fball_58

what is the best way to roost a tom? Should i call to locate the birds of just hope that i see them fly up to the roost? this is my second year and i haven' t roosted a bird yet. all advice is welcome.

Tree climber

some my dissagree,but the way I go about it.
I go to an area I know that holds birds,wait till just befor fly up time and crow call,cackle with a mouth diaphram call a couple times. if I get no responce I will move a 1/4 mile and do it again.at dark I will shake my gobble call,some times they will answer that then I start with the owl hoot.

if none of this works,I will just be back in the morning and listen.hopefully you will hear one.

thats just my two cents,there are 98 more!!!

cao5599

i hunt property where the birds aren' t very vocal. out of all of the times i have tried roosting the night before, i' ve only been successful once. so now, i usually get to my hunting spot before it gets light and blow on my owl call. most of the time i' ll get them to answer it.

Lefty Llewellyn

In the areas I' ve hunted in WI and NE I' ve been very successful at roosting turkeys. I get out to an area I know holds birds about an 1 1/2 hours before sunset and find a location I feel I can HEAR the best. Often I' ll hear a boss hen doing an assembly yelp a few times while they travel to their roosting site. Next I' ll hear loud wing beats from them flying up, accompanied by an occasional braking branch or their wings slapping a branch. In WI more than NE I would get a tom or two to gobble a few times once he' s settled in for the night. In WI the birds I hunted roosted mostly in the tallest white pines. In NE its just the tallest trees in the forest, usually cottonwood. One time I was even sitting below the tree that three hens flew into.

One note, don' t assume they' ll all be exactly where they flew up to the night before. I bumped a hen that roosted right over a logging road one time and I know she wasn' t there when I walked out. I felt that put all the turkeys in the area in an alarmed state and I didn' t get one off the roost that morning. Approach with caution and try to get within 100-150 yards.

strut

I have pretty good luck just going out to where I know there is turkeys and just sitting around, every once in awhile I might use a crow call or owl call just before dark if nothing has gobbled yet. Theres not much that I know of in the hunting line that makes it any harder to sleep than to come in about dark and having a big' n roosted for the next morning.

halcon

The turkeys around here seem to pretty well stay in the same roost trees all the time . If you have seen birds roosting somewhere before it would pay to check the same trees again . This time of year the hens aren' t roosting in the trees all that much they are on the nests . I just watched a dozen toms fly into the roost tree here and there weren' t any hens with them . Tomorrow is opening day ,but I have a couple of big toms spotted on a friends ranch I will try for .

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How was opening day?

snowdog2

It doesn' t hurt to do some preseason scouting and find roost sites, either. By this I mean walking the woods during the day, looking for signs of a roost site--piles of bird poop, feathers, scratchings in the leaves/dirt. When you find one, you' ll know, as you' ll be able to look up from the poop piles and see the branch where the turkey has been roosting. Then when you have an idea of where there might be birds roosting from time to time, it is easier to concentrate on those sites as potential night roost spots for the time frame you are hunting, though, of course, the birds won' t always roost in the same trees every night. Use your GPS to mark the potential roost sites.

Lately I' ve been given to using an owl call early in the morning on Easterns in the midwest, rather than try to roost them the night before, since I don' t have permission to hunt " big woods" . If I don' t hear ' em on the property I do have permission to hunt, I' m mostly out of luck anyway. If I had " big woods" , I' d probably try the evening before, with ears and owl and crow calls and the procedure Lefty describes.

Out west I use a coyote call (Song Dog) after flyup/early dark. Works like a charm for producing shock gobbles, but not so easy to know where, absolutely, the birds are roosted. I don' t mess with them again in the morning before flydown, though.

halcon

Frobin if the question was for me I saw quite a few birds ,but I have kind of zero' d in on two toms that I have been watching all spring . We have a long season and I' m willing to wait for them .