I've always been told by friends that if I had patience I would be a lot better turkey hunter. The problem I run into is if a bird gets henned up but still answering my calling, do I hang around or leave. And if I stay for how long and do they typically come after they are finished with the hens they are with.
I take one of two approaches. I'll fall in behind them and try to keep tabs on where their at by their vocalizations. Then you'll see a direction that they seem to be headed. I'll make a wide circle and try to get in front of them and then locate them. Once I locate them again I'll get close and try to posistion myself where I think they will come.
Option two is walk away and try to find another bird. Give it two or three hours. If no luck go back and try to find the first bird again. You may catch him at the right time.
You can patience yourself right out of a kill if your not careful.
Depends. If a bird will continue to talk to me I will usually keep messing with him. If you know he has hens with him my favorite thing is to try to get the hens to start calling back to me. I will call real aggressive and get them fired up and "sometimes" they will come in to investigate and bring mister Tom with them. Sometimes by staying patient and calling to a bird I have had other gobblers sneak in that I didn't even know were there. I can tell you one thing for sure though I have spooked way more birds by getting up and moving around than I would have if I would have just sit tight and been patient.
If he keeps being vocal (with or without hens) then I'll stay with him because I can keep tabs on him and feel like I can probably get in front of them at some point or at least stay within ear shot of him to try and work him again if his hens leave or if his mood changes and he gets lonely. Sometimes they will come off the roost and just have something else besides my calling on their mind but that can change throughout the day.
When they commit to going the other way, I've never had much luck changing their minds by calling them back so I usually figure it's time for me to get my walking boots on. Patience comes into play when they are potentially working toward you. When you get confirmation they ARE NOT coming to you, its time to make a move.
If a henned up gobbler stays vocal, i may hang with him if theres no other game in town. His courtesy gobbles mean hes interested in hooking up but he has to get away from the mrs first. Ten am seems to be my lucky window. Usually sometime before that i'll catch a cat nap while givin him time. If he gobbles on his own after ten am, its usually a really good omen and things can happen quickly from that point. It pays to be patient, keep tabs on his movement and wait for those hens to slip off to nest. If nothing else is gobbling or youre limited in hunting spots, etc its about the only chance u have.of course you could slip in close, scatter the flock and reel that tom in when he's anxious to get with his girls again. More effective than youd think, most folks are just afraid to try it. Goes against the grain of how we think were supposed to hunt in the spring.
A buddy and me were workin a tough henned up bird one year and we decided to get aggressive and get close to the roost. Unfortunately we walked under a bunch of hens and flushed them in the dark. We thought the jig was up, but the boss started gobbling, still in the tree less than sixty yards. We flopped down and that old bird couldnt stand the loneliness. The hens must have flushed really far, or were just that spooked they never made a peep. He must have gobbled a hundred times. When it got light, i clucked twice and the gobbler almost landed on top of us. After frustrating us for two weeks, it was too easy. Another thing i can tell ya is if you r ever set up and see hens sneaking by you on their way to the gobbler and u can get away with the movt, scare them away, usually just takes a wave or two of the arm. Play dirty against the real competition like a girl in a beauty pageant who pushes the girl in front down the stairs. :D
I use to walk and run my butt off trying to get ahead of a gobbler that walks off in the other direction with or without hens or unknown to me. I finally learned one thing. If he answers my call and is about the same distance away every time, even after I run and try to catch up. I quit.
If after about 3hrs I don't have anything going, I'll come back to the area I started with him and set up and call to see if he was with hens and came back to check the one (me) he had heard earlier. Has worked quiet a bit for me.
As long as he is still talking I will hang in there. Even after he shuts up I'll wait a bit before giving up. Maybe he is coming in silent. Another trick is to call to the hens. Get her mad and she may try to confront you and the gobbler will more often than not follow her.
Quote from: hoyt on March 05, 2012, 10:10:03 PM
I use to walk and run my butt off trying to get ahead of a gobbler that walks off in the other direction with or without hens or unknown to me. I finally learned one thing. If he answers my call and is about the same distance away every time, even after I run and try to catch up. I quit.
If after about 3hrs I don't have anything going, I'll come back to the area I started with him and set up and call to see if he was with hens and came back to check the one (me) he had heard earlier. Has worked quiet a bit for me.
