turkey help?

[Axis II]

Okay guys lets hear it! I tried for years and always get them to call back but never come in so looking for advice. I will list how i usually do it below.

1) Public land, pines, thick timer, small gas line fields throughout the timber, rolling hills. AKA Mohican state forest. I start off usually a week before season and drive around just before dark or right at sunup and crow call or owl hoot and if i get a response and in past years its been 2-3 responses i will mark it on the map and come back in the AM. We park and quietly get out and head into the woods to usually a pre determined location watching old gas line road, logging roads or openings in the woods and once the sun starts to crack i give a series of yelps about 6-8 on the Primos laminate box call or cheapo pot call and 99% of the time i get a response or two and then i try and move a little closer and sit down with a thick tree or dead fall. If i get a response i wait about 5min and give a soft yelp or 2-3 almost just dragging the top of the call along the box on the call and get a little more aggressive with it and sit and wait another 10-15min and sometimes with that second call sequence i get an answer and sometimes its no answer after the very first answer.

I'm not real sure on how to putt, purr, etc so i keep it simple with yelps. I heard a guy or two over the years do very soft sounds like a pur, pur, pur then yelp, yelp, yelp and then like a yip,yip,yip, yip with the box call at the end and get responses and i have gotten responses also. IDK if i'm calling too much, not the right sounds, not the right habitat, etc? 5yrs ago the last time i went there was a private hay field with a couple clear cuts in the woods and an old atv path and ferns and oaks all over the place and we got there late so i crow called and got a response so ran in and setup and got one more response and nothing so upon leaving i see a balloon i wanted to take out with me and walked into a hen on a nest of 3 eggs and busted more hens out of the area.

2) Do you hunt the small valleys or up on the hills?

3) When do you start calling and how often and what sounds?

4) Should i buy a better call than the Primos laminate and cheap HS strut pot calls?

5) Say you get a response 10min after sunup and you wait 20min to call again and no response should i move to say another side of the road or pack up and head somewhere completely different? The problem with Mohican is there are smaller parcels of private intersecting the public so a bird could be across the road on private gobbling and your on the other side. Is that a wash and just move on?

 

[redneck2]

My hunting buddy has numerous cheap calls. I always do better with my custom call that I got years ago at a NTF show

Public land is really tough because idiots go out preseason and call birds. Problem is they get call shy

YouTube is your friend

 

[FL-NC]

Typical problems. Public land is a real b to hunt anything- especially turkeys. I am going to be hunting public land here for the first time, and most of what I have gotten from knowledgeable people is warnings about hunting pressure/intrusion, and safety. Today my taxidermist advised me not to use a gobbler decoy or even think about fanning for my own safety, for example. MOST people call too much, and like redneck said, people gobble scouting pre-season and educate the turkeys. I'm still going to try to hunt them on the edges of the forest in some very uninviting places. If I get lucky, great- if not, timein the woods is never time wasted. Hopefully some **** doesn't put a load of #4 in my butt. Also, yes- you tube is your friend.

 

[redneck2]

Also, if I were hunting public land I’d be sure to wear some type of impact resistant glasses. Getting a face full of shot would be awful, but getting a face full with no eye protection could be drastically life altering

 

[Laphroaig]

Public land birds will be educated, and become more so as the season wears on. It won't be easy. The first day will be your best bet, but you never know

My theory is that there are days a bird will come in no matter what you do, and days when they won't come in no matter what you do. I've had one come while I was shaking a can of spray paint in my back yard.

 

[Patocazador]

Also, if I were hunting public land I’d be sure to wear some type of impact resistant glasses. Getting a face full of shot would be awful, but getting a face full with no eye protection could be drastically life altering

Two guys from my old hunt club went turkey hunting together. They told each other where they would be. However, the jerky one snuck up on the other guy and shot him twice with magnum #4 shot. The shooter pled that "it was just an accident" while the guy who got shot was airlifted to a hospital and lost the vision in one eye. He was a sheriff's deputy so he lost his job too.

Don't take chances on public land. There are more "jerks" there than you can imagine.

 

[MCgunner]

I stay clear of ANY public land in Texas. There ain't that much of it and what there is is crowded. My one exception is duck hunting on coastal WMAs, can be excellent and is well managed.

