Deer & Turkey Hunting Tips

After a long morning of dealing with chilly, damp conditions and no luck, I had stopped on the side of a ridge to reevaluate the situation. The area I was turkey hunting was known for having an abundance of  turkeys. I had hunted there in years past with regular success. Today however was not going as I had planned.

As I stood there, I took out an old mouth call and began softly clucking just to remind myself of its sound. As luck would have it, apparently I was loud enough to be heard. A gobbler answered from a distance. Actually he answered rather aggressively with three gobbles. I was excited for the first time all morning.

I pulled my face mask down and found a nice spot to lean against a tree. There was a little bit of under growth to help aid in my set up. I began my calling again and again was greeted with several more gobbles. The gobbler appeared to have gained ground and was headed my way. After several minutes the gobbler had made his way within about seventy five yards. I could not however see the turkey.

For the next forty five minutes, the gobbler zig zagged from side to side in front of me. Moving up a little closer, then moving back away. Apparently I had located a wise old gobbler that wasn’t quite ready to show himself. Then, the gobbler went quiet on me. I changed the tone and frequency of the mouth call and once again the dance was on.

This time the gobbles were more consistent and the gobbler was moving in on me rapidly. About the time I thought I should be seeing the gobbler, silence once again returned to the equation. A long silence. I sat there expecting a head to pop out at any second, but it didn’t happen. I made a couple more soft clucks with no response.

Suddenly, as it happens so many times, the gobbler popped out of no where. I was looking directly at him. My heart rate increased rapidly. I made a minor adjustment in my position and let loose with an accurate shot. I was able to successfully take a nice twenty pound gobbler with an eleven inch beard and inch and a half spurs.

This just goes to show you how quickly a bad day can turn good. The thing about turkey hunting is nothing is ever the same. No matter how many times you go into the woods, always be ready for the unexpected. There have been many a successful turkey hunts made on the last set up of the day after not even having heard a bird all morning long.

On most mornings, the average person wakes up to another work day. This can be a good feeling or a not so good feeling depending on whether or not you enjoy your work. But this time of year is one of the more anticipated times if you happen to be a wild turkey hunter.

The spring mornings early rise before day light provides excitement about the possibilities of encountering the first gobbler of the season. The sounds of the woods coming alive with the all important gobble from afar is experienced by many turkey hunters. Their faces filled with pleasure and dreams of success can be spotted from a distance.

The collections of box calls, slate calls, and diaphragm mouth calls will be in every turkey hunter’s backpack. The hill tops, ridges, flat lands, fields, and every where in between will be saturated by many a turkey hunter. There will be spotting, lots of walking, calling, and listening. All this activity with the hopes of taking the elusive wild turkey.

Some days, when all the situations and conditions are right, turkey hunting can seem somewhat easy. You stop at your first location which you had been watching for several weeks. You walk to a predetermined spot. You take out your favorite turkey call. You fire up a couple of clucks and yelps and boom. The woods come alive with the thundering sound of that old tom turkey.

You get excited, the turkey gets excited, and the next thing you know, there the turkey is. He has come running in on top of you as if on a string. Your heart is pounding. Your breathing becomes harder and harder. You suddenly develop a case of the shakes. The closer the gobbler comes to you the worse off your conditions are. You try to compose yourself with little success.

Finally, you regain your senses just as the old tom makes his way within range. You take a deep breath, focus, and make a successful shot on one of natures most famous creatures. Then, as if a switch was turned on, all those emotions come rushing back in again. But this time, the feelings are of relief and happiness. You have accomplished what so many hunters only dream of.

Now us turkey hunters know that it doesn’t work out like this very often, but it sure does feel good when it does. It makes up for all those hours spent in the field with no luck. But hey, that is ok to. You could be at work. Think about that with a smile.

We made our way to the location just before daylight. We made very little noise and set up just as planned. As the sun came up, we were about fifty yards from where we had seen the gobbler the evening before.

