Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting He got away. Today. (Video)

But there is always tomorrow.

Got to the woods about 3:30. Snoozed till 5:30. Headed in. Heard a very vocal bird in a tree in a ravine in the pine thicket. I was able to get into around 75 yards or so. He responded to my homemade call. But when he hit the ground, he went the other way. I tried to work my way around him but he would have gotten to private land before I could get in his path. Tomorrow, I'll be on the other side of that ravine.

LOL. I love these guys.

Good luck👍

Best of luck and great video

I'm here now. Listening to the Whipoorwils. There's a coyote howling out there somewhere. Pretty cool. I love. The country sounds.

Get'em.

I will say I never call to them while they are still in the tree, you knew he was there, no reason for it. Wait til he hits the ground and then let him know where you are at...he's more likely to check things out.

Not sure how they are where you are. But the birds where I hunt don't utter a sound after they hit the ground. Tree only. When they hit the ground, they clam up the rest of the day. I have never had one here come in gobbling. Ever. They are maddening becasue I can never really tell where they are until I see them.

I got to the ravine at 5:30AM, an hour before sunrise. Waiting until about 6:15 before I heard the first gobble. But not in the ravine. Rather, across the swamp on private land, about 75 to 100 yards away. So I set up, looking downhill, towards the swamp. I set out two decoys about 1/2 way down the slope before the ground bottoms out and runs out to the brush in the sawmp. The bird must have hit the ground, because he went dead silent. I called subtly and intermittently for about an hour facing the swamp. I had good visibility to either side. Never heard him fly across the swamp. Never heard another turkey sound at all. About an hour after he went silent, I'm sitting there contemplating my next move. Then I hear walking in the leaves over the left shoulder. It was heavy. I immediately assumed another hunter. Slowly (but apparently not slowly enough) turned my head 90 degrees left and all I saw then were turkey wings flapping and him heading back where he came from, somehwere behind me. If that was the same bird, how he got there without me seeing him I'll never know.

My view this morning. The decoys are about 20 yards down the hill, with the swamp just beyond the boittom, and private land on the other side of the water. (The ravin in the video above would be about 50 yards to my right, and it feeds into the swamp. The turkey came from my 8:00 position.



For this season, I'd like to take another bird with my .410.



Called in on my own call.



My call does sound good and yesterday I had a tom answsering back to it. I took my Dave Halloron slate with me today, but only used mine. I was using mine when that bird came in.

I have to say, my slate sounds pretty good. It's a little deeper, raspier than the Halloran. I think they both have their place. The Halloron sounds like a well refined, young, prim and proper hen. My call sounds like a hooker that smokes. Under the right circumstances, either will do.

Some gobblers like the smoky hooker sound, you never know.

Ahhhh the good ol days long live the Smokey hooker

Wait. Did someone say smoking hooker? You definitely need to market your call with that name. I’ll send you some art work to use.

Keep after it he’ll mess up again.

Cool video !!!

Brother..........we need to hunt together someday.

At 75 yards in the tree, I'm thinking that was a dead bird most days outta 10. There were just a couple things you didn't say to him..........

Best of luck hammering him the next time you meet.

If you was within 75 yards of him, you probably need to say something different if he in the tree. I have killed a few by knowing exactly the tree he was in, sitting there waiting for first light, make a light cluck or purr then get up and walk away.....making noise in the leaves....get few yards from where I am sitting and make a gobble on my box call....hurry back to where I was sitting and be ready to shoot him when he hits the ground. He thinks a gobbler is after his hen. If this is going to work, most of the time you will kill him soon as you sit back down, get you mask up, gun on knee.

I went out today. Parked the truck at 2:30 AM. Snoozed for about an hour, until 3:30 AM when another guy I am know showed up. We yacked it up in the parking lot until about 4:30 am. We worked our way into the woods at 5:00. Pitch dark. He turned up a trail to the north. I turned down to the south, the same trail I shot that video on. Set out two hen decoys in a small open turn-around area at the end of the trail. About 5:50 the gobblers started sound off. At least 4 of them at diffferent places, but far enough away that I am sure they were on private land. I called. They stayed vocal until about 6:15-6:30. When they hit the ground, like always, they went dead silent. Never heard another gobble. On top of that, there was a stray dog running around in the distance barking like mad - incessantly. The day was over at noon and I met my buddy back at the parking area. He had one start to come in but said "there was a God damned dog running around barking scared it off." He was the better part of a mile from me and I could heare that dog.

that sucks

It was a great day. Slightly overcast. Cooler than yesterday - yesterday was downright hot. I heard more gobblers today than any other day this week. Never heard a shot, anywhere. I did see a whole lot of coyote turds on the trails, one of them full fo deer hair. I heard my first coyote howling there yesterday morning at about 3:00 AM.

The season is less than a week old, and we have 4 more weeks to go. We have one more week of 1/2 day hunting then we have 3 weeks of full day. I'll more options then.

I did notice the crop fields are full of barley. They already have big seed heads on them. Do turkeys eat that?

LOL, if I was a call maker, I'd have great names for my calls:

"Smoking Hooker"
"The Milf"
"Jail Bait" or "The Baby Sitter"
"Hot Married Middle Aged School Teacher" (this would be a Jake call.)

Watch, someone will start using these names.

**

As far as hunting, I'm hunting on nearly 800 acres of state forest land, which is just one tract of several totaling about 10,000 acres. My tract ranges in elevations from 65' above sea level to a couple of feet above sea level. That's not a lot of difference, unil you start hunting and find that it is one deep ravine after another, all of them draining into a swamp. The ravines nearer the swamp are deep, and the sides are steep (cliff-like in some places). It's generally not possible to cross a ravine except where it starts and its shallow. If you want to get from one side to the other, it's typically a long hike around them.

