Paying attention to detail is how some of us learned to turkey hunt and it isn' t an " old wive' s tale" that most birds will leave the roost in a direction that will allow them good visuals of the surrounding areas. Very few gobblers will bail out toward the east.
No doubt about it BB,paying attention to detail bags those birds that prove to be elusive due to a # of circumstances!IMHO you hit the nail on the head in your first statement here,as I quoted by mentioning there comfort zone!I set up on the average of 35 to 50 gobblers a year in the roost and thats exactly the case for the majority,hens,pressure,predators unatural sounds as you correctly say can definately play into this also,but with that said the fact that the sun comes up in the east has very little to do with my birds pitching out towards that direction simply because the majority of our birds hit the ground well before sun-up negating this blinded by the sun theory!Because of that, there' s more important factors/details in determining which direction he' s bailing out than where the sun is coming up!If he has a good landing/comfort zone to the east thats exactly where I' ll be before he hits the ground!!