Turkey & Turkey Hunting  was asking for a show of hands the other day.  It was a quick poll:  state, how many birds you expected to take, level of experience, etc.    I found myself putting down “very experienced.”   It took some soul searching.  For one thing, I still think of myself as a beginner even though I’m going on 30 years.  However, experience is experience, right?  Even if some of it is bad experience, it counts.

I do not claim to be an expert turkey hunter.  However, I do claim to be an expert on hunting my 200 acres of heaven.  In the big scheme of things, it may not be much.  However, it is what  I have to work with.  I hunt one state, one county, 2 tags– that’s it.  I do not mean this to be taken as prideful. I do not mean to say everyone should hunt this way.  It is just the lot I have chosen.

I was talking to my neighbor last Summer.  He drove over to see me on his quad.  We got to talking about turkey hunting last Spring, and he said the hunting had been lousy up on the ridge we shared, so he went to one of his other places over in another county to fill his tags.  I stayed.  It was a challenge.  I helped Angus get a bird in.  I called a couple in for SuperCore.  However, Moose and I both got skunked.  The birds spent a good deal of time not cooperating in the least.

It all gets me to thinking what has shaped me as a turkey hunter.  Again, I do not try to hold myself up as all that great.  I get birds, but I can also be flummoxed.  Part of it is me.  Part of it is where I hunt.  Part of it is the birds themselves.

ME

I would have to believe t hat a lot of my style of hunting comes from early upbringing.I spent a good deal of time hunting in places that were less than ideal for turkey hunting.  Hocking Hills back in the early 80’s was not like it is today, crawling with turkeys.  I had one 80 acre patch.  I had to drive 3 hours to get there.  Most days, I had to pray there would even be turkeys on the place.  The neighbors hunted too, making it a lot like hunting on public land.  Most seasons I did not even see a turkey.  However, most seasons I did not get out but one or two days a season.  For a journeyman computer programmer, just showing up was a triumph.  There was no Sunday hunting.  I could never get off during the week.  There was no hunting past Noon.  It was absolute futility– one half-day a year.

I theorized back then, that it was going to take me about 3 days of contiguous hunting to get turkey.  I really never got that until we got the farm in 2001.  In the meanwhile, I tried a bunch of states, a bunch of styles, a bunch of gadgets, and a whole lot of . . . well, looking back on it, I would have to admit it was more superstition than anything else.

What this all contributed to my evolution as a turkey hunter is hard to pinpoint. It all sort of runs together after a while.  However, I do know these facts:

• If I can work at it for a few days, I can usually get a gobbler to come to me after a few days of feeling them out.  I can usually do it sometime late in the first week of season.  My early assessment of 3 days was a little optimistic.  5 is more like it.
• Patience drives a lot of my success.  There is no replacement for just putting my butt to the boat cushion and waiting.  If I get antsy, there really is no place to go on 200 acres.  It is not like I can hop in the truck and drive the roads or run-n-gun. I can  travel , at most ,about a half mile in any direction without running into one of my own fences.
• I still see this as an exercise in futility. I do not have expectations.
• One of the biggest stumbling blocks was getting over the fact that I grew up not hunting past Noon.  Once I figured out it was okay to hunt afternoons, my success improved.  One day it just hit me that there I was, sunning myself on the porch after a big lunch and I still had 6 hours of hunting left.

Where I Hunt

I hunt in southwestern Bracken County, KY.  I have about 10 miles to the Ohio River to the north and 2 miles to the Licking River in the South.  This is an area called the Trans-Bluegrass.  It is mostly grown-over farms.  Some fellows are still running cattle.  Most guys took the money from the Tobacco Settlement and moved to town.  Where it was wooded, you have Oak /Hickory Savannah.  Where it was open, cedar trees are taking over.   It is near-ideal turkey land and deer land.  However, it has its hitches.

I read these Old-Schoolers on the forums talk about “by calling alone.”   For some it is state law.  For others, you would think they had gotten in from a Burning Bush. Guys seem to confuse the two. It is funny.  A lot of guys come hunting in Kentucky and are amazed at the bad luck they have calling to the birds.  I cannot count the number of times I have seen writers grousing about a trip to Kentucky that left them resorting to unconventional tactics to get their tags filled as if this was a bad thing.

