Which is harder: Deer or Turkey?

Which is harder: hunting deer or hunting turkey? This is just one man’s perspective. I know this is going to have a lot of different opinions. However, I’ve been at both for nearly 40 years, so maybe I can at least lend a valid opinion.

Twenty years ago, I would have said they were both hard to do. Why they were hard had nothing to do with the animals themselves. It all had to do with my lifestyle and my hunting opportunities.

No animals to hunt

This is first and foremost. It sounds silly, but make sure there is enough game to hunt, otherwise it can be really hard. Remember that I started hunting in Reagan’s first term. Back then there were not as many deer and turkey around. I had to drive 3 hours over to Hocking Hills to hunt. The land had both deer and turkey, but it was not like it is today. I did not see a turkey for the first 5 years that I hunted them. Deer populations seem to grow faster than turkeys. By the late ’80s there were huntable populations of turkey within an hour’s drive of the house. Deer were always around, but their numbers grew. Deer were also much more acclimated to people.

No place to hunt
Starting out, I had to either drive for hours or I had to constantly dig for places. I would get permission to hunt for a year or two and something would happen– the land would be sold, or somebody’s brother-in-law wanted to hunt or. . . it was always something. I did not like hunting public land, because, no matter where I went, I could scout endlessly and find the perfect spot only to find the turnout filled with trucks on The Opener. With turkey, I had too many instances of folks hunting me by mistake.

No time to hunt

I was a busy YUFFIE (Young Urban Failure) with dreams of a career when I got started. I thought I could hunt deer a few half-days a month. I usually hunted turkey one weekend during the season. Yeah, you can see where that was going.

THEN I GOT THE FARM

Having 200 acres all to myself was a huge boon. I bought the place thinking deer, but I distinctly remember KYHillChick and me running into a hen and poults crossing the road on the way out that first time seeing the farm. That was July 2001. I knew I was onto something. It turned out the deer and the turkey were fairly huntable. I filled two deer tags my first year and filled a turkey tag the next spring. I also started burning a week’s vacation a year on turkey hunting and later did the same for deer.

The next two decades have seen me blossom as a hunter. I ended up a pro-staffer for deer and turkey magazines as well as turkey call manufacturer.

SO WHICH IS HARDER, SHAMAN?

For me, hunting deer was fairly easy to master. It came down to two basic axioms:

1) Find the deer beds. Find where they are feeding. Draw a line. Hunt somewhere along that line that is most advantageous to you.

2) The other thing that makes a world of difference is keeping the doe happy. If you have happy doe groups, you will have good hunting. If the doe stops feeling safe around your place, it won’t be a good year.

It took about 3 years to get that straightened out in my head. Once I did, I was pretty well able to hunt deer. Everyone at camp usually has good opportunities to fill their tags with nice bucks.

Turkeys were a whole other story. I still feel like a duffer, and probably always will. Since 2001, I’ve been fairly consistent filling my tags, but it is only through dogged determination and . . . ( who am I kidding here!) Dumb luck.

Years ago, I read an article about the evolution of a turkey hunter. From gobblers 1-20, he’s trying to absorb as much as he can from everyone around him. From 20-40 gobblers, he’s telling everyone else how to hunt. At 40 gobblers, the hunter has finally learned he still doesn’t know squat and finally shuts up. There’s a lot of truth there.

What I will way is that for all my hard work, research, and ground time, after 20 years I still cannot predict when gobblers are going to be ready to come to my calls. Some days look perfect, and there is nothing but silence. Other days, sometimes with miserable conditions, the gobblers suddenly turn on and before mid-morning, they’re climbing up my leg.

Timewise, Turkeys eat up far more time than deer. Up until about a decade ago, I was able to be quite successful limiting my deer hunting to weekends. With turkeys, I generally need a whole week off to do nothing but hunt. Some years not even that is enough. Some of that is just the weather, but a lot of it has to do with the basic perversity of the bird. Deer will generally come to feed at the same spot at least a couple times a week. With turkeys, you have maybe 2-3 days a season where you can kill a given gobbler, and there is no predicting when those days will come.

For me, the act of deer hunting is a matter of logistics. If I can put myself in the right spot at the right time and keep myself there without getting cold and hungry or hot and sweaty or whatever, I’ll see deer. If I’m lucky, I’ll see a big buck. Smart preparation and good execution go a long way to success.

Turkey? Logistics are nothing. I can scout a gobbler for a week, and even get him coming to me with just the right call. Something happens. He hangs up, a hen intercepts him– whatever. He’s gone. I’ve had my whole season hinge on an encounter like that and . . . silence.

Qualifications and Provisos

Let me circle back to what I was saying at the beginning: no animals and no place to hunt. We have had a poacher or two encroach on our place over the years, and it does not take much for the farm to become unproductive. It is imperative that, as a landowner, you control access to your land and manage the number of deer and turkey taken. My property has been fairly consistent. My neighbor sold out a few years ago, because he had ceased to take deer and turkey from it. The difference? I have no more than 4 hunters on 200 acres. He regularly had 8 hunters on 100 acres.

Weather conditions have also played a part. We had a couple of bad years with the weather that caused the poults to die off. There is a lot going on that causes trouble with deer and turkey. Another hunter might pack up and go elsewhere. I stay on my 200 acres and take what I get. That changes the whole complexion of things. Given these situations:

1) Deer seem to be the easy-going ones. They filter back right away. They have 4 legs and are constantly moving, and doe tend to break off from their mothers’ herd in August and strike out on their own. If the woods get empty from poaching, or habitat change, or Blue-Tongue or whatever, the deer will come back if you have patience.

2) Turkey are the hothouse flowers in this equation. If you put a hit on turkeys it takes at least a couple of years for them to bounce back– more if there are bad hatches involved. I have seen far more variability in my turkey flocks over the years.

So which is harder?

Deer hunting is a slog. It involves gear, planning, execution, coordination. The shot I take on a large buck is just the beginning of the process– my day is just beginning. It is hard work, but from my point of view, my success is mostly under my control.

Turkey hunting is a religious quest. I humble myself to an animal with a pea-brain and end up baring my soul to him. Even if I succeed in filling all my tags, I walk in from the field at the end of the season fully chastised and humiliated. Still, I go back again and again. Success? Even if I do succeed in my quest, I have nothing to show for it, but a 20 lb dead bird that tastes no better than a $2/lb Butterball.

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