The Early Birds: Spring Turkey Tips
It’s time to get ready for the spring turkey season! Here’s the latest tips and tactics that will help you...
By Bob Humphrey Fine-Tune Your Calls
Your new call might run fine out of the box, but these three tips will improve your chances at the moment of truth. Slate Calls
The tone of a slate call can change depending on where you apply your striker. On any slate, you’ll tend to get higher-pitched notes toward the perimeter. A real slate–one made of stone, not glass or aluminum–will vary in density across its surface. This results in random variances in tone. There may be spots that sound flat when plucked with a striker, but there will also be sweet spots. When you find one, notch the wooden rim adjacent to the spot so you can find it with your thumb.
Steve Hickoff, author of Turkey Calls & Calling (Stackpole, 2009) and a contributor to OL’s Strut Zone blog (outdoorlife.com/blogs/strut-zone), sometimes trims the tape around his diaphragm calls for a better fit. “A little goes a long way here,” he stresses. “If the mouth call you’ve purchased doesn’t fit right in the roof of your mouth, take a small pair of scissors–I use the kind found in fly-tying shops–and start trimming. Take off a small amount and try calling with it. If it still doesn’t fit, trim a bit more, but be careful–you can ruin a call this way, too.” Hickoff suggests cutting back the sides of the call first and then the back curve, trying for a fit that conforms to the roof of your mouth. “Some companies provide smaller mouth calls, including youth models, to fit smaller palates, so be sure to research your options,” says Hickoff.
There are a couple of things hunters should look for on their box calls, says Ray Eye, host of “Chasing Spring” (outdoorlife.com/chasing spring). “Screws can back out slightly or the calling edge can wear down just enough for the call to lose its tone,” he says. “Center the lid on the apex of the calling edge. If the lid balances on the sidewall, you’re good to go. If not, adjust the screw slightly to center both edges.” Use a black pen to mark the screw’s starting position by drawing a straight line across the screw and onto the box lid. “Next turn the screw clockwise slightly, not even a quarter-inch. Try the call. If there is a worn spot or if the screw has loosened from use, this alteration should get you back into proper alignment. If not, turn the screw back the other way slightly past your mark.” If neither works, Eye recommends you turn the screw back to its original (marked) spot and clean the call’s edges with a very fine steel wool or sandpaper.
Shotguns were originally designed for wingshooting, where you swing through a target and slap the trigger. Turkey guns require more precise aiming and squeezing of the trigger, much like a rifle. Timney Triggers recently released a new Trigger Fix that will fit most Remington 870s. The kit includes a sear and three pull-weight springs, so you can choose from a light, medium or heavy spring, then fine-tune the pull weight with a hex wrench (included) for a precise setting. The end result is a much more accurate shot. Installation is easy with included instructions. ($90; timneytriggers.com)
During spring, a tom turkey’s life is ruled by two emotions: lust and jealousy. Okay, turkeys don’t really have emotions; but it’s the easiest way to explain how to exploit the birds’ tendencies at this time of year. Jealousy is often a stronger emotion than lust. A tom might come to a hen decoy. Add a jake decoy, and the odds go up quickly. Position the hen decoy in a squatted, ready-to-breed posture, and the setup gets even hotter. Stick the jake just behind or on top of the hen, as if he is mounting her, and your spread becomes all but irresistible.
The only thing that fires up a tom more than a precocious jake is a rival tom, which explains the increased popularity of full-body, full-strut tom decoys. They may occasionally intimidate younger, subordinate birds, but when conditions are right, older, more dominant birds will trip over their beards running in to trounce the perceived rival. Photo: Threat
As anyone who’s used stuffers (actual mounted birds) as decoys will attest, realism is very effective when you’re trying to entice gobblers into range. However, for those of us who can’t afford $500 decoys, there are alternatives. Flambeau started the trend of using taxidermy-quality heads on its Master Series foam-body decoys, and then improved it with “flocked” hard-body dekes. The latest advancement is Carry-Lite’s Bob’n Tail HD turkey decoy ($60; carrylitedecoys.com), which features a head molded from a real freeze-dried turkey head. It has a poly-lycra “skin” printed with high-definition digital photography of an actual turkey’s feathers, which conforms to the realistic contours of each decoy’s body. The tail of the Bob’n Tail tom even moves in a natural, lifelike manner.
