Turkeys that have been hunted hard present some special problems for Mississippi hunters. Here are a few tips to help you put your tag around an old tom’s leg.
Anticipation is a driving force for turkey hunters.
Preseason planning is second only to deer season, mentally and physically. For many, turkey season never really ends.
Charlie Cox of Forest admits that the anticipation is so great he has trouble sleeping the night before opening day. As the season progresses and gobblers become more educated, sleepless nights are more likely the result of challenging situations instead of anticipation.
Nobody likes to lose any contest, but losing can be the end result of some turkey hunts. At times, a bird is more clever — educated, if you will — than the hunter. Birds learn how hunters act, and they adapt a whole host of defenses to trick human predators.
These are pressured birds that have seen and heard it all.
It would be great if every turkey hunt had a successful ending, but that just ain’t so. Successful hunts seen on television make it look easy, and birds appear predictable. Many of those shows are produced by companies that want you to buy a product or service. Truth be known, a great deal of video is left on the “cutting room floor.”
The Eastern wild turkey has been called the smartest of the turkey species. As birds go, they have large heads and brains and excellent senses of sight and hearing. They can perceive movement and process that information with amazing speed. Now, the comparison of the predator and the prey: turkeys assemble and remember sensory input. Hunters need to assemble and remember the same input.
Long-range rifle shooters are often seen with cheat sheets showing windage and elevation settings to help them make an accurate shot. For a turkey hunter to try to write down every if-then option would look like Sean Payton guiding the New Orleans Saints with his playlist — but that’s just what a hunter needs to do.
For example, you settle down in your listening location in anticipation of hearing a gobble. You know these facts: it’s April, hens have begun nesting, a perfect morning is shaping up and soon the morning music of the dawning woods starts to proclaim a new day. You are on public land, so you know the gobbler you’re targeting has likely been called to before. You want to wait until he gobbles so you can close the distance before you set up to call.
From the creek bottom comes a barred owl asking “Who cooks for you?” Your prey responds; you start to make adjustments in your location. A woodpecker drills against a hollow tree, likewise trying to attract a mate, and your gobbler shouts, “Is that all you got woodpecker?” as he shakes the leaves with a thunderous gobble.
You make it to an old logging road on the same ridge as the roosted gobbler. Fanny cushion in place, you settle in to call. Your imitation of a roosting hen’s limb yelp, announcing to the world that everything is good, sets the gobbler on fire, and he double gobbles. Other hens in the area open up, and you try to cut in on their desire with a call of your own. This scene continues until the hens hop from their roosts, cackle, and with a distinctive fly-down wingbeat, stretch and preen, purring and clucking all the while.
You see the gobbler pitch out and sail into the road you’re watching. The hens begin to amble in his direction, and together, they disappear around a curve in the logging road. Fifty more yards and he would have landed in your lap, the hens behind you — or you might have busted the whole roost. At this point, you have a few choices:
- Sit tight and perhaps a subordinate gobbler will respond to your calls hoping to steal a lover from the gobbling dominate bird.
- Wait long enough, and the dominate bird will finish with his hens and come looking for the one he left behind. Speaking of behind, yours may be pretty numb by now, and a relocation may suit you.
- You might hop-scotch ahead of the flock and get to a favorite bugging area before they arrive. Get a decoy up and toss some tender purrs and yelps at the approaching troupe. All this time, you have to be cognizant that long periods of silence must be endured. Just as you heard the turkeys, so did bobcats, coyotes and other hunters.
As the hens all head off to lay, the gobbler will replenish his strength with insect and plant life. But don’t be disheartened; you have added to the treasure trove of information — but so has the turkey. Tomorrow, the gobbler will again be near that flock of hens. He will again gobble, listen, look and learn. You must do the same things you did today: listen, look and learn.
“Persistence is the one best piece of advice I can offer those who hunt pressured birds,” said Preston Pittman, a legendary Mississippi turkey hunter. “I don’t know anyone who has all the answers to proper technique when turkey hunting. Birds are just as different as the people who hunt them. But persistence is always the key to success.”
