Lets hear your tricks of the trade
 

I have been hunting this bird for many years and seem to always learn something new about them. I for one have great luck very late morning and late afternoon.
What do you have to share???

Don't over call.

With a lot of foliage in late season here in the south, gobblers are closer than you might think.

Real hens win ... almost every time.

scratching the leaves like turkeys has been the demise of many toms.


Gman

well i am far from being an "expert" turkey hunter but i have picked up on many things over the years.

1. don't over call. alo of guys call almost non-stop when they hear a tom gobblein. that almost never works.
2. CAMMO!!! the most important aspect of turkey hunting. camoflaugeing yourself good enough is the key to bagging that big tom.
3. use an assortment of calls. ive noticed that you might be calling a tom in on your box call when at 100 yds he holds up. and no matter how hard you try he just wont come in. thats where multipul calls comes in handy. switching over from a box to a slate or mouth call might be all it takes to lure in the wary longbeard.

Patience is a must for one. Now if I have a stubborn gobbler and he isn't budging much, I will get aggressive and hit him with loud yelps and cut at him, then throw in a couple gobbles from the gobble tube and here he comes. But Im real careful on when I use the gobble tube. I don't want to call in another hunter which will blow my set up.

thats exactly right. patience is probably more important than anything i mentioned.

Find a good farm

Chufa!!!!!!! :)

Most of these have already been said, but a few I've picked up on:

1. Don't over call. It will ruin the hunt every time.

2. Don't call when the birds are close. In the woods, I go quiet when they get to 50 yards or when they're in a clearing with direct line of sight to me. In a field, I go quiet at 100 yards. I don't see a need to keep calling when they already know you're there and have already committed themselves to coming in. If they hang up, then call again. Once they're coming in, you want their attention to be on your decoys, not you. And every time I've tried even a soft call when a bird is close and coming in, the bird will look from the decoys to me. They know exactly where that call is coming from, and many times I've had birds (though, usually jakes and young toms) completely forgo the decoys and make a bee-line for my blind. Going quiet always seems to work, so I stick with it.

3. Use a variety of calls, especially if you're hunting on public land. It make sound odd, but some birds will ignore say a slate call, but then come running to a box call. And even then, some might be more willing to come to a raspy mouth call vs a clear mouth call. The key is variety until you find something the bird likes and then avoid over using it.

4. Patience. That's prettymuch the key to every turkey hunt. At first it's a struggle to find birds, then it's a waiting game, then you have to know how to talk turkey and show him what he wants to see in order to get him to come in. It's easy to mess up, you just have to learn from your mistakes and apply your new found knowledge to the next hunt. Another thing with patience, you may hear or see a tom fly off the roost then go silent. Your biggest mistake would be to assume right away that he's moving away from you. More often then not the bird is coming towards you, he's just being very slow and quiet about it and waiting for you to mess up. There have also been birds that have gone quiet, circled around me, and the next thing I know there's a gobble not 30 yards behind the tree I'm up against. They're sneaky bastards, and they don't always want to talk. Just don't always assume you need to get up and move right away when birds go quiet.

5. If it didn't work the first time, it probably won't work the second or third time. This sort of goes back to using a variety of calls. Some birds want to hear different things. Some also want to see different things or be in different places. If you're after one or two specific birds, learn what they do and where they go. Try setting up in different places, try different decoys and arrangements, and again, call variety. Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

6. Don't move. Your blind is fairly irrelevant. You could sit naked up against a tree, you could park your truck out in the woods and sit in that (if it was legal), you could build a brush fortress out of branches and sticks and leaves and what-have-you or you could sit in one of those pop up blinds. It doesn't matter at all. Turkeys usually could care less what your blind is or what it looks like. The key is not to move. Obviously, camo is also key since solid skin color usually stands out against the greens and browns of the great outdoors, but it's movement that will ruin everything in a hurry. Make sure your gun is up and ready before you see the bird and if he managed to sneak up on you, just move slow and only when his head is behind something like a tree. Turkeys aren't predators, they're prey. That's why their eyes are on the sides of their heads, to give them almost 360 degree vision. Just because it looks like they're not looking at you, just remember, they can still see you and will pick up on even the slightest movement.

Patience is a big part of it for me. I like to set up in a area that holds turkeys and let them do there thing. If I can't get a particular gobbler to come my way, I let him leave with the girls and he will often come back to the area where he heard me.

