Who all taught themselves to turkey hunt?

[stinkpickle]

More like, I've taught myself how NOT to turkey hunt. 

[Duke0002]

Started hunting the birds at 50.  Hunted small game and waterfowl most of my life.  The turkey fever hit me and I haven't been the same since!  Self taught and thankful for the great people of turkey forums like OG.  Always learning and relearning.

[Muzzy61]

Count me as self taught. No one in my family hunted. At16 a buddy and his dad started taking me dog hunting (deer). I loved it, but at 20 decided to try still hunting. From there got into turkey. But  pretty much self taught. I've tried to learn something from everyone i hunt or fish with.

[TRKYHTR]

I started on my own. Where I live there were no turkey hunters that I knew about. Very few actually turkey hunted. I started in '83 and finally killed a turkey in '85. I finally heard of a guy who was a turkey hunter and I went and introduced myself to him. He was a great guy but had only killed fall turkeys. So I taught myself how to kill turkeys. I learned from my mistakes. I finally met a guy in 1990 that knew how to turkey hunt. I had probably killed 10 turkeys before we met. We were inseparable from that time on in the spring. Now I am passing the torch. Nothing wrong with learning the hard way, good and bad but you can learn alot quicker with a little help.

TRKYHTR

[RickC]

No one in my family hunted, and I was in my 20's and started deer hunting and later in started hunting birds. Dove, quail, and pheasant. Pretty much stopped deer hunting because I found I liked chasing birds more. A series of life and job changes put hunting on the back burner for a couple decades. A few years ago I started up waterfowling and have just started getting the itch to try turkey hunts. Like all my other hunting it'll be self taught but the benefit of living in these times of information and guidance at your fingertips via the web makes the learning curve much easier. Im 57 and figure with any luck I'll have time to enjoy another type of hunting.

[Tail Feathers]

We had no turkeys in this area when I was a kid.  I took it up about 13 years ago when my hunting lease opened turkey hunting up after stocking some a few years earlier.

I had great success early on.  Unhunted turkeys come to a call in a way you just have to love!
I've been addicted since hunt one. 

[turkey_slayer]

My uncle was a huge turkey killer. I went the first time by myself when I was 11 and killed one. After that he started taking me but we split up as soon as we left the truck. He always said boy the best way to learn to turkey hunt is make your own mistakes. So I learned on my own and am so glad I did now. The first year or 2 I managed to kill a few but I screwed up a lot. I use to bump a lot of birds by trying to get in to close. Part of that was because I was young and impatient. I called in a few birds later on for him and I swear if I let out a 4 note yelp he would lean over and say don't call to much lol.

He broke almost every bone is his body when a load of logs rolled off a truck and over him. He's in his 60s now but those injurys have came back to haunt him now plus logging over 40 years has took a toll on his body and not able to climb these mountains like he used to.

The last hunt we went on was about 5 years ago. I had scouted some new national forest that had held some birds and walking wasn't to bad. We get out of the truck and hear 4 or 5 all in the same direction. I let him take the closest bird and I went to one on out the mtn. By 8 they all had shut up then one fired off bout an hour later between us. I thought it was the bird I was originally on that had worked his way around there.

I get setup on him within about 100 yards. I purr and he double gobbles. I hear a light content hen yelp over near the bird. I thought great hes got hens. I would purr and lightly scratch the leaves and be would go nuts. A few minutes i see him strutting about 80 yards away on the side of the ridge. There was a slight hollow between us. He breaks strut, gobbles, then KABOOM and I see him flopping down the ridge.

I see a man stand up and ease down there and gather his prize. I wanted to see the bird so I gathered my stuff and walked down there. It was my dag gum uncle lol. I thought he was a real hen and when he heard me he thought they were some hens feeding so he figured he would let the "real" hens bring the gobbler by him and it worked.  That was a great hunt i will never forget. Sorry for getting off track

[stone road turkey calls]

My grandfather was a turkey hunter, I remember a few stories from him but never went hunting with him. started on my own in 1979 took me 4 years to kill a turkey, still learning.

[longspur]

I was taught lots of things by others, like you can't call them downhill, and you can't call them across a creek or fence. The rest I learned on my own. Things like you can call them downhill and you can call them across a creek.

[mattbrooks]

I guess you could say I'm self taught too. I hunted 7 years on public land before I killed my first turkey. I learned lots of things not to do in those 7 years.

[JVA54]

I'm self taught.   

[Rio Fan]

I taught myself to turkey hunt. I've made lots mistakes in the 20 years I've been hunting these birds and still do make mistakes, but I try to learn from the mistakes and spend as much time in the woods as I can. I'm pretty confident in my turkey killing abilities (although I still have a LOT of room for improvement), but confidence plays a big part in being a successful turkey hunter. The big problem though is I live close to an hour and a half away from where I hunt, so I don't get to the woods nearly as often as I would like to.

[Matt81302]

I am a self taught turkey hunter. This will be about my 6th season of turkey hunting. The first few seasons were a struggle, but I guess the only way to learn by yourself is to make mistakes. Boy I made plenty of them. I am to the point now to where I feel like I am good enough to call and kill a turkey every time I go in the woods. We all know it doesn't work that way, but I am know how/what to do and I am capable of it.  Its kinda funny "now", not then, when I think back about some of the stupid things I done back in the day.

One that gets me every time was my very first season it was mid day and I slipped up to a huge field on some public land. As I rounded the last corner before the field there was a HUGE gobbler all my himself in the middle of the field looking hard for a hen. For some crazy reason I figured I could go into ninja mode I guess and slip out to the field and just shoot him. Well, you can guess how that worked out, you would have that turkey had a rocket strapped to his back got out of there so fast. LOL!!! No doubt in my mind looking back if I had of sat down as soon as I peeked around the corner and seen him it would have only took a few soft yelps and he would have been in my lap. I just shake my head chuckle every time I think about that. LOL!!!

[Spring_Woods]

Yeah I learned it on my own and hunted with an old friend one day and started killing birds after that.

[VaTuRkStOmPeR]

Self-taught.

Wish I could have some of the gimme birds I messed up on back in the day all over again.