Less is more, turkey hunter says

“I believe less is more during late-season hunts,” Eddie Salter said. “And that old bird had long spurs and was red hot.

“That just goes to show you that you can work a turkey one day and he won’t do nothing, and the next day call him right in with little or no trouble. Now on this particular bird I went in there only a day later and called just twice, and he came running!”

And sometimes that’s the key to working and harvesting mature late-season gobblers, he said.

“You can call too much,” Salter explained. “Sometimes those wise old birds will know a Lynch Box from a Primos mouth call or a Pittman slate late in the season.

‘If you run it, they’ll know it.”

Salter said that, while late-season hunters might need to call less, how much less is up for debate and can depend upon the individual circumstance and the bird itself.

That’s when intuition and experience pays off.

“If I get on an old battle-tested gobbler, it won’t take long to find out that he’s not going to come running,” Salter said. “So you just have to play it by ear.”

Although Salter can call with the best of them and enjoys calling and cutting up with the old gobblers, sometimes that’s not the best way to kill them.

“I’ll give them just enough to spur their interest, and (then) shut up,” he said. “If they gobble or cut me off and start heading my way, I’ll just wait on them.

“If they stop responding or start leaving and heading away from me, then I may have to change tactics a bit or give them a little more.”

But more often than not, it will only take a call or two to do the trick when hunting highly pressured late-season birds.

He combines this controlled calling with a mobile strategy.

“After hunting birds on the roost, I usually stay on the move during the midday hours and try to locate an old gobbler by cutting, yelping and calling,” Salter said. “And once you get a late season bird to answer, you can usually kill him — if you don’t call too much and show your hand.”

If a bird answers, Salter will set up and wait. If the tom comes on in, he won’t ever call again. The next sound heard will be the roar of the shotgun and flapping wings.