 

[SoonerMedic]

Sounds like you're calling too much. Don't try to call them off the roost and instead wait until they fly down. If you're close enough, you'll hear them and then call. Once they reply, wait. He heard you and is on his way. If you wait 30 minutes and see or hear nothing, try to purr and putt a little bit. Not loud and aggressive, just enough to let somebody nearby know you're still in the area.

This is what I've learned by watching YouTube.

 

[MCgunner]

Reeds make me gag. I used a cheap push button box call one year and took a nice tom that was leading a his hens.

Last season I used a cheap electronic call with success. I paid 30 bucks for it at a local hardware store. It does everything, but gobble, all the hen calls.

 

[jmr40]

All I use anymore is mouth calls. Once I got used to them I simply stopped using anything else. They are inexpensive, I can carry several in a shirt pocket and it is nice to have both hands free to mount and aim the gun while calling.

I also hunt public land. There is a 20,000 acre WMA about 15 minutes from the house that is about as good a place as anywhere else in GA. Pre season scouting doesn't help much on public land. They quickly change their habits once hunters get in the woods.

I've had more luck towards the end of the season. Once it gets warmer most guys have either given up on a turkey, or concentrating on fishing. Plus many of the hens are on a nest and gobblers are more likely to come to a call. Early on they don't want to leave 4-5 hens to chase after another.

Lots of coyotes and bobcats here. This more than anything else seems to make birds more call shy. I call in almost as many predators as turkey. I don't really call all that much. I try to spend a lot of time in the woods early and figure out their patterns and hunt them almost like a deer.

 

[buck460XVR]

5) Say you get a response 10min after sunup and you wait 20min to call again and no response should i move to say another side of the road or pack up and head somewhere completely different? The problem with Mohican is there are smaller parcels of private intersecting the public so a bird could be across the road on private gobbling and your on the other side. Is that a wash and just move on?

If you get a legitimate response, it means the Tom hears you. The reply you hear 10 min. after sunup may be from a tree and easily heard at a good distance. 20 minutes later, the Tom may be down and behind a hill, in a valley, deep in the woods, at a distance or muffled by the wind, gobbling his head off. 20 minutes is not very long to wait for a Tom, especially if he has hens with him. If he is with hens, he may not gobble at all being too busy strutting. Continue to call and you may get the hens to come, bringing the silent Tom with them. I've given up on birds I had gobbling their heads off on the roost after an hour or so, only to get up to take a pee and spook them. Sometimes after an hour, you faintly hear a hen yelp back to you and bring a parade behind her. If you got birds actively responding, you can't give up on them until you know for sure they ain't coming. If you ever have the chance to watch a flock of turkeys after fly down, you'll see they are not in a a hurry. The hens have their Tom and the Tom has hens to show off for. Ain't no reason to run off anywhere else in a hurry. I've watched flocks fly down and take hours to cross a 40 acre field. They may be waiting for more hens to show up or there is something in the field the hens are eating. Years ago I hunted with a friend who had little patience. Can't count the number of times he insisted we move after not hearing a gobble after a half an hour only to move to another area and hear Toms gobbling off where we just left. Sometimes they get to their strut area and will gobble back to anything they hear but won't leave it because the hens know to go there. If that is the case, then you can leave and try somewhere else and then come back later(coupla hours) and try again. Later in the day, the Toms will seek a "lounge" area where they can get outta the hot sun and still wait for hens. Later in the day when the real hens get bored with the Tom, those Toms that were henned up right after roost will be easier to get to come to you. If you can make good yelps, both singular and series, you don't really need anything else. Just soften them up when the birds are close. I've found a plain cluck is as useful as anything and simple to do on a pot. Hens cluck when they expect to see another turkey. Many a time I've seen them use it as a "here I am, where are you" call.