When a turkey senses danger, it does one of two things: It flees the scene or it freezes. It should be no surprise, then, that motionless decoys sometimes spook turkeys. Conversely, decoy motion can often be a clinching factor in whether a gobbler comes within range or hangs up. Most artificial decoys are designed so they’ll move passively with the wind, which works okay when there’s some wind, but not too much. Adding deliberate motion increases your odds of success. There are many devices available, but home-made contraptions are limited only by your own imagination. The key is to make the decoy move when and how much you want it to. The deadliest setup features a full-body, full-fan decoy that moves the same way a real strutter does. Photo: threat
Spring is breeding season–the turkey rut, if you will. How you should call, use decoys and hunt in general depends on which stage of the rut you’re hunting. Pre-Rut Most turkey seasons are scheduled to begin after the majority of hens have been bred, so you typically won’t experience early pre-rut stages during your season. Still, in a year when spring arrives late in the North, or on some early Southern hunts, you might. Toms and hens, which have been apart all winter, begin reaquainting themselves and forming flocks. Toms gobble mostly from the roost, and spend much of the day strutting their stuff for large hen flocks.
As the days grow longer, competition heats up among the males and we experience what biologists sometimes refer to as the first gobbling peak. Toms gobble fervently for the first hour or so, trying to attract mates; then they spend much of the day displaying for and mating with those that show up. Subordinate males driven off by the boss tom might gobble more throughout the morning as they search for lonesome, unmated hens. At the peak of the turkey rut, the boss gobbler has assembled his harem. He still gobbles from the roost, but typically shuts up once his feet hit the ground. The classic henned-up tom has what he wants and is nearly impossible to call. However, subordinate satellite birds begin searching in earnest for hens, and can be downright suicidal when coming to a call. Photo: Threat
As the hens complete their clutches, they spend increasingly less time with the flock. Then one day the old boss tom wakes up and finds himself alone. He begins searching anew for any unmated hens. This signifies the second gobbling peak. He also might travel farther and wider in search of unbred hens, sometimes stumbling into unfamiliar territory. Knight & Hale’s “Turkey Hunting Gobbler Guide” is a handy reference book designed to help you determine which stage or transition period your turkeys are in. It’s no longer in print, but there are copies available on eBay and Amazon.
You don’t need calls to kill a turkey. Sometimes, in fact, you’re better off without them. Gabe Jerome, a guide at Turkey Trot Acres in New York, is a master of the silent kill, and one of his specialties is the turkey hunter’s bane, a henned-up tom. What’s his secret? Photo: flythebirdpath
By Ray Eye Spring turkey hunters are programmed from years of turkey-hunting lore to hen yelp to a gobbling tom inside the short time frame of the mating season. To these conditioned hunters, hunting quality seems to be determined by an abundance of gobbling, a majority of hens on the nest and love-struck two-year-old toms running in to anything that sounds remotely like a female. Anything outside this “perfect world” has hunters all across America grumbling that something is wrong with the turkeys. State wildlife agencies attempt to set spring turkey seasons during the time when a majority of the mating is completed and most hens are on the nest, but Mother Nature doesn’t attend agency meetings, and more often than not, this window of opportunity is closed during the limited time many hunters have available. Early-season hunting prior to mating–or even during mating–guarantees a ton of competition from hens for gobblers, making life miserable for turkey hunters who rely only on the basic hen yelp to fool lonely toms.
Hunters facing a late spring or a turkey season that begins prior to spring green-up will be familiar with big flocks of turkeys that have not yet broken up into smaller groups. During this phase, with gobblers fighting for social status within the flock, hen yelps are not effective, so a hunter must be willing to change his status within the pecking order. During this time frame, I use gobbler yelping, aggressive purring and gobbler cutting. I utilize my fall turkey hunting skills; I call tom-to-tom with gobbler talk. I’ve been killing gobblers all across America with this calling tactic for more than 30 years. A good friction call is an excellent choice for gobbler yelping; just lengthen your hen yelps. Gobblers know what it is. The reaction from challenging toms is much the same as you’d get using strutting decoys. These decoys are very good when used in conjunction with gobbler yelping. It’s also important to roost early-season birds, get in tight and call aggressively.
Every early-season hunter has experienced gobblers that are covered up with hens, which lead the tom away the minute they hear a hen call. There are several tactics to implement during this henned-up phase. The first is to use the pecking order again, but this time by challenging the ladies. Forget the gobbler; call to the hens. You want to answer their replies note for note, but respond with more feeling and emotion. Call in a yelping, irate hen, and the rest of the flock–including the gobbler–will follow.
It’s time to get ready for the spring turkey season! Here’s the latest tips and tactics that will help you get your bird.
