Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting What's everybody hunting?

Merriams, Rios and hybrids.

Travel a little to deep east Texas and there are some Easterns. Everywhere else, Rio Grande.

Jack

Rios mostly. Will hit Easterns in Arkansas and maybe Louisiana. Hopefully hit CO and NM for Merriams as well.

That's cool. We call them "personality turkeys", the last one to fall was named "Charles Manson". He was seemingly un killable and drove my hunting partner and I crazy for a couple of years (as you say it may not have even been the same bird but it was fun to think that it was). His mistake was pitching out in a cow pasture in front of my partner and strutted, walking straight away-I was on the ridge above him and my partner set up below him. I could hear him gobble as he walked away then BOOM!! my partner crawled on his belly through the wet grass and gained enough ground to kill him. I heard him yell out "I got you now you son of a *&%&!!"

He and Charles were soaking wet. Good times.

We can just ride the tractor behind the house, out by the hay rings where theyre scratching most days. Just pick one out and pop him with some squirrel load. Ya know, kinda like auodad hunting.
Suppose theyre easterns. Whatever TWRA stocked. All i know is they are a menace. Several different broods of 50-80 birds, maybe 4-5 different flocks, I've accidently bush hogged a hen once nesting.


Anyway, Dont have to get up at 3am, drive to the Happy hills pay-hunt ranch, plop down $1200...nothing like that.


Good times

good luck everyone

Easterns on heavy hunted public lands where birds have heard every call known to man sold at Wal-Mart.
And the fools can't kill em and complain about smart birds.
Go silent and be patient.........

Outside of al hilla iraq in late March 2003 , my platoon got a frago to go clear some AA sites by some mud hut arab chyt hole village

Locate the sites, been taken out by air force CBU munitions
Uxo all over the place. Call up for EOD. Go back to village , place out security on rotation plan.
Platoon taking a break basically , 4hrs before EOD can get their.
Out of the blue I start hearing gobbling, I'm like WTF???? Take my RTO and 2 joes looking for this bird
Some haji had him in a high fence in the backyard. Frigging eastern with about a 8 inch beard and 3/4th" inch spurs.
Old dudes breeder tom , bunch of hens and poults all around
Chickens , geese , ducks, place was an avian zoo for gawds sakes
Offered old dude 35 bucks American if he would let me whack his tom with my m4
All thru half assed sign language , I think he almost considered it.
I would have cut that fuggers beard off and cut his feet off at the knee joint if he would have let me shoot that bird.
Killed me listening to that fugger gobbling his fool head off until we left the place
PL and my squad leaders and some of my joes egging me on about it
They all got some good chuckles on me about that bird

Only pay hunt I ever considered . Hahahahaa!!!

Easterns here. Habitat and terrain is the common factor in how to go about trying to kill one.
Blue ridge mountain birds with no openings or agriculture can be tough to locate and connect with.
The latter part of the season is better for me in the mountains.

Best time of day to hunt around ftcky and Montgomery county
Is midday after 10- 1030 in the morning
Most hunters have left the woods over calling birds gobbling their heads off
Giving em a free education.
Locked up with hens in the morning. Hens start going to nest pretty regular after the 2nd week of the season late morning
Toms are looking for hens all day
Put out a hen deke or 2
3-5 yelps followed by 2 clucks (hen mating call)
Bout 2 times an hour
Usually a tom will show to scope stuff out.

Or hunt in the rain or just after a rain
Buy a camo rainsuit
Turkeys hate being in the woods in hard rain
Cuts down on their hearing and vision makes em insecure
They hit feilds to feel safe
And most hunters around here don't do rain
I have spent hours under a hooch in severe storms
waiting on birds . It has paid off many times
Nothing like seeing birds hit a feild shaking off like wet
dogs and then seeing your deke and they work their way in.

Get in well before daylight
Set out a deke or 2 bout 35 yards out in a feild in prominent
spot where it can been seen for along ways.
Set up a hooch, bout 15 feet in the woodline
Thunder and lightning get em gobbling sometimes
Wait em out, don't call
Some tree yelps real soft in the semi darkness if they gobble
And espically if their are a bunch of toms sounding off just enough to get
attention once maybe twice and shutdown on em and wait till fly down
Might be at dawn or 9am , they decide that.

