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Spring 2020 Gobbler Season
- Thread starter woodsdog2
- Start date
I tagged out last season at 64 and 53 yrs with a lesser pattern. I don't let them get to 20, but it is shooting a baseball to softball up close. I use sights that are dialed in for sure.
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- Dec 25, 2018
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- 1,981
Great job! Good to hear!
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2018
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- 3,925
Tried a different choke tube on my 20ga Stoeger 3020 this morning for fun. Turned out to be $. This is Apex #9 TSS at 50 yards on a 12" target. Federal TSS was good, but not this good. And yes to the turkey snobs, I will shoot to 70 yds all day long. I like longer shots, they are more fun to me.
I would be happy with that pattern. At 30 yards. With a 12 gauge.
Wow
@gcr0003 - I don't know if your state permits more than one bird to be taken during the Spring season, but if they do, this may help you bag another:
Head back to where you heard/saw that second gobbler, but do so in the last hour of daylight. Use your locator calls to get a shock-gobble. Then be stealthy and sneak to within 100 yards. As best as you can, you want to pinpoint where he is, but you don't need or want to get close enough for visual confirmation. Just be careful not to get busted as you work to pinpoint his location. He will often have a few hens with him that will roost at the same spot, so there can be several sets of eyes up in the trees that can bust you if you get too close to their roost.
When they bust, you'll hear it because you're too close and those big birds are noisy leaving the roost. they'll fly quite a ways to get clear of your vicinity, and you won't find them there the next morning. Assuming you don't get busted, however, return to the same spot in the morning, quietly positioning yourself about 75 - 100 yards away from the roost well before daylight and make some super-soft "tree yelps" to see if you can verify he's still on the roost. If he is, set your decoys, setup your portable ground blind (if you use them), and sit tight. It's easy to overdo the calling when you're new to turkey hunting - especially if you get a gobble response to most of your hen yelps. So resist the urge to keep talking to the gobbler on the roost. (Believe me - he makes a mental note of where you are!) If he's with hens, you will hear more than one bird fly down within a minute or two once the first bird leaves the roost. They generally don't glide far from their roost - they sort of just flap their wings as they drop nearly straight down.
If the tom isn't with hens, that's when you will often get a "textbook hunt" ... he'll fly down and start in your direction gobbling hard. Provided that there are no obstacles between you and him, he will close the distance pretty quick and you'll get a kill. I've had a few hunts where there was a small creek or a stone wall between me and him, and he just decides he's going to strut on the other side of it and wait for the hen to come to him. (That's the way it's supposed to work) If that happens, it's best to stop calling entirely. More than once when I've done that, the tom gobbles and gobbles and gobbles because he's frustrated that the hen isn't coming in and he's trying to get her to do so. Stay completely still and don't call - just wait it out and be prepared to do so for up to an hour. (It's hard to have the discipline, but if you betray your patience and call again, he'll just gobble right back and all you will have accomplished is that you'll have hit the reset button on his mental timer for the hen to come to him.) So clam up with discipline and he'll usually get frustrated and appear to move off while he's actually circling you and moving in for a look at the location where he last heard the hen. Let him investigate in his own time and he'll often come to you eventually. The only time I've had that fail is if he hears a hen yelping from another location ... then he aborts his investigation of you and heads her way.
More often than not in my area, a tom on the roost has hens with him. You won't know it until you hear more than one bird fly down after you're set up. In that case, I've been very successful using the following tactics:
I give a few of my best hen yelps and wait to see if he is going to close the distance. I err on the side of calling too little. Maybe four to six hen yelps and then nothing for 15 minutes. If he's with hens, he's going to breed each one of them before he comes looking for the new gal in town. Sometimes this ties him up for several hours, and he doesn't respond to my yelps. It always seems like he's gone away (and he may have in order to breed the hens that are with him.) I just keep calling one series of four to six hen yelps every 15 minutes. I usually don't get any response. When I was a novice, after a couple of hours, I would get antsy and start to tell myself that I should get up and move to relocate him or to find another tom. What I've learned over the years is that is a mistake! Patience pays off! Usually by 9 or 10am, that tom makes his way right back to where he heard me from the roost, and he comes in hot because the hens he bred have left him to go lay an egg. He gobbles at every set of hen yelps and eventually sees my hen decoy, and comes into kill range.
I've had several textbook hunts where the gobbler flies down, comes right in, and I get him at first light. But I've had MANY MORE hunts where that doesn't happen and my patience to wait for him to return pays off. In my experience, a lot of other turkey hunters don't have the confidence or patience to sit that long, and they get up and move to a new location. They end up playing cat and mouse with the tom for the rest of the morning - a game the tom usually wins! If you are able to set up on a tom that gobbles to you from the roost in the morning but doesn't come in when he flies down, give this strategy a try ... more often than not, it has worked well for me.