I have something in my voice calling that grabs hens attention...I wish I could pin point it but I can call in hens and literally get them hopping mad.They will stick around a long time and act as my live decoy..had a few kick the Ba Geegees out of my hen decoys..Lol
If I have had a rough week I pull out the Bobbin head deer decoy and put the Turkey decoys around it..That has never failed me.

Overcalling isn't as big a deal as some make it. I've called turkeys in being loud and aggressive and I've called them in with leaf scratching and clucking once every 5 minutes. The real tip is to be able to take the birds temperature. A bird that is henned up is less likely to come to mild calling as aggressive calling.

A bird that is lonely and gobbling hard may come to the more subtle approach or the hard approach. I called a hard gobbling bird off a 10 foot bluff last year before missing him by calling more aggressively to him. I've also called up a bird that wouldn't answer a single call and would gobble once every 20-30 minutes by using leaves.

This year I may hang back some but my method has always been to close the distance as much as possible to a gobbling bird. The natural way of doing things is for hens to go to gobblers. When I close the gap I get so close as to almost bump the bird. At that point the bird feels that everything has gone as planned so he is more inclined to come the last little bit. I call to him as I move, clucking and purring as I walk while occasionally scratching with my boots. It's a method that has served me well.

A big one for me is scouting. You have to know where the birds are and/or where they are heading to be able to do anything else already mentioned. I hunt public land, so scouting is huge. You need to locate a couple of birds, just in case one spot does not work out for you or someone else beats you there.
If you know there are birds in the area, it helps you be more patient and confident in your spot.
John

There is some pro turkey hunter right here. I couldn't agree more to your tips. Well done and patience is key!!

The hunt
 

If you can roost birds you have your starting point and by looking at sat. images you have a good idea of where they may go. It's best to scout and watch where the birds go or shock call to find out where the birds go after fly down and getting an on the ground idea of the lay of the land can help you run and gun when you need to greatly increasing your chances of killing another good gobbler.
Staying in the woods longer can get you a lonely gobbler that's not hened up and going back to the roost area in late afternoon can get you a gobbler coming in fast.

This has been my tactic for years and has been very rewarding.
I copied this from another post I made but this is the plan I use every year along with my secret weapon that will remain secret lol.

So I guess I'm not the only one using Google Earth as a research tool for hunting. Knowing the terrain and where the birds are likely gonna go helps for sure.

We also started using trail cams for turkey season . Gives us a good idea whats in an area and at what times. Every little thing helps when your hunting big public lands.

Since the last couple of years, the turkeys in my area seem to be getting pretty thin. I print out google map images and keep track of turkey sightings when I drive around. Just keep in mind that those flocks you see now will be busting up soon into bachelor groups and may not be in the same places you see them now.

Now I'm on private land and I know I'll probably get quite the bashing on this, but it works and I'll do it again. Spot the birds, whip a fan up in front of ya and walk right at em. They'll come running at you before ya know it. By no means am I suggesting anyone trying this. But that's one of my tricks of the trade.

Nope a tablet travels with me at times.....
here I sat - the star and had a tom gobble his fool head off to the south for 2 consecutive days. You can see the clearing to the south in the woods and those thin lines in the woods are trails to which I did an end around run and changed my calling location.



I can't tell you enough - my tip ~ scout and then scout some more. If you know where the turkey wants to be at any give time you can hunt him. I like to find feeding areas.

JW

I feel better about all the marks I leave on Google Maps now XD


This is the only problem I face with the private property I hunt. It's on the side of a mountain and the majority of the property is open field. The lower third of said property is mostly forested with a small stream running through it, but a really steep drop off makes getting down there a pain and I've never seen a bird or sign of a bird down there, not even a call. It's at the bottom of the mountain and becomes a sort of gully, so while I thought birds might travel down there for water, again, never seen or heard them so I'm wondering if the all day shade keeps them away from it.

Every bird I've ever seen or heard has been in the fields at the top of the property. I can hear them gobbling on the roost at the top of the mountain, but the property I hunt starts a quarter of the way down the mountain so I can't get up there. Google Maps tells me there's a clearing right on the top of the mountain that I know they must be using. The birds I do get to see all seem to come from one of two directions, straight down from the top of the mountain or from a 4-wheeler road that comes down from the other property to ours. Of the seven large fields though, they always seem to cross through one particular one, so that's where I've been hanging out the last couple years. So, there isn't much scouting to do up there. I've yet to hear or see a bird roost on the property, so I'm left with guessing when and where they might come down in our field. Not the best way to hunt, especially since I grew up on scouting for the birds, but it's all I've got to work with on that property anyway. But... if scouting is an option wherever you hunt, do it.