When to Call . . .and When Not to

I have previously given y’all my basic strategy for calling. It is actually a bit more complicated. For starters, I have mostly given up on locator calling. I hunt in an area that has surrounding farms and a lot are still actively engaged in farming. If I am patient, the gobblers will sound off at a lot of things. Cows, dogs barking, my favorite for years was a donkey that would bray clear over on the next ridge every morning. If I wait, usually the gobblers give themselves away.

I am never the first to call in the morning– unless it gets on past sunrise and I have not heard any hens. When I call, I try not to be the loudest– unless, well, I’ll get to that. I try my best to work myself into the flow of things. At least starting out, I want to be just another hen.

As the morning progresses, I may get a gobbler to honor my call. If he cuts in, that is usually my cue to shut up for quite a while. He is thinking about coming, but if I answer too much– he’ll probably stay where he is and wait for me to come to him.

When I do call, I try not to set up a conversation. I try to make it sound like either that I did not hear the gobbler or that I am responding to another gobbler way off. I realize as I get on in this sport that most gobs do not go covering 300 yards in ten minutes to be with the likes of me. Sometimes they do. Most are playing a bunch of options, and I suspect they think there are better than me. I might like to think that I am the Siren of gobbler dreams, but experience tells me I am more like the homely buck-toothed two-bagger over on the next block that you know rides your bus to school, but you do not know her name. When the big jock gob comes calling it is only because the cheerleader dumped him and he needs a date for prom.

Then comes that special time of morning. I do not know what it is. I can say with authority that it does not happen every morning, but some time in the morning gobblers get finished with what they have been doing since sun-up. The gobbler’s sandwich truck must come around, or somebody puts on a fresh pot of coffee. Gobblers seem to look up from their turkey cubicles and start heading towards the turkey water cooler or something. Anyhow, they become receptive to my calls. I may have started off as that buck-toothed coyote-ugly girl in the back of the bus at sunrise, but now I have the chance to be the horny slut calling from under the bleachers. Some mornings I get it right. Most mornings I do not. One run of skanky cutting is usually all it takes. If that does not work, two runs of skanky calling seems to be too much. Wait a while. Try again. Change calls. If the waifish young hen does not work, then I try the old hag on the barstool waiting for last call routine. Sometimes I get it right.

If you listen to turkeys a lot, you will notice that the woods is not a good place to carry on a conversation. It is hard to hear; the wind and the terrain mixes things up. Turkeys do not have Facebook. If they hear a hen saying she is dying for a date, that hen may be a quarter mile away. A cedar thicket may have the wind blowing through it somewhere in between. If they do not get the response they expect, gobblers may get on their bicycles and come looking.

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