The fact of the matter is that Trans-Bluegrass  is not like Alabama or Mississippi or Florida.  Remember, I am not talking about Kentucky, just my piece of it.  Southern Kentucky can be a lot more like the South.  The Trans-Bluegrass is not like Western Kentucky or  Eastern Kentucky.  It is not even like Ohio.    Another thing that influences our hunting is  when Kentucky chooses to start its season. Having hunted down in the Big South Fork Region on the KY/TN border, I can tell you that the weather is considerably different.  Kentucky is far enough north that it is not uncommon to have snow for Opening Week in the Trans-Bluegrass.  It can be cold and blustery.  It can also be in the 90’s.  You just do not know.  Usually it takes about 3 days with highs in the 70’s for the gobs to get active.

I have seen my turkeys act like Mississippi gobblers.  I have see them pitch down off the roost and come strutting over to me.  It is a rare and wonderful sight.  Usually, there are about 3 days every season where the turkeys are in that kind of mood.  The rest of the time, you have to be willing and able to expect something else.  I had a fellow from Mississippi tell me that he sees days like that where the gobblers are not ready to seriously honor a call.  If they ain’t ready, he just goes back to the house and drinks coffee.  He ain’t gonna hunt them.  Frankly, I do not have the capacity to consume that much coffee over the course of a season.

Kentucky picks the opening of its season to coincide with The Lull.  The Lull is that period in the year where the turkeys have already gotten through the first part of their breeding.  The gobblers are henned up and the hens are not disappearing yet to work on their nests.  If you are out as I am in the weeks preceeding The Opener, you can see this all unfold.  Usually turkey activity hits a peek the second weekend in April.  This is the bye week between Yute Season and the Spring Gobbler Opener.  Gobblers are out doing all those wonderful things gobblers do in the videos.  Calling to them is not legal, but it is okay to go out and watch.

Even though I did not fill a tag last year, I still consider it my best year ever for turkey hunting.  For one thing, I brought in a gob for SuperCore to see just by rearranging my knees rhythmically in the leaves.  That was how hot that gob was.  In another instance, I went out behind one of the barns one morning and sat drinking my coffee in full camo.  I had picked just the right spot, because for a half an hour, I had gobblers strutting in front of me , some as close as 10 feet.  However, all this was before The Opener.  From The Opener onward, it was like the gobs had crawled in a hole and pulled the lid in over the top.  Part of it was the rainy cold weather.  Part of it was just local to our ridges.  I mentioned that my neighbor  just packed up his hunting and went over to the next county and did just fine. The fact that I was able to call in two for SuperCore  under these conditions was a triumph.

It kind of ices me sometimes when I see gobblers roaming the fields at Midday and later gobbling their heads off, looking for love a good two weeks after Kentucky’s season is over.  It peeves me sometimes when I can see a flock of 50 turkeys less than 200 yards from the back of the house in mid-March, but do not hear a gobble some mornings the first week of season.  My little part of Kentucky is just like that.

The Turkeys Themselves

How I hunt turkeys is based on a tried-and-true Old School method I learned from the locals.  I take an old bed spring out to the middle of the field and put corn out in the middle of it and. . .    Just trying to get a rise out of the Old Schoolers.  Sorry.  No, actually what I do is probably about as distasteful to some.  For one thing, you have to realize that after 10 years on the same 200 acres, I have these turkeys pretty well patterned.  Oh sure, I started out hunting my place with locator calls and going out and planting myself next to a roost and and all that.  However, I gradually figured out I was planting myself next to the same trees year after year.

There really are honey holes in turkey hunting.  It just takes a good long while to figure out where they are.  My gobblers have been strutting in the same oak groves and out in the same back corners of the same forlorn pastures since before the advent of modern season.  Probably, they were strutting there before the White Man came and cleared the land.  I can see where if you have thousands of acres of public land to hunt, you would not make a study on this sort of thing.  I can see where if you have 5 states to hunt in every year, you would not be seeing this.  You probably would not even see it if you had only 20 acres, because so much of a flock’s activity might be off your property and out of sight.

