MO-KS_hunter

IMO, hunting turkey's with a rifle is a bad idea. As previously mentioned, it takes away from the challenge of getting them close unless the hunter plans on shooting them in the head (which would be much more challenging than hunting with a shotgun). More importantly, the combination of public land, high-powered rifles and well camoflauged hunters sitting yards away from very realistic decoys is a recipe for disaster. The only way to make turkey hunting safe with a rifle would be to require hunters to wear orange and not allow decoys, exactly like deer hunting. That would ruin turkey hunting for most people that do it and will (thankfully) never happen for most states. That being said, I might go for hunting turkey's with a rifle during the fall deer season with the hunter orange and no decoy rule in place.

I think most of you missed Adrian's point of his post; he was pointing out the danger of mixing high-powered rifles and hunters in close proximity with decoys. It just happened to be a poacher shooting at (what he thought) was a goose and a well camoflauged hunter who was close to the decoy was tragically killed. I can imagine a similar scenerio in Turkey hunting if rifle hunting was allowed with decoys and camoflauge with everyone being on the right side of the law.