Pittman said the difference in birds can work in the hunter’s favor. Since no two hens sound the same, hunters can get away with some not-so-perfect calling, as long as the cadence, and call used fit the situation. Naturally, you don’t use a fly-down cackle at noon in the edge of a meadow where a kee-kee may far more appropriate. Nor is a cutting call the one to use when other birds are quiet. These are things hunters can learn by reading books, magazines and attending seminars, but the best teacher is time in the turkey woods.
Imposters
Decoys can fool pressured birds, especially in the afternoon when mature gobblers feel less threatened. But remember, the mature veteran of many hunts knows that a hen is supposed to come to him, or at least meet him halfway. So a pretty model posed in the edge of a field calling aggressively just doesn’t ring true. Placing a hen decoy in a squatted, submissive pose with a jake decoy, using purrs and clucks, is much better for closing the deal. No matter how smart, a mature tom with raging hormones has trouble managing his anger at a jake taking a hen he wants.
A gobbler fan and a hen decoy will serve the same purpose. A little breeze will cause a fan to twist and flirt, adding another dimension to the illusion created by the hunter. The added, life-like movement will go a long way in getting a pressured bird to commit.
There is also the old fade-away trick. A jake gobble and purring in the woods at the edge of the field is an invitation to test an old bird’s dominance. More easily done by two hunters, the calling hunter can fade or sound as if he is moving away from the field edge, taking the hen with him. Hell hath no fury like a tom turkey scorned.
Afternoon setups in meadows or fields are good locations. Turkeys will also frequent areas recently subjected to prescribed burns. They seem to have a taste for roasted grasshoppers. The ashes also provide great opportunities for dusting.
Keep it soft
Jim Spencer, the author of Bad Birds, Bad Birds 2, and Turkey Digest has spent countless hours in the turkey woods in every state that offers turkey hunting. He is a proponent of calling seldom and softly.
“Once a gobbler has answered your yelp, put your call down and let that gobbler come to you,” Spencer said. “The more you listen, the more you learn. If your hearing just isn’t what it once was, there are all sorts of hearing aides and amplification devices, They are worth their weight in gold.”
Spencer said most crusty, old turkey hunters will turn up their noses at the use of mindfulness in the hunting woods, but that’s just what you need to do. Be aware of every sound, not just what grabs your attention, Listen to every sound and understand what it is and what it means being made.
“As you do this, you’ll hear soft purrs and clucks that when used in a decoy set will put old, smart birds at ease,” Spencer said. “Many an old turkey has added to his years and died of natural causes because hunters didn’t know when to shut-up.”
Walk away
Every turkey hunter has a bird that bested him. Maybe you have wasted the better part of the season trying to kill a gobbler that was just better at living than dying. Mine was a bird we named “Queer Bird” because of his odd behavior. He never gobbled, ever. Charlie Cox and I saw him a number of times, always just out of range at 50 to 60 yards, before the days of TSS shot and super-tight choke tubes.
We roosted him one afternoon and were on him the next day, gobblers sounded off in the distance. Queer Bird never made a peep. In the weeks that followed, we discovered he did respond to calling, but he never made the commitment to the caller; decoys didn’t help. We patterned his roost habitats and identified him by three, white-tipped tail feathers. Maybe he had been called and shot; perhaps he had a physical defect that prevented him from making a sound. But Queer Bird beat us.
Has winter’s ice storm affected Mississippi turkeys?
What is or has been the effect of this winter’s freezing weather and ice storm on our turkey population?
“At present I do not have anything to gauge how (late February’s) weather will have affects turkeys,” said Adam Butler, the turkey program leader for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. “My guess is that they were not adversely affected in a major way. Wild turkeys persist all the way into southern Canada, and I have personally run into turkeys while ruffed grouse hunting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so they obviously do well in environments where (that kind of) weather would be merely shaken off as mild, mid-winter days.
“Any more longer-term effects would be linked to damage done to forest canopies and the subsequent effect those could have on forest understories, but I honestly have not yet really heard reports of how bad such damage might have been. I know the ’94 ice storm was significant enough to alter the structure of many forest under/mid-stories in areas of central and north Mississippi, but again, I haven’t really heard one way or another as to whether damage from this storm is in that same category or not.”
Be the first to comment