on a bright orange statue of a restless hunter in a ghillie suit every day of the week. The turkeys key on movement is danger. Period. So don’t move.
2. Excess calls. Who in their right mind doesn’t enjoy an aroused tom that gobbles up all your peeps? But if turkey calls too much, it will develop that bird’s ego to the point where it can just stop and wait for you to approach it. This is how nature works. If you’ve caught enough turkey then you know you want Tom to have an idea of where you are and that you are available, that’s it. Leave the rest to your imagination, or your lures.
3. Sleep. You are not a Ninja. Turkeys can see when it is light. So get in position in the morning when I’m not. Enough talk.
4. Bad preparation. If you wait until the last night before the season to collect calls, projectiles, camouflage, blinds, decoys, and more, you will inevitably enter the woods without an item or two. Have you ever tried calling a bird by its mouth because its diaphragm call is in a box in your basement? Do not ask. Just make a list and make sure everything on it is within easy reach.
5. Laziness. If the best approach to a bird in the chicken coop is across the river and from the other side of the mountain, take it. A scared bird does not respond well to the opposite sex.
6. Quitting too soon. I have killed almost as many birds in the afternoon as in the morning while turkey hunt. They tend to gobble less, but have often been abandoned by their friends. A lonely cat is vulnerable. Hold on if the weather is stable and there is little wind.
7. Stick with tactics that don’t produce. By definition, it is insane. If you approach a cat in the chicken coop for two days in a row and he answers all the calls you make, but does not come in, DO NOT keep doing it. Come in from the opposite side of the farm, switch calls, try lures, ditch the lures, whatever. Switch it on. A change in tactic could be your death sentence. But you will never know unless you go the extra mile and give it a try.
To be a successful turkey hunter, regardless of the game, YOU HAVE TO WANT IT! Live and hunt by that Mantra, and I promise you a wall full of trophies and a mind full of great memories.
Straight Shots, Louis J. Foggia III