A black umbrella will do the same thing and is much easier to keep track of and use than a fan. I think this tactic was borrowed from cape buffalo hunters in Africa who discovered it worked to get up close to capes. (A TRUE death wish if ever there was one!
) The supposition is that the buffs think it's either another buff or more than likely, mistake it for an approaching ostrich! By the time you're close enough for them to think ill of the situation, you have already had time to perforate their hide! Same goes for the turkeys, except that in the Toms situation he might actually consider it a challenging bird and come closer looking for a fight!
It'll work because turkey's believe what they "think" their eyes are telling them in that situation. I used a similar tactic in southern MO on a large cattle ranch I hunted for 20yrs. Many times we'd need to move on birds that were in large, open pastures and so two hunters would bend over close enough to "appear" as if we were a cow or calf and then we'd move across the field. I can't say as if that tactic would work on other lands that contained no cattle because that wouldn't then be a natural occurance for those birds. But since that was on a working cattle ranch, the birds were constantly exposed to many cattle. 100% of the time it worked! I never tried to get close enough for a kill that way, but we did move within 100yds or less of the birds and they never spooked. It would allow us to get into another ditch, depression or woodline to gain better position for calling or an outright stalk. I wish deer were so easy!
But my grandad told me many times that as a kid during the Depression he had a mule he could ride up into shotgun distance of deer with while he laid flatout on the mules back. He'd ride up within essentially bow range of the deer, raise his 12ga Stevens pump (that I now have) and KABOOM he'd have meat for the community. (He grew up in the MS River bottoms north of Memphis in what is now Shelby Forrest so there were still ALOT of deer in that area despite their being nearly "extinct" in most other areas of the state during that era)
You WONT CATCH ME DOING IT on my west TN river bottom farm! That's a suicide mission for SURE!!! It'd be a GREAT way to crawl up on a face full of cotton mouth, eastern diamond back or copperhead snakes!!!
Snakes are so bad on my place I can't even sit on the ground unless the temps are below 60. I had a 4ft black snake crawl up on me last week while I was calling a bird that was within 30yds of me but it was so thick we couldn't see each other. The snake came up within 10ft before I could hear him slithering up on me. He would've gotten 2oz of 4s for his trouble if that bird had NOT been so close! Instead he got a limb across the forehead, he high tailed it and the bird went quiet and around me....