We glanced up into the trees with our binoculars and sure enough, there the gobbler was just a roosting away. We made a couple of soft yelps from the old mouth call just to let the gobbler know that we were there. The gobbler responded with several gobbles. Everything was just fine, or so we thought.

The sun kept rising, we kept yelping, the turkey kept gobbling. Still sitting in the tree. 7:00 am, 7:30 am, 8:00 am, soft yelps, gobble-gobble, still on the roost. 8:30 am, 9:00 am, still in the tree. Although we managed to find humor in the situation, we were both a little dumbfounded.

I decided to crawl away from the turkey, thinking the gobbler might fly down after the yelping started to leave him. I moved about seventy five yards away, still in the tree. One hundred yards away, still in the tree. One hundred fifty yards away, still in the tree.

By this time its 10:00 am and I made my way back to where my brother was. He is pretty much in tears from laughing so hard. He whispers over to me, “apparently Mr. Tom ain’t coming off the roost today.” Of course now we are both laughing.

Now 12:00 noon is the close of the day where we were hunting and now its 10:45 am, so we need a new plan. My brother is going to circle around the turkey and approach from behind. I’m going to maintain my position but crawl in a little closer.

I get within thirty yards of the turkey and stop. Meanwhile, my brother is taking a long slow approach from behind. He gets within thirty yards of the gobbler and stops. Now we are both well within shotgun range of the gobbler but we don’t shoot turkeys off the roost.

At 11:30 am, I stand up and slowly walk towards the gobbler. Finally the gobbler flies down, just over the head of my brother. Just as the gobblers feet hit the ground, my brother ended the hunt.

Now this turned out to be one of those strange but extremely funny days in the turkey woods. We have never known a turkey to stay on the roost that long before or since. 19 pounds, 10 inch beard, 1 inch spurs.

About an hour later, I noticed a hen turkey pop out into the field about seventy five yards away. Then a second hen, a third, and before long there was a total of twenty hens feeding out in front of me. I thought surely there would be a gobbler in the field at any time.

This was perfect, live decoys walking around. Thankfully, I had sat down just inside the woods near some thick undergrowth that gave me ideal camouflage. The hens never saw me as I watched them for an hour.

I never made a sound as I had the real things just talking away. Eventually, three gobblers made their way into the flock. Strutting around, looking all pretty, just out of shotgun range. I tried to call them closer but they weren’t buying into it.

It was nice to just sit and watch and gather information about the turkeys. The different sounds they make. The body languages and such. Even though I didn’t harvest anything, I truly enjoyed the entire morning.

Ever been turkey hunting and had those picture or video moments where everything worked according to plans? Well although we have had quite a few of those, there are just as many if not more that didn’t turn out the way it was expected. This is one of those stories.

As we stepped onto one of the ridges at daybreak, we heard the sounds of gobblers among us. Now any turkey hunter loves to hear these gobbles first thing in the morning. We decided to pick the gobbler that was the closest and began our assault. My brother hit the slate call a few times and received a welcomed gobble response. This went on for forty five minutes and then the gobbler went away from us never to be seen or heard again.

No problem, we have plenty of time. We picked up on another gobbler and headed his way. On our second set up, we carried on another conversation with Mr Gobbler number two for an hour. Again we were skunked.

We located our third gobbler and set up again. Yelp-yelp, gobble, gobble, gobble. But again after another hour had passed – nothing.

Now on one hand we had some heavy action, but on the other hand, not so good results. By mid day, we had stopped on the top of one of the ridges, got a bite to eat and regrouped.

Shortly afterwards, we made contact with gobbler number four. We made a very long path to get to him. As we set up on him, the fourth gobbler seemed happy to make our acquaintances. Unfortunately, he locked up on us about seventy five yards out. Back and forth we went. And then like our three previous encounters, the hunt ended with nothing.

As the time went by, we decided that we needed to start heading back towards the truck. Since we had been very active, we had walked about three miles from the truck. We decided that the most direct way path back was by way of the river bank.

