Hey guys,

Great forum here!

This is going to be my first Turkey season and I'm really looking forward to it.

I grew up hunting Ducks and geese but got out of it in my middle 20's (I'm now in my middle 30's). I have been feeling that pull to get back out and start hunting again and I've decided to give Turkey hunting a try. It strikes me as something that looks like a lot of fun especially given how much I like the excitement of calling in birds.

I don't have any buddies who are into turkey hunting so I'm doing this on my own and don't really have any resources to learn about it from other than reading stuff online and watching youtube videos. So any practical advice given would truly be appreciated.

At this point I've secured a good piece of land that holds turkeys to hunt on. (My wife's grandmother has an 120 acre patch with a creek and two fair size ponds on them. Most of it is pasteur but a good 40 acres or so of it is timber. I have been going out in the mornings and scouting the area in my truck before work and I regularly see a flock of about a dozen or so turkeys that seem to like run the tree line that edges the pasteur and the timber... So I know there are turkey there.

I am trying to make a few choices but not sure what to do yet on these so I thought I'd ask.

I am considering building a permanant blind in the proximity of where I see the birds but I read that their behavior changes from late winter to spring and they may move to different areas. So I don't know if this would be a waste of time or not. I wondered if it might be better then to just completely camo myself out sit under a tree with some underbrush or go ahead and try the blind idea.

Another thing I was wondering about is the use of decoys. I have read some good reviews on some inflatable decoys at bassproshops and was thinking of going that route. But I have read too where people have good luck by just sitting tight and calling birds into range and have implied that you don't need the decoys to get them to come in.

I have been practicing with a box call and I feel like I'm getting a couple of basic calls down but was wondering if a slate call and a gobble bellows would be a better way to go? I can't use a mouth call because I have a full upper bridge on titanium implants from a bouth with mouth cancer (15 years of chewing skoal and then coppenhagen to thank for that) so I can't hold the call in my mouth right to make it sound proper.

I am hunting with a Mossberg 535 turkey thug with a set of fiber optic sights. Which is new for me too as I've shot skeet for years but I've just used a front bead only. It has a picatinny rail for a red dot scope and was considering picking up a cheap one for around $50 online that's got some great reviews at amazon. But again, I've never shot a red dot I've only shot front bead with shotguns.

Thanks in advance for any advice you experienced guys might care to share!!!