"OUTSMARTING GOBBLERS WITH YOUR INSTINCTS"

Nothing is more enjoyable to me than an old "classic" turkey hunt. The type of hunt you picture in your mind lying in bed the night before your hunt. You are set up 80 yards from the roost at first light just as the gobbler starts to wake the woods with his thundering gobbles. You are so excited that your peg trembles as you give your first tree yelps on your slate call. Twenty minutes go by before the mighty gobbler hits the ground and answers your call. Giving excited cuts and yelps as the gobbler answers with gobbles and double gobbles as he slowly approaches. As he reaches
forty yards you fear he will see the steam of your breath or hear your heartbeat. He closes into your decoy I dancing his dance and strutting his stuff. As he reaches twenty yards you give a single cluck to bring him out of strut to expose his neck for the shot. As you begin to squeeze
the trigger - "RRRRRING" (the alarm goes off). WAKE UP! This dream doesn't always come true.

So what do you do when you've given your best calls and the gobbler ignores everything you do and runs off with his hen? Go home for some much needed sleep? No way! You need to reverse the situation back in your favor by using your natural hunting instincts as you would if you had to survive in the wilderness. Being a turkey hunting guide has helped me to come up with some of my own successful hunting tactics by using my instincts and observing turkey behavior in the wild. Some of these tactics include drives, ambush, stalking, imitating the sounds of a flock of turkey, and using the cautious nature of the wild turkey to my benefit.

Have you ever heard of a turkey drive? Do you not drive other game? Why not turkey? When all else has failed and I have nothing to lose, I use it.

To have an effective turkey drive, its important to try and use a natural barrier to pin the birds in on one side such as a river, swamp, or narrow woods. This idea came to me while on a hunt with a client. We were hunting a smart trophy class gobbler who had lived his whole life on state land. If that doesn't educate a bird in a hurry, nothing does. As I called the gobbler would answer with double gobbles, but would not come in. This went on for about an hour. I then tried other tactics that have worked in the past such as purring, and scratching the ground to make the gobbler think the hen was too busy feeding to come in. When that didn't work, I changed calling location thinking maybe there was an obstacle in his way. As I started calling with another type of call to sound like a different turkey, he double and triple gobbled, but still would not come any closer. This time I got up and walked in the opposite direction and pulled out a diaphragm call and a push button call. I would use them simultaneously to sound like two hens leaving the gobblers territory. This usually gets them. I mean what gobbler could resist the thought of strutting around with a "chick" under each wing? As I called he let loose a mighty gobble, but then I also heard no less than two real hens firing up next to him. No wonder he wouldn't move. Now I really had to dig down and think hard. What could I do that
the previous hundred hunters didn't do?

Knowing that the turkeys probably would not cross the river they were following, I decided to try a one man turkey drive using the river as a barrier on one side. I positioned my hunter thirty yards from the river out of sight from the turkeys. I then put on a florescent orange hat for safety reasons and done a large loop around the birds. Once in position I showed myself to the birds who were about 70 yards away. They quickly turned and hurried back the way they came, which I now find to be common on drives. I stayed 80 yards off the river and about 80 - 100 yards behind the birds. If I had been on the river, they could've slipped between me and my hunter. If I would've ran toward them, they would've taken to flight. I just walked slowly and they moved in the direction I wanted them to. As they approached to within 80 yards of the hunter, I stopped and waited for the shot I hoped would come. It came along with a lot of hooping and hollering. From that point on, this has been a deadly tactic.

Ambushing game has been around since the beginning of time, yet you hardly hear of this highly successful method. To use it to its fullest potential, it helps to have the birds daily routine patterned. To do this, I like to find a back woods road that the turkeys are traveling. Once I find their tracks in the sand, I'll come back in the evening and mess them up. I'll return at 10 AM the next morning. If there are fresh tracks, I'll mess them up again and come back at 8 AM. If there are no tracks at that time, I can assume that the birds are coming through between sun up and 8 AM and can set up my ambush. Turkeys are birds of habit, if undisturbed, they will pretty much follow the same routine day after day.

You can also ambush/stalk turkeys in more open areas such as farm fields, or open woods by using terrain to your advantage. Ditches, river cuts, and hills can hide your movements all together allowing you to position yourself in front of the oncoming birds.

One particular hunt comes to mind. A client and I had worked a gobbler who was with two hens for about an hour. The gobbler wasn't about to leave his hens for a turkey sound he heard in the woods. Therefore, I called out to the hens. I gave aggressive cuts trying to get one to challenge me. In the past I've gotten them to come in with the gobbler in tow by using this method. Not this time. They just kept feeding slowly to the west. I did notice that they were moving toward a small creek that ran through the field. I figured if we got down on our hands and knees and crawled into a position in front of them, we would have a better than average chance of getting that gobbler. As we crawled into position getting our glove and pants soaked, I carefully peaked over the crest. The birds were only fifty yards away coming straight at us. As they reached twenty yards the shot rang out, the gobbler dropped, and high fives were in order. Using the lay of the land and getting out in front of the birds are always a key to success on any turkey hunt.
Ridge runners as I call them are no exception. Ridge runners are birds that roost on ridge tops. They are fairly predictable in that when they fly down from the roost, they will run the ridge top for a while before going on with their daily routine.

The key here is to determine which way they go when they fly off the roost. Once this is determined, I like to set up eighty yards from the roost in the direction they want to travel. This can sometimes result in a quick hunt. Again we are using the hill side as a natural barrier (they do not like going down hill), we are setting up in the direction they want to travel. If they circle you, they can only do it in one direction which is not a problem if you are positioned to swing your gun correctly.

Most of the time with the above mentioned tactics I can harvest a ridge runner, but sometimes they humble me and throw a curve ball. Such was the case on one of my own hunts. My father came along as my cameraman trying to get the bowhunt on tape. The morning started off like most others with the birds gobbling at the crack of dawn sending chills down my spine. No matter how many hunts I go on, that sound never gets old. I tree yelped to let the gobbler know that I was there. He responded with many gobbles. I looked back at the camera and gave a thumbs up figuring we would have action as soon as the gobbler hit the ground. Well, it ended up this gobbler had six hens with him, and the hens didn't care to share their man with anymore hens, so they took off in the opposite direction. The next morning found us set up on the other side of the roost this time. I decided not to do any calling and just let them come by, well what do you think they done? They went the other way. No wonder I'm losing hair.

I only had one more day to hunt before I had to leave. I could've just put my father on the other side of the roost and at the very least have had him drive the birds my way. I still wanted the hunt filmed. What we really needed was a third person which we didn't have. My brother was supposed to be there, but he made a scheduling error and could not be there. I said "Freddy is a dummy" and my father said "that's it! we'll use a dummy". We constructed a scare crow named Freddy and put him out that night on the other side of the roost. As the birds woke and gobbled, I gave out a few tree yelps and went silent. When it became fly down time, the birds went in the opposite direction again, only this time Freddy was there to greet them. I could just hear that gobbler as he saw Freddy for the first time, "what the hell?" The gobbler didn't want any part of Freddy as he followed his tracks back to me. I drew my bow as he went behind a tree a twenty yards and released when he came out. The arrow found its mark as the bird only ran twenty yards and dropped. I could say after the fact that I had a great time, and had it not been for some unusual tactics, this bird would still be out there.

There are few things more satisfying than see your own plans work, unconventional or not. I still prefer the "classic" turkey hunt when it presents itself, but for the times it don't, it's still rewarding to use your instincts and skill to outsmart one of the most elusive creatures on this earth, the wild turkey.