Veteran, old-school hunter shares how he likes to call, set up on gobblers, make them make a fatal mistake.
Walter Ridinger owl-hooted from the top of a ridge near Meridian, but the gobblers were shut up tighter than a drum, so he moved to another prime spot to listen a few minutes.
“I hooted, and the owls and crows started raising cane,” Ridinger said. “So I moved down to the end of a ridgetop (and) green field and pondered what my next move would be. Suddenly, a crow flew over, and a turkey belted out a shock-gobble right in the hollow beside me. He was so close I was afraid to move, so I slowly sat down by a tree.”
Ridinger yelped to the gobbler at 5:50 a.m., but 40 minutes later, he hadn’t heard another sound.
“While I was sitting there, two other gobblers got cranked up, further off — one to the north and one toward the west — and I mean, one was hammering,” Ridinger said. “I didn’t hear the closest bird again, so I hit the ridge and walked down an old logging road to the west and set up to call to the more vocal one.”
At 6:45, Ridinger sat down and cackled.
“Gobble, gobble, obble,” thundered two old toms on opposite sides of him.
And then, there was only silence.
“I called again at 7, and then at 7:15, and didn’t get a response,” he said. “I just didn’t know what had happened or why they’d shut up. At 7:30, I yelped on my box call, and one gobbled where I’d started calling from originally. I yelped with my mouth call, and he gobbled, and then with my box, and he gobbled, but he never budged.”
The wise, old tom was strutting back and forth and toying with Ridinger as he had with many hunters.
“I knew I had to do something different or he wasn’t going to move any closer,” Ridinger said. “I called with my mouth call again, and he gobbled, and then I yelped with both sides of the box, and he gobbled again — but he never moved an inch.”
Game changer
Time was slipping away, and Ridinger knew desperate measures were in order.
“I remembered my scratch box call that I’d made back before the season, so I pulled it out of my pocket and yelped,” he said.
“Gobble, obble, obble,” thundered the old tom in a lusty response to Ridinger’s sweet come-hither pleadings.
“As soon as I yelped to him with my scratch box, he started my way, and I could tell he was coming down the old logging trail,” Ridinger said. “There was a bunch of huckleberry bushes obscuring my view, but I saw one opening in the bushes, and I knew that had to be my shot, or he’s going to be in my lap. He was torn up, and I bet he gobbled 20 times as he quickly moved toward me, so I never yelped to him again.”
“All of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of the tom coming,” said Ridinger. “I had my gun on my knee pointed to the opening ahead of him, and when he eased up to the opening and stuck his neck out, I pulled the trigger.”
“Ka-boom” roared the Remington 870 shotgun, and the gobbler met his maker.
It had been a challenging duel, and Ridinger had called up the lovesick bird with a scratch box he’d made himself. Evidently, the wise, old gobbler had never heard such sweet calls in those woods before.
“Sometimes, you’ve got to use a different call, or one that the bird hasn’t heard before, to get his interest,” Ridinger said. “In this case, I almost forgot about the scratch box I had in my pocket, but as it turned out, the gobbler liked it and came running.”
Calls and setups
Ridinger, a retired railroad engineer from Meridian, has spent a lifetime hunting turkeys, and he’s been influenced by some of the sport’s most-legendary hunters and callers: Ben Rodgers Lee, Preston Pittman and M. L. Lynch. He hasn’t forgotten his turkey hunting education the Bogue Flower Hills west of Meridian, and he makes turkey calls.
“I don’t carry a lot of calls with me, but I do rely on a Primos or Pittman mouth call, a Ben Lee box call and a Lynch box,” Ridinger said. “If you can master those three types of calls, you can surely call in gobblers everywhere you hunt.
“Typically, I want to arrive at my first listening spot before daybreak and listen as the woods wake up,” Ridinger said. “If you have hills or mountains in your hunting area, then you should know a high place where you can get to hear a gobbler from a long way off without spooking him. The key to hunting a bird off of the roost is to know the lay of the land and locate a tom on the roost.”
If you can locate a gobbling turkey on the roost, you can get set up on him and start the day with a good shot at getting him to head your way.
“I like to get up on top of the ridge when calling to a gobbling bird,” Ridinger said. “If you want to get a leg up on him, then get up higher than the bird is. I’m not sure why, but the gobblers like to come uphill, and they will come to a call if they’re in a hollow below or on a lower point of the ridge I’m on. It’s important to get on the same ridge they’re on before you start working them or get to a ridge above them.”
While they may occasionally come long distances to a call during late season when the hens are on their nests, gobblers normally won’t come from another ridge to your location, so it’s best to close the distance and get to where they are comfortable or want to be.
After he’s located a gobbling turkey, Ridinger will set up 150 to 175 yards away, as close as he can without spooking him.
“I’ll let him gobble on the roost, and I wait until just before fly-down time to give him a series of light tree yelp or purrs and clucks to let him know where I’m at,” Ridinger said. “If you call to him too much while he’s on the roost, you risk spooking him or making him suspicious.”
Less is more for old-time turkey hunters like Ridinger. They prefer giving gobblers just a little sweet love talk and come-hither pleadings to make that gobbler want more.
Gobblers in many areas with high hunting pressure may be called to soon after they crack out of their shells, so they know the difference between birds and hunters.
“If you play your cards right and get set up and be the first hen to call to the gobbler, then he may fly down your way, and you’ll have a quick hunt,” said Ridinger. “It doesn’t always work that way, but sometimes, all it takes is a tree yelp or a purr and cluck to get them to head your way right off the bat.”
Mid-morning hunts
If you’ve hunted turkeys for very long, you know there are times when gobblers are silent on the roost or silent after they fly down. What then? If you’re not sure where the bird is after he flies off the roost, it might be a good idea to find a trail, an old logging road or a ridgetop and stay on the move until you fire one up.
“We’ve always owl-hooted and crow-called when trying to locate birds after fly-down and through mid-day,” Ridinger said. “I prefer to owl hoot and crow call during the mid-day hours as well. I prefer that, because on one hunt, I was going along and stopping every so often and cackling and yelping. After I did that, I heard a noise and saw a big gobbler running away from me. My thoughts were that he had heard me at my last stop and started toward me, and when I walked up and called, he knew I wasn’t a hen and got away from me. If I’d have owl-hooted or crow-called, he may have gobbled and let me know where he was, but he surely wouldn’t have come running towards me.”
Ridinger occasionally stops and calls to the turkeys during the mid-day hours, but he’s going to get set up and be ready for a turkey to show up before he makes a call. That way, if a gobbler is close to him and decides to come up unannounced, he won’t be busted.
“If I’m going to try a locator turkey call, I’ll never do it walking down the road,” he said. “I’ll always set up a few minutes and then try it, and I won’t leave until I’m sure no birds have come in.
“Patience is also a key aspect in tangling with a wise, old tom, as you need to stay put and give them time to come in,” he said. “They may come in quietly without ever making a peep, and if you move, then there’s a good chance, you’ll spook them.”
Walter Ridinger’s turkey thoughts
- “Gene Nunnery, author of The Old Pro Turkey Hunter, said that turkeys are like people. When they’ve had a good night’s sleep, they felt good in the morning and felt like gobbling, so they’d cut it loose. But when they’d had a bad night or weathered the storm all night or been harassed by predators or poachers, they might not make a peep.”
- “There’s no set way to do it, and nothing written down for every situation that may occur, but I’m going to get up and react to how the weather is and how the morning is going before I decide to do something or hunt a certain way. “
- “When it comes to old-school turkey calling, less is more, and sometimes that’s better when calling to wary old gobblers.”
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