About three quarters of the way back, my brother lost his footing and slipped into the edge of the river. The barrel of his shotgun went into the moody river bank along with him getting soaked. Now we both got a good laugh out of the situation. He climbed back onto dry ground and decided to sit for a few minutes. He had to clean out his barrel and we would be back on our way.

As we were sitting there laughing, my brother cut loose with his mouth call a few times. A few minutes later, to our surprise, a turkey flew towards us and landed in the tree just above our head. Yes, that would be gobbler number five.

Now we don’t shoot turkeys out of trees but we had to laugh at the situation. The turkey stayed for fifteen minutes and then flew away. We both looked at each other, shook our heads, laughed, and walked back to the truck.

We had a great day. Lots of action and lots of laughs

Opening morning of turkey season was met with great anticipation. My brother and I made our way through the woods in the dark to a predetermined location. We had located a roosting area and had been watching the flock of turkeys for two weeks prior.

We reached our destination with relative ease and set up our gear. After everything had settled down, you could tell that we were both excited about the possibilities.

As we waited for day light, we noticed that the sun seemed to be rising awfully slow. The temperature was in the fifties with a forecast of mid seventies and sunny. As time went by, we realized that it should have already have been daylight but it wasn’t.

We kept looking at each other and our watches. We joked to each other that the sun must have over slept. As we waited a slight breeze came drifting in.

Suddenly, a few rain drops began slowly falling. We both had puzzled looks on our faces. The rain started to pick up. Then the bottom dropped out and it was pouring a cold rain.

We decided to make our way over to a blind that we use during deer season to wait out the rain. By the time we made it to the blind we were both soaked.

As we sat inside, we both started laughing. We began joking back and forth about the situation. The longer we sat, the harder it rained. After two hours, the rain had finally stopped and the sun popped out. We decided to start back to our original location.

About half way back, we heard what we thought was a turkey. We stopped for a moment looking around. Suddenly, the trees came alive with feather ruffling. Turkeys began flying off their roost in several directions. We had walked right up amongst them. Busted.

We spent the remainder of the day trying to get back up with them. Yeah right.

That evening, we sat down to watch the late news. We wanted to see if they said anything about our morning rain. The weatherman tried to play it of by joking about the unpredicted down pours throughout the morning. Oops!

While preparing for the following mornings turkey hunt, the decision was made to hit the old honey hole one more time. We had taken many turkeys over the years at this farm and so it had become one of our favorites. We would only hunt the farm when our other spots did not pan out, that way we wouldn’t over harvest.

As the morning hunt began, we headed down to one of the smaller grassy fields near the edges of a hardwoods grove. We put out our decoys and waited for daylight. As the sun rose and the sounds of nature began, we were greeted with several good morning gobbles.

We responded with a few yelps just to let them know we were there. A few minutes later, we heard several more gobbles about two hundred yards out into the hardwoods. We stepped up the excitement level of the mouth call and the gobbles kept a coming. There were two toms responding.

They were both off to our right. As the gobbles continued, the two toms were moving in closer to one another. They came together about one hundred yards out. Now they were really making some noise.

The two turkeys entered the edge of the field together, looked our way, and started running towards the decoys. About half way in they stopped, blowed up and began their final approach.

Now I tell you, this was an awesome sight. One that as a turkey hunter, you never get tired of seeing. Gobble, gobble, strut, strut, all the way to the decoys.

Now we had set out two hens and a jake. The two gobblers ran over to the jake decoy, lowered their feathers, and began to put the smack down on the jake decoy. They jumped on top of the decoy, kicked it over, and stood on top of it.

Now this would have been one of those cool video moments if we would have had a video recorder. But it was neat to watch anyway. The decoy was cut in several places with scar marks.

After all the excitement, we were able to harvest both gobblers. Both eighteen pounds, one 10 inch and one 10.5 inch beards. one inch spurs.