Seeing if any of y'all could possibly help me out on some turkey questions. I'm from East Texas and the Eastern turkeys we have here are transplanted from Tennessee. Living around this parts and asking questions to others about turkey's is about like asking someone about ice fishing. The birds here were active a week ago and know have gone silent because I believe all are hemmed up with ladies. What makes them active again? I appreciate all help I can get!! Thanks.

give them a week, hunt later into the day, it gets good after 9:00 AM
RR

Ok thank you! I sat this morning til about 10 just calling very little with soft clucks and yelps every know and then but seen nothing at all. In a situation like this when they are quite and have hens with them what are you trying to do when calling? Pull the hens to you our maybe get lucky and have him come your way? Sorry for so many questions.

relax, while they do hen up for periods during the day, for the most part they wander, esp. the jakes and the tom's without their queens. they travel a great deal and eventually they will run into you, stay put, sometimes it takes all day

cheers

Usually sometime late in the morning the hens "get away" from the toms. By calling every so often your hoping to catch a tom trying to figure out where his girls went, when he hears your calls he hopefully comes to investigate. atleast thats my take on it.
Last night i watched a tom and 3 hens fly across a lake and go to roost. This morning (youth season opener) not a single gobble even though I new he was near I could not get him to make a sound. Around 8 o'clock I seen all of them single file fly back to my side of the lake, a few hunderd yards from me. As soon as I thought his feet hit the ground I made a couple calls loud enough that I new he would hear. Couple minutes later a gobble half the distance, one more soft call and another gobble almost in sight now. a few seconds later my nephew had his first long beard down at 30 yards!
Anyway the reason for my long winded storie(sorry) that bird would not respond to anything but when they flew across I think he lost track of his lady friends, heard me and thought that he had found them again.Wrong.Atleast thats what I think

Great story about your kin nothing like sharing traditions with family and passing it on!! Thank y'all very much for the advice and different options on this. The more I learn the better I am out there hunting and I appreciate it a lot. Thanks

Those East Texas Easterns can be tough to tame. Keep at it, especially up into the mid morning time period. Those hens will eventually go to lay or nest, and that is when you can score.

When i was in Texas I was hunting Rios but I found that they were henned up big time. I scouted around and found a heavily used strut zone on a small trail. I sat on it later in the morning after again having no success calling anything off the roost. At 1100 am a hen walked by and then ole' tom came strutting along behind her. He was a beauty with 3 beards and 1" busted off spurs (unfortunately). It was awesome to watch him strut up that road in the full sunlight.

When they hen up we practice what we call run and gun. Basically we start covering as much ground as we can. Lots of hills and ravines where I hunt so every time we top a hill or a ravine we hit the call. I carry a diaphragm in my mouth so I can call at any time. As soon as we hear a gobbler we set up and hunt that bird. The system works but at the end of they day you're going to be tired, scratched from the briars and probably muddy. In other words it's great fun!