Imitating a hen that is vocal with a tom around her
Sound for sound will usually piss her off enough that she will
come to ya wanting to fight the sleazy bitch in the woods trying
to steal her boyfriend

Tracked up rain filled ruts filled up with
Pollywogs late season are good places to hang out
And wait. Turkeys around here eat the heck outta pollywogs

Running and gunning
Use terrain masking or stay put if ya have terrain and hear one on the other side of something
Might have hens with him and chances of calling him off hens he sees to go look for one
He hears but can't see can be an exercise in futility
If he ain't got hens with and is gobbling like crazy or several are doing it
Just stay put and wait em out, they wanta see to commit
They might be silent and coming in or might come running in fast to beat others

Big mature pines with fly down into mature hardwoods are good spots in the morning
Specially if ya know they roost those places regularly.
Soft tree yelps , fly down cackle , couple excited yelps and cutts with one decent
Series of assembly yelps.
Shut down and wait

Calling to hens randomly mid afternoon
Nothing seemingly around

Loud and I mean really loud assembly yelps , loud clucks, if hens show use some loud putts to
let em know I see you come see me i am the deke over here
Use 2-3 different calls to make it sound like a bunch of hens are around
Work a mouth call and slate at the same time
Call loud for 30-45 seconds bout 3 times an hour
You might be real surprised what shows up from seemingly nothing and what might be
with hens tie that in with evening feeding time is one Many hunters don't pay attention too
Hunting late in the day can pay off big time
One of the least hunted time of day
A deke in a feild at 3pm and sit till an hour before Sundown can pay off.

It's amazing what a bird with the brain the size of a grape can put ya thru at times
They are all different for sure.
Worst are the Judas birds you have to kill to move onto the next
I have had that obsession many times to kill one specific bird playing stump the dummy
with me. A bird like that can make or break a season being obsessed trying to kill him.
But you get a feeling of satisfaction when he is dead.and you can move on to another.



Places I hunt some of the toms hear a call 200 yds out in an open feild and they will literally run back into the woods
That's when I go into silent bob deke mode for a day or couple of days.
Btdt.
Gawd I could go on and on and on.
If you try to use every part of their behavior they do thru their day to day life
You can kill alot more birds than just doing the morning only game
Specially on hard hunted public lands.
Turkey hunting is addictive.........

😃😃😃😃😃
Hahahahaa!!!

What about setting up one of those ridiculous "double bull" 2 man tents out in the middle of a 60 acre hay field. And sit inside there for 4 fuggin hours blowing every Turkey Thugs reed, slate, and hooter call known to the the Drury Brothers or michael waddel. The Wal Mart starter pack

Then when the next hunter comes, the birds are call-shy as a mfker.

Good bless the teachers , frigging birds suck up the free lessons.

You know things are fugged up when ya see a tom 250 yds away and your good and ain't been spotted one
one bit so Ya decide to give him a couple of cackles or 3 yelps to get his attention and play him from their
depending on how he acts.
And that mofo periscopes his neck straight up and you can swear you heard him say
"Beep- beep" like the road runner and haul azz with a dust trail at mach 1 back in the woods.

That's the type of bird to set a deke out on and never call too.
He will make a mistake eventually. Might Take a couple of days, might only be one
Educated birds like that need some #6 bad.....
If he was a good sized bird it would be worth putting some time in on him
Btdt......
Alot of times if you can get a deke out fast after they haul azz like that they will come back in an hour or 2.
Alot of people will think the game has stopped for the day and leave.

These 2 homemade scratch box calls have killed late season birds
that have heard every wally world call ever sold.

I am pretty sure the birds I hunt in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho are mutts.

They're supposedly mainly merriams, but I know I have killed at least 2 birds in Idaho with strong eastern traits. There's also supposedly some Rios there, especially by Lewiston. Most folks in the Bitterroot Valley claim that the east side of the valley has merriams and the west side of the valley has easterns, but I have killed birds on both sides with both traits. 2 inch spurs (easterns), short stubby spurs (merriams), dark tail feather bases (eastern), white tail feather bases (merriams) and many combinations there of.

I really want to chase an osceola one day.