Too many folks expect a Tom to change his routine and come running to the first call he hears. Many is the time when a Tom has hens with him or is used to going somewhere else to meet them, then the spot the hunter is calling from. Now a lone Tom will go great distances in a short time if they think they can get to the "new" hen first, but many times that Tom will also come in silent as to not alert the dominate/boss Tom of his intentions. Gobbling Jakes generally mean there ain't much for Toms in the area. Getting to an area a Tom, even a henned up Tom is used to going to and finding hens waiting for him is where you want to be. On those mornings you get responses early and then never hear them again, odds they are going in another direction. Set up in another direction the next day. Figure out their pattern.....that is really the secret to Turkeys. While you will get lucky every once in awhile and find a lone Tom, to be consistent, you need to know where the Turkeys want to be during the whole day and either be there or in some spot to intercept them on their way there. Late in the afternoon/ear;y evening the Toms will not be far from roost. If you can hunt at that tinme of day, it can be just as productive as early in the morning. My best time for Toms if I don't get lucky right after flydown, is from 10:00 to 2:00. I get aggressive on my calls and try to get any kind of response. If I can get a bird to answer, most of the time he'll come. Thing is later in the day, there is more wind and it's harder to hear Toms gobble. I watched Toms gobble on days when the wind was blowing towards them and never heard them at all until they were almost within shotgun range. Many was the time an hour after the last gobble I heard, the crack of a twig or the shuffle of feet on dry leaves was all I heard until I saw that white head. What kept me there waiting patiently was the confidence I had in my knowledge of the turkeys in the area and the odds of moving and working a different bird as opposed to waiting this one out. One thing I have come to realize is, if you don't screw a bird up today, you can still hunt him tomorrow. Spook birds from a spot today and that spot is probably done for a while unless there are multiple birds on an area. If birds don't get their pattern disturbed, they will continue it until they do. I've patterned Toms during an early season only to shoot them a month later in the same spot.

 

[kscharlie]

There is some really good advice here. Normally, when turkeys are on the roost (early morning), the "real" hens have the advantage because the gobblers can see them. They can only hear you. Gobbler has a sure thing, why would he want a "maybe". One thing I have learned over the years is to call the hens, not the tom. One way I do this is by mimicing the loudest, nastiest hen on the roost. I don't start calling until the hens begin sounding off. Get the boss hen riled up on the roost and sometimes she will come looking for that nasty little intruder to teach her a lesson. If she does, that gobbler will be behind her shortly. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I have also learned that, at least here in Kansas, is you can seldom call too little, at least on private ground. More often than not, I will get pretty aggressive with my calling. However, I use a full arsenal of turkey sounds. I purr, ranging from a contented purr to a fighting purr. I cluck and yelp. I cutt, I do whatever it is that the turkeys want to hear. I vary the "volume". Today they like soft, tomorrow they like loud. Some days, it's one thing, other days it's something totally different. I am a bit of call "nut", and I carry at least three different pot calls, two different box calls, and a handful of mouth calls. Again, some days the turkeys will like one specific call and totally ignore others. Next day, it is a different call they respond to. With enough experience, you can learn to "read" the turkeys and hone in on what they want to hear.

It is important to be able to reproduce as many of the hen vocalizations as possible. It takes practice on all of the calls. To me, this is the ultimate challenge to turkey hunting, figuring out what it is they want to hear, then coaxing them in for a shot. It is never a sure thing. Good luck to you on the upcoming season.

 

[Bull Nutria]

I have taken several turkeys over the years more than half have come in silent. turkeys don't always gobble and sometimes minimally and many times not at all. if you are in good habitat, try to position yourself behind cover that you can see and shoot thru. keep movement to a minimum turkeys have the eyesight of an eagle. Turkeys will ease thru the woods looking for you(the source of your hen call) from a great distance and spot you before you see them. Do not sit too close to a downed tree top like I did once the turkey came in fast and when I raised my gun I hit branches and could not swing--turkey won that time. Lesson was learned!

Good luck Turkey Hunting is a great Outdoor Challenge!!

Bull

 

[Duster340]

My 2 biggest gobblers walked up on me late in the day, 11:15 am and 2:45 pm. Neither made a single sound. I'd got out before sun up, got plenty of replies right at 1st light. But nothing came in. In both cases the woods went dead silent at 8am or so. I ended up sitting there keeping eyes peeled and keeping still. I made occasional purrs, soft calls etc every 20 to 45 minutes. The Toms both surprised me in that I had no clue they were around, they just kind of materialized in front of me!. One at 15 yards the other at 25.

I feel that just staying at it and minimizing my movements, even if it seems nothing is happening, and not calling too much, or too loudly, is key to successful hunts.

Be well all