Red Hawk,welcome to the board!Sorry for coming in late on this post.Its nice to see another west coast hunter here as we dont have many.Anyway let me just cover a couple of important points I believe will help in your beginning stages of turkey hunting.California as you well know has a lot of birds but the major portion of our overall population inhabit private lands.To this end its up to you to secure a starting place to have a real legit spot to hunt turks in.Having never hunted gobblers before tells me it would be a good idea to try and set-up a hunt with one of your buddies first who has, or try booking a guide service to get a grip on how its done.Videos are nice but can give you a fasle sense of reality on how easy it looks on tape.Getting back to my first point to much emphasis is put on equipment nowadays and not enough on your preseason work such as locating huntable populations of birds and learning the overall terrain you intend to hunt.Obviously good camo,calls,and all this other stuff are necessary but being able to sit still especially when the birds are close is more important.Remember this,you can be the most well equipped hunter in the woods but it wont do you a lick of good if the birds aren' t there.Do your preseason work now and not wait till spring season gets here as so many do.Find the birds,periodically check on there movements,try and locate there roost,and as our terrain starts to turn green again with the coming of spring everything will fall into place.Good luck and stay here with us at bbs because there are alot of helpful folk here who enjoy huntin turks!!