My turkeys, by outsider standards are both call-shy and deke-shy.  It is not so much that they are frightened by the prospects of being hunted, but they generally keep to their well-worn paths and do not go too far off their tracks most days.   I have found a few spots that are good spots to intercept them and I have pre-positioned blinds ( mostly old cedar limbs piled up)  and go to these blinds as I see fit.  The point is that these turkeys are not going to go too far out of their way.  There is no sense putting out a decoy if you know a gob is going to be walking by sooner or later anyway. It is equally absurd for me to try and act like I am surprised when I hear gobbling from roughly the same spots every morning.  You can call this ambushing or just having an intimate knowledge of the birds I hunt– take your pick.

Calling?  For the most part, I have given up trying to call a gob off the roost.  That does not mean I stay in until 10 AM.  I am out there at first light and get settled in.  I listen to flydown and mark the movements of the birds carefully.  I realize that my best chance is not throwing my “A” game at these gobblers right away.  Instead, I hole up and wait.  I take their temperatures slowly.  What I am looking forward to is a mid-morning encounter that is maybe half-an-ambush and half not.    I know where the gobblers will be coming.  I am there ahead of them and put together a string of calls that sound like there are hens there already feeding.  If the spirit moves me, I’ll try and throw in a little something that makes it sound like one of the girls is getting horny.

In the afternoon, I have made a study of where my gobblers have come to strut and the hens come to loaf.  I try to get in the middle well ahead of them and make a few loud and aggressive runs.  On a good day I have had a gobbler come from 500 yards out like he was on a string. On the bad days? I probably should have stayed at camp and done chores.

Putting it All Together

See, this was about me, but I think it should be all about you too.  I don’t mean for you to take my advice and go piling cedar branches next to where you saw a couple flocks last Spring.  The point here is that it is okay to be yourself and not the kind of hunter you see on the TV shows.

Know yourself.  I will probably be forever distrustful of my calling.   I get by, but I rely more on my powers of observation and my woodsmanship.  Calling may seal the deal, but there is a lot more to it than that.  Trust yourself.  Know what you know and know how to use it.

Know the Game.  If you watch the TV, you will have this idea that turkey hunting is a string of chance encounters– that turkey hunters are like disco kings trying to pick up strangers in a bar with an endless string of strange women and an unlimited number of bars.  That may be the way it is for you.  However, I am locked on 200 acres– part of it is by choice, and part of it is circumstance.  This is like a cage match.  I am locked in with the same bunch of turkeys all season.   I have to change up calls, change up routines, change up everything several times a season to keep presenting a fresh pitch to the gobs.   There is no escape for me.

Know the Turkeys.  I am out with these gobblers from usually late February until I close up deer camp in December.  I know them. I knew their mothers and fathers.  I probably called to their great-great grandparents. I may have eaten some of them. That is perhaps my one great advantage.  For someone who does not have that luxury, the best thing I can say is to get out and watch turkeys.  You will learn more about turkey behavior in the months prior to season than you will all during season.  Go out and watch the sun come up and listen. They will teach you.

Know the Challenge. Everyone goes at turkey hunting a little different.  One guy wants to take a gobbler only if he has called it into him.  Another guy only wants to do it with his grand-daddy’s side by side.  Another fellow only feels right if he’s spent $500 on ammunition and is wearing the latest camo pattern– vest and boots matching.  Another guy only wants to saddle up his bird and ride it back to camp singing “John Brown’s Body.”  We all look at this sport differently.  Me?  I find enough challenge just trying to bag one or two  off the same 200 acre plot every year.  That seems to be just about right. The next guy might throw up his hands and say that was stupid and run over to Ohio and hunt if the action was sparse. He might get on me for not shooting 3.5 inch Nitros, or not having a strong opinion on decoys .  You?  The trick is to find what sort of challenge you want and going for it, and along the way not getting to feel like your way is the only way, or even the best way.  The turkeys are not going to mind one way or the other.

This post has already been read 314 times!

Views: 6

Related posts:

Bring on the Game Wardens More Game Animals I Have killed Who’s a Turkey Expert? What Is the Hardest Part of Turkey Hunting? How do I prepare to go hunt turkeys Strategies for Turkeys on a Small Plot Honey Holes and Structure Hunting What is the best time of the day to hunt wild turkey?