Hey guys, for those of you that have a lot of experience hunting all the sub species, how would you describe the Merriam's vocabulary versus the others?
I often hear folks refer to the gobbles as "Nice sounding bird, but that ain't no eastern..."
What about hens? Do they seem more chatty? Do your calling styles change when hunting Merriams?
Thanks for any insight and observations!
New guy mistake, sorry, should've posted on the hunting strategies page.
I'll bite,
only thing I've really noticed is how great of a tool a box call is for Merriam's/Rios, Now a days I would never pull a box out east of Mississippi River. Other than that they are just turkeys, they are quirky suckers. As a hunter from the southeast I remember on my first trip to Merriam's country my friend and I were quite literally outsmarting the birds (If that even makes sense). I guess meaning trying to cut birds off as you would in the eastern hardwoods, that bird had cut the distance in half from us in under a minute and left us standing in the middle of the prairie wondering why the bird ran on a string into our calling. I've since made many more trips to hunt Merriam's and now consider them my favorite subspecies.
The Merriam gobble is slightly different than the Eastern. If I remember correctly Lovett Williams' CD has some examples of the gobbles of different sub-species.
I shot a couple of Merriam's when I lived in MT. Have also hunted lots of Easterns and Rios in the Midwest, Southeast, and Pacific Northwest. To my human ear, the hens all sound pretty similar (given that there is a large range of hen vocabulary even within a given sub-species - again Lovett Williams is a great source for examples).
Merriams in country like eastern MT/WY can roam over larger territories (sometimes water sources and food sources are more spread out in arid terrain), so hunters often call louder/more aggressively and cover more territory between calling stations compared to the hardwoods of the Southeast or the farm fields of the Midwest...