Head back to where you heard/saw that second gobbler, but do so in the last hour of daylight. Use your locator calls to get a shock-gobble. Then be stealthy and sneak to within 100 yards. As best as you can, you want to pinpoint where he is, but you don't need or want to get close enough for visual confirmation. Just be careful not to get busted as you work to pinpoint his location. He will often have a few hens with him that will roost at the same spot, so there can be several sets of eyes up in the trees that can bust you if you get too close to their roost.
When they bust, you'll hear it because you're too close and those big birds are noisy leaving the roost. they'll fly quite a ways to get clear of your vicinity, and you won't find them there the next morning. Assuming you don't get busted, however, return to the same spot in the morning, quietly positioning yourself about 75 - 100 yards away from the roost well before daylight and make some super-soft "tree yelps" to see if you can verify he's still on the roost. If he is, set your decoys, setup your portable ground blind (if you use them), and sit tight. It's easy to overdo the calling when you're new to turkey hunting - especially if you get a gobble response to most of your hen yelps. So resist the urge to keep talking to the gobbler on the roost. (Believe me - he makes a mental note of where you are!) If he's with hens, you will hear more than one bird fly down within a minute or two once the first bird leaves the roost. They generally don't glide far from their roost - they sort of just flap their wings as they drop nearly straight down.
If the tom isn't with hens, that's when you will often get a "textbook hunt" ... he'll fly down and start in your direction gobbling hard. Provided that there are no obstacles between you and him, he will close the distance pretty quick and you'll get a kill. I've had a few hunts where there was a small creek or a stone wall between me and him, and he just decides he's going to strut on the other side of it and wait for the hen to come to him. (That's the way it's supposed to work) If that happens, it's best to stop calling entirely. More than once when I've done that, the tom gobbles and gobbles and gobbles because he's frustrated that the hen isn't coming in and he's trying to get her to do so. Stay completely still and don't call - just wait it out and be prepared to do so for up to an hour. (It's hard to have the discipline, but if you betray your patience and call again, he'll just gobble right back and all you will have accomplished is that you'll have hit the reset button on his mental timer for the hen to come to him.) So clam up with discipline and he'll usually get frustrated and appear to move off while he's actually circling you and moving in for a look at the location where he last heard the hen. Let him investigate in his own time and he'll often come to you eventually. The only time I've had that fail is if he hears a hen yelping from another location ... then he aborts his investigation of you and heads her way.
More often than not in my area, a tom on the roost has hens with him. You won't know it until you hear more than one bird fly down after you're set up. In that case, I've been very successful using the following tactics:
I give a few of my best hen yelps and wait to see if he is going to close the distance. I err on the side of calling too little. Maybe four to six hen yelps and then nothing for 15 minutes. If he's with hens, he's going to breed each one of them before he comes looking for the new gal in town. Sometimes this ties him up for several hours, and he doesn't respond to my yelps. It always seems like he's gone away (and he may have in order to breed the hens that are with him.) I just keep calling one series of four to six hen yelps every 15 minutes. I usually don't get any response. When I was a novice, after a couple of hours, I would get antsy and start to tell myself that I should get up and move to relocate him or to find another tom. What I've learned over the years is that is a mistake! Patience pays off! Usually by 9 or 10am, that tom makes his way right back to where he heard me from the roost, and he comes in hot because the hens he bred have left him to go lay an egg. He gobbles at every set of hen yelps and eventually sees my hen decoy, and comes into kill range.
I've had several textbook hunts where the gobbler flies down, comes right in, and I get him at first light. But I've had MANY MORE hunts where that doesn't happen and my patience to wait for him to return pays off. In my experience, a lot of other turkey hunters don't have the confidence or patience to sit that long, and they get up and move to a new location. They end up playing cat and mouse with the tom for the rest of the morning - a game the tom usually wins! If you are able to set up on a tom that gobbles to you from the roost in the morning but doesn't come in when he flies down, give this strategy a try ... more often than not, it has worked well for me.
One more tip - never try to call a tom down from a ridge or down a hillside to a lower location - they much prefer to come into a call uphill or on the same elevation. If they sense danger when they're coming uphill, they just turn downhill, jump, lock their wings and glide to safety. (They don't like to come to a call downhill because if they have to do a 180 turn to flee, it's not easy for them to head back uphill quickly, and it's a lot of work for those birds to fly!)
A lot of great stuff here, I will add I’d much rather strike a gobbler to work at 10-11 am than early in the morning ( I guess this depends I bit on what part of the season your in) I’ve killed many more gobblers right before noon looking at my watch than I have off the roost.