The tract I hunt is broken habitat: oak, tupelo, poplar, maple, and beech bottomlands down in the deep parts of the ravines, which can be 50+ yards wide and hold some water (this is where most of the birds roost in the spring). The starts of the ravine, the shallow parts, are populated with laurels, which can get very thick .

On the higher ground, there was lots of stands of lobloly pines. Some groves are thinner, populated by trees 6-8 inches in diameter. Other groves have younger trees 2-4 inches in diameter. Both of them have some maple understory, as well as young holly and other green broadleaf green plants in them. I refer to these areas as the "pine thickets." The substrate is pine needles, several inches thick, with sandy soil underneath. I have found that the birds will take daytime shelter in these thickets when its cold or windy. In the winter, they will roost in these thickets. Even in winter, it's possible to find insects under the pine needles in the sandy soil.

The other major area are the clear cuts. There is one new 75-80 acre portion that was just clear cut this summer, but it is already greening up with blackberries and deer are using is heavily. Other clear cuts are nearly impenetrable thickets of 8-10 feet tall pines, and masses of mature blackberries. To make it even more uninviting, they are also filled with Devils Walking Sticks. The hens nest in this. And if you happen to flush a bird during deer season, they fly into this area. I would not have imagined that turkeys would go into this. But it's a safehouse for them. There is no going into this without the loss of blood. And I would not want to disrupt their safe spot anyways.

Around this 800 acres is private land with a mix of old hardwood trees, but mostly crop fields. All of it right now is fill with barley. I have no idea what will get planted once the barley is harvested. Corn perhaps.

Birds use this 800 acres extensively. But there seems to be no rhyme or reason (except to them) to where they will roost at night. One ravine that hold a bird or birds won't have any the next day. They will be hundreds of yards away in another ravine.

In spring, they will start gobbling well before sunrise. All of the birds, whether its distant roosters, oir song birds, start waking up and calling at about the same time. The thing about the gobblers here that is hard not to notice is that once they hit the ground, they go silent. It is extremely rare for them to gobble at all once they hit the ground. I don't know why that is. I've heard it happen, but it's rare indeed. It happened in the video above. But I am surprised. And it let me know that bird was going away from me.

That's one of the frustrating aspects of hunting these birds on this forest. There is no seeing them on the ground until they are very close. And once they go silent, it's hard, if not impossible, to tell where they are. If you get too close to them on the roost, they'll take off. I've inadvertently flushed a bird or birds off their roosts going to my deer stand in the pitch dark. They have no compunction about taking off in the dark.

It is a very challenging way to hunt turkeys. When I am successful, which isn't very often, I have a very great sense of satisfaction. When a gobbler beats me, which is most of the time, I appreciate him that much more. I actually have grown to love this style of hunting.

**

I have learned some things over the years, and I still do things wrong that I know don't work well here. I need to get back to what has worked for me in the past.

Our season starts well after the crest of breeding. But there are still some hens that aren't bred for whatever reason. Maybe they aren't fit or healthy enough to conceive, are too young, and who are looking for the opportunity, or at least for company. When hens yelp here, and I have heard it a few times in the 4 days I have hunted this spring, and have heard it in the past, it's not a few raspy yelps. It is a series of fast, desperate sounding, milky smooth, high pitched, 8-12 yelps. 5 minutes later, I hear it again. It's not another hunter. That's the way they sound here. When I think about it, every bird I've ever called in here came in to a high pitched call from a glass pot and a dense striker. My glass perfection Screamin' Demon and acryllic striker, and my Hank's glass and aluminim calls with diamondwood strikers are the calls that have brought in the birds. They replicate what I hear here the best. Not saying low, raspy yelps don't work. They do. Just saying I've gotten better reactions to high pitched creamy calling than low raspy calling.

Another thing I've noticed, my smooth, high pitched glass and aluminum pots call in the eagles and red-tailed hawks. That indicates to me, as well, that they are producing a more realistic sound, or it's better at piercing the dense woods and they can hear it better.

I had a bird come in that busted me day before yesterday and I was using my homemade call. But I didn't see it well enough to know if it was a hen, jake or tom. And I had one respond to my homemade call when it was on the roost. But it didn't come in once it hit the ground. I'll be leaving my slates at home and taking my glass and aluminum calls the rest of the season. And I'll call a few times like I hear real hens here call.

The yelps are coming mid morning. 8 to 9 AM, well after the gobbling has stopped. When I happen hear hens in the early morning, it's a few soft tree noises and a few noises when they hit the ground, along with the beating wings of the flydown. Yesterday, I took a push-pin call and my Lohman Wing-Thing to replicate that. I guess nothing heard it, or cared, but it did work last spring. Last srping, I had a longbeard tree hop to ID me on the ground. Next morning, I had one come in to that sound and dropped him.

Whenever I've been successful in years past, it was from doing what I hear, and not necessarily what the pros recommend. My own ears have been the best teacher.

I have a bad tendancy to abandon techniques that have worked for me to try things others. I need to get back to what has worked.

**

And one more thing, I HIGHLY recommend the Tom-Teaser turkey hunting bag. When it's hot, it's a life saver. It's a lot more convenient tha a vest. I guess that's why women carry purses and don't wear vests.
https://tomteasers.com/products/quick-sack

Your a marketing genius. I’d buy all those calls.

I quit using a vest years ago and just keep everything in pants pockets. I’ll take a look at the sack. Thanks.