Even though no early morning hunt has ever failed to provide me something entertaining to see or hear from God’s Creation, the older I get, the more difficult it has become to drag my aging carcass out of a warm bed to head to the deer blind or the turkey woods. Yet here I sat, bundled-up on my camp chair in the chilly darkness, hoping to at least figure-out where to best get a shot at a strutting gobbler another day, if nothing else.
I hunt on family-owned ground where there has been a small flock of turkeys every year since I can remember, but those turkeys are also notoriously hard to hunt in the morning. They roost in a several acre woodlot / pasture where they are difficult to get near unseen and unheard, plus there are several different directions available for them to go once they’re on the ground for the day.
I had built myself a small makeshift blind, just enough to break-up my silhouette, in an area of trees and overgrowth along a drainage ditch that stuck out into the surrounding wheat field. In the meager light from my headlamp, lugging my shotgun, decoy and chair, I clamored down a steep bank and followed the drainage for a hundred yards to where the brushy area stuck out into the field. I put the decoy out beyond the trees where it could be seen from where the turkeys would begin their day, then began making my way to the blind. In the daylight, I had tried to clear a path, but on this unusually calm morning, the leaves and debris littering the ground surely made every measured step I took sound like fireworks to roosted turkeys. I found the blind, sank into my chair, adjusted my shooting stick to hold the shotgun at the right height then sat quietly to listen.
In the darkness, three gobblers began to rustle around, gobbling at every noise. I sat facing north, and the turkeys were roosted a couple hundred yards to my right. When the sun had crawled up onto the horizon enough to see around me, I used a box call to shout out my best imitation of a sad lonely hen, hoping to cause the three lovesick gobblers to see my decoy as a lost lady they could corral into their harem. I had two calls that each made different pitched sounds, and I tried to alternate between the two to give the three “fellas” different sounds to think about.
There is possibly no greater debate among spring turkey hunters than what calls to use, and when & how often to use them. I probably call too often, but when a tom is constantly gobbling, I have a hard time sitting there quietly and not answering his every cry. The other camp says that once the tom knows the decoy is there, calling sparingly better entices him to approach her, which is exactly what I wanted.
I could hear that two of the toms had gone the other direction and were probably in a nearby hayfield, but the third hung around. I only got occasional glimpses of him through the trees, but I could tell he was gobbling, strutting and moving back-and-forth like a mechanical target at a carnival shooting range. Finally, after a good twenty minutes of acting like he was “all-that” in hopes of enticing what he saw as a “lost hen” to come to him, the gobbler went completely silent. Now, I have read many stories by turkey hunters who have given up on a gobbler when they suddenly became silent, only to later catch them sneaking quietly up on them and their decoy. I gingerly clicked the safety of the shotgun off and watched the edge of the trees and brush intently. Sure enough, there he came, slowly but steadily making his way along the trees toward what he saw as a hen he could claim as his own. He would take a few steps, then stop and fan his tail out completely, strut around a little then go forward some more. The decoy was placed well past where I sat so as not to draw attention to me, and when he passed me, I harvested my spring turkey. He was a nice young bird, probably hatched last year, that will taste great on the smoker.
The antics of wild turkey gobblers in the spring is something that must be seen to believe, so even if they can’t yet hunt, take a kid along turkey hunting to enjoy the show; trust me, they’ll be hooked. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].