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- Jun 28, 2019
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- 8,062
Wow! Awesome job and great bird. Great story too. I'm very happy for you!!!!! I'm sure you're "hooked" now!!
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- Jun 28, 2019
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- 8,062
One thing a lot of hunters try to do is change the course of mother nature. Tom's gobble for a lot of reasons but they expect to sound off and have the hens come into them. So many hunters set up on a roosted bird the night before or that morning and the bird gobbles and gobbles on the roost and this tends to make hunters want to keep calling. DONT DO IT!!! If you're in the bubble, let him know you're there and then shut up. Wait for him to sound off. Typically, they're gobbling on the roost and will sound much louder. Don't despair if it has been gobbling its head off and then it flies down and sounds like its going the other way. It will sound more muffled and if it gobbles facing away from you, it will sound muffled yet even more. Be Patient. The Gobbler could be on his way!! Once they commit to pursue, oftentimes they gobble a lot less. And.... they know where you are. Just like deer and predators, they have a great sense of direction and can pinpoint your calling so be super still. Alternatively, the tom has meet up with a hens or some hens. The ladies dictate where the gobbler goes and you typically won't win that battle. If I hear hen calling and the tom is just gobbling intermittently throughout the morning, most likely he's all "henned up" and you'll have a tough time getting him to break to you. Try getting the hen mad by making some aggressive cuts and long assembly hen type yelps and yelping. Yaap, Yaap, Yaap, Yaap, Yaap, put, put,cut,cut cut cut cut. She'll start cutting and cackling too so then mimic her calls as close as possible. then get even more aggressive and then quiet up. If she cuts again, do the same, but keep watching..... the whole flock may be closing in now. Some more tips I've had some luck with.
Yeah i've had pretty good luck bring in hens by mimicing them and getting aggresive, seems to get them angry and come investigate which brings the toms in tow. I've had a few situations where the hen was just walking along lightly clucking and yelping almost like it was looking for a friend, the toms were always following along about 50 yards or so behind the hen. I would mimic every noise they made and they would come in and drag the tom along behind them.
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- Nov 1, 2018
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- 8,047
Wife caption by request: “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni”
I cleaned the beard and fan up and got it salted. Now to make a plaque. Who here has done this? Also put the legs in the crockpot with chicken broth for 8 hours. From what I read I’ll probably pull the meat and make a casserole or enchiladas.
I cleaned the beard and fan up and got it salted. Now to make a plaque. Who here has done this? Also put the legs in the crockpot with chicken broth for 8 hours. From what I read I’ll probably pull the meat and make a casserole or enchiladas.
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I always used borax on the tail rather than salt, I bet it’ll work fine make sure you hurry up & spread that fan out on a pc of cardboard or plywood so it will setup in full display...... right on for the legs about anything that’s low & slow will be right.
TooBigToFit
Well-Known Member
Yeah I was in the same situation as you last year (got my first bird last year), used Borax on the tail after doing all I could to remove any fat I could. I believe one article suggested using "white gas" to degrease whatever is there, and used push pins on cardboard to spread the fan out before it set. Ah, found the article from the NWTF.
www.nwtf.org
Create the Perfect Fan Mount
The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) is a national nonprofit conservation and hunting organization that has worked for the conservation of the wild turkey and preservation of the hunting tradition since 1973.
www.nwtf.org
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- Nov 1, 2018
- Messages
- 8,047
Yeah I was in the same situation as you last year (got my first bird last year), used Borax on the tail after doing all I could to remove any fat I could. I believe one article suggested using "white gas" to degrease whatever is there, and used push pins on cardboard to spread the fan out before it set. Ah, found the article from the NWTF.
Create the Perfect Fan Mount
The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) is a national nonprofit conservation and hunting organization that has worked for the conservation of the wild turkey and preservation of the hunting tradition since 1973.
Oh man I watched a video today that said all that but I had too many projects going at once. Thanks, I got it set up now. I used what I had because of the virus and everything. Also this is meat cure so a lot higher density than salt, should do ok I hope.
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- Nov 1, 2018
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- 8,047
That’ll be a whole project in itself. I have no clue how to do any of that yet.
Meat turned out pretty well. Tastes like roast beef. I was surprised at how good it taste after being told by a couple folks that it’s awful.
ImThere
Well-Known Member
Keep posting them buddy! I enjoyed reading about and being “in” the hunt with you!
See you in a tree, Ricky
VA saddlehunter
Well-Known Member
Run and bow no blind for me again this year, once you try it it becomes an addiction, I'll never hunt turkeys any other way!