[/quote]
Would someone please explain the dog method of turkey hunting. Had never heard of it.
The Black Hills are pretty thick terrain. The prairie not so much.
[/quote]
If you grew up hunting pheasants and grouse without a dog then you know how much walking and blindly kicking the bushes is involved in hopes of getting the occasional bird to flush. Searching for a roaming flock of turkeys in the woods can be just as challenging but using a dogs nose and ability to cover ground greatly improves your chances to state the obvious. A dogs speed and barking also improve the chances of scattering the flock in as many directions as possible. The birds from a scattered flock are typically very vocal and eager to reassemble which makes it easier to call them back to the area from which they were flushed. A person trying to flush a flock of turkeys more often than not only succeeds in pushing the flock in one direction away from the approaching hunter where they quickly reassemble and the odds of calling either larger groups or the entire flock back toward you is much slimmer than a lone “lost” bird. In the thick Black Hills terrain you mentioned, a dog would work well. In the open prairie not so much if the turkeys can see the dog approaching from a distance since they’re going to all take off together in the opposite direction like I mentioned above.
If you have a dog that likes to range quite a distance or you hunt in areas where your line of sight is limited it helps to have a GPS tracking collar on the dog. When you hear the dog barking on the flush you can mark the spot to know where you need to go set up and call.
That’s the basic gist of it along with what Yoder said. LFC definitely has far more knowledge and experience on this topic than I do so I welcome any corrections he may have if if I misspoke about anything.
