Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Field turkey question

So I'm from Alabama where the terrain is rolling ridges and bottoms (we call them hollers) and you almost need a machete to hack your way through the vegetation. It's all thick stuff, kudzu, vines, pine plantations, some hardwood et cetera.

This is my first season hunting western Kentucky. After 4 days of getting my butt kicked by educated birds out at land between the lakes, I decided I'd hit up a buddies farm where he says he's got some turkeys roosted.

We setup on the edge of a grown up weedy corn field just before sunrise. About 5 minutes after sunrise I hear gobblers all down the left side of the field, all down the right side of the field, in the field behind me, and on the next farm over! Sure enough, 1 enormous Tom, 4-5 jakes, and about 8 hens fly down and link up in the middle of the field just off to our right. Then another group comes in from the adjacent farm about the same size. We sit for a while dumbfounded, and when the birds started meandering across the middle of the field about 80 yards from us, I decided to try and do a little calling with my slate just to let them know we were there. We had a jake and a hen decoyed about 30 yards from us between the turkeys and the field edge where we were setup. Very softly, I started purring and clucking. Just enough to let them know we were there. I'll be danged if I didn't hear another Tom behind us strutting and drumming! My buddy said we didn't have permission to hunt that field and not to worry about it. About 10 minutes later third group about the same size as the first too enters the field from our right.

I'm now looking at what can only be described as a field full of wild turkeys. It looked like a winter flock. There were like 8-10 gobblers I'd have been happy as a pig in [bleep] to shoot and tote over my shoulder back to the house. They couldn't have cared less about my calling, and why would they? There was like 20 hens to breed right there.

We don't hunt like this back home. I've never seen a flock of turkeys like this in the spring.

1. How do I get them away from the hens?

2. I'm considering dominant gobbler decoys with fans that move, maybe something like the primos chicken on a stick. Is this a viable strategy.

3. If none of this works does somebody have a silenced 223 or 22-250 I can borrow?

I have seen the same thing this year, I can't put my finger on it either.
The way it has worked for me this year is to call and piss a hen off. When she comes to kick my butt, she will bring a tom with her.

I've found it hard to get a gobbler away from a hen until later in the morning when she will hopefully go to nest before I have to be out of the woods.

Like pullit said, sometimes she'll come to investigate and bring her boyfriend with her.

I usually hunt with my son or a buddy and one of us usually has a 22-250 for just such an occasion or a rainy day when the birds like to feed in the middle of a field.

Lately...the last two years anyway, I've been setting up in the middle of the field, 30yds off the woodline where the birds were coming out.

It worked to perfection the last two years. If they come out of the same spot, or nearly so, daily, try the same thing.

don't be afraid to change calls, from slate to mouth diaphragm, for instance. Sometimes that's all it takes. If you didn't have a full strut decoy, then that's a good switch up for next time out too. Every time that I've had turkeys come to a set up of mine when I had both hen/s and full strut decoys out, the turkeys always go to the full strutter, so be sure it's in range.
One problem I've run into in the situation you speak of, is that a bunch of jakes get to my decoy/s first and knock'em over before any of the toms get to the set up. This year, when that happened, I settle my 10 yard pin on the offender and stuck an arrow in him.
Other thing is, use a blind and set up in the middle of the field. The blind simply doesn't bother them. That's how we do it all the time, but we are using archery gear.

I've killed field birds by gobbling at them.

A really good jake decoy next to a really good hen decoy can work well with the gobbling. Zink makes some that fit the bill.

Last effort for me is to call and cutt alot. It's a gamble as it can push them, but it can also pull hens or a tom out. Killed many field birds in large flocks with really aggressive calling.

The main thing of all is being where they want to be. Sometimes it takes a couple days in a new place to find where the field birds like to hang out(enter, exit, mingle, etc).

Be where the turkeys want to go. Sometimes it takes a whole season to figure that out.

Steve.

Get a goose type field blind, layout blind. Use the decoys and bang away.

when on private property i too have gone the route of challenging the Toms with a gobble call and decoy. sometimes the Tom will come in looking for a fight and sometimes the hens will come in to check out the "new guy" and bring the Toms with them. however it should be noted with caution it could also bring in another hunter. which is why i would never try that if hunting public land.