Same for me. I remember one hunt and we could see the gobbler and the hens. Every time I would call he would hammer. He would start my way and the hens would get in front of him like they were pushing him to go the other way. We tried to cut him off and he was always about 75 to 100 yards away. We finally lost track of him. Two hours had passed and we headed back to our original position. My pardner had left his gun sling on the edge of the greenfield we were in. I was scanning the area and saw the bird standing on or close to the gun sling. We didn't kill him but it taught us a valuable lesson. I tend to wait them ot most times.At 54 it seems like its harder and harder to chase them down.
I think if you can be a little bit more patient you'll kill more birds. I look back when I first started hunting turkey 20 yrs ago, and most times i'd get up and move too soon and bust gobblers that were coming in silent..
I remember one hunt where i set a blind up on a cut milo field, put a few dekes out. This was an afternoon spot where birds like to feed before going up to roost. It 5pm in the afternoon ( Indiana), I didn't expect much gobbling being the afternoon..but I do call blindly on food sources int he afternoon, just feeding purrs and the occasional light clucks...after an hour of calling avery 20 minutes or so, i saw a nice longbeard skirt the corner of the field, he came out into the field looked up my way gobbled a couple times and went back to feeding and disappeared....I was thinking , crap!, there goes a nice bird!....15 minutes later he came out directly across from me and worked into my decoys and I killed that bird after a 3hr sit in a blind...28lb, 33 mm spur and 11 3/4 beard..after thinking about what happened and what actually transpired i concluded, the gobbler knew where he was headed, to a small creek below the field i was in, he skirted the corner headed to water, gobbled up to decoys saying I see ya, and after he got a drink of water, came back...my point is, sometimes those birds have a mission in mind, he was thirsty, if you're patient and observe the birds ad think about what they are doing and why, you may be surprised what you learn...My rule of thumb is....Whenever I feel like it's time to get up and move...Wait 20 more minutes...I killed alot of good birds waiting 20 more minutes.
Coming from a area that didn't hold alot of turkeys I would stay all day if thats what it took. I would get on a gobbler and stay and call at least till dinner. Sometimes I killed the bird sometimes I didn't. I figured out that if that gobbler had hens in the morning, the hens would leave midmorning he would come back and check the area he heard the hen calling earlier.Alot of times he would just come in silent. I always figured it was like deer hunting just setting up on stand and calling till its time to go home. It works when theres few turkeys in your area. Now that I hunt areas with good turkey populations I still tend to spend more time at one setup after a gobbling turkey than most of my hunting buddies. I once set up on a tom on the roost and called most off the day and finally killed him or another at 2 in the afternoon :fud:
When you think you have waited long enough, wait 30 more minutes.
Quote from: guesswho on March 05, 2012, 05:57:53 PM
I take one of two approaches. I'll fall in behind them and try to keep tabs on where their at by their vocalizations. Then you'll see a direction that they seem to be headed. I'll make a wide circle and try to get in front of them and then locate them. Once I locate them again I'll get close and try to posistion myself where I think they will come.
Option two is walk away and try to find another bird. Give it two or three hours. If no luck go back and try to find the first bird again. You may catch him at the right time.
You can patience yourself right out of a kill if your not careful.
Exactly this! Also sometimes you can get him to answer you a few times and then you shut up and everyonce in a while you can get lucky and hell get mad and come investigate, why a hen has quit talking to him.
Quote from: guesswho on March 05, 2012, 05:57:53 PM
You can patience yourself right out of a kill if your not careful.
Very astute advise.
This is on a plaque in my office " Patience has its limits--take it too far---and its cowardice"
Please read the writing under my avitar ! :icon_thumright:
vaturkey :newmascot:
One week...two at tops and then I move on to another bird.
Im not a very patient person when it comes to turks. I can sit in a treestand all day and not get bored, but if a turkey shuts up or walks away gobbling his fool brains out i'm outta there. If nothing else is gobbling I'll try to get ahead of him or just stay with him until he gets to where he wants to be then I'll try and work him from there. But the majority of the time I'll make a round and come back about ten and check his blood pressure again. And I always try to get real close to where he was at when he answered me that morning before I make a peep. I had an old timer tell me when I started hunting that if a gobbler ever answers your call he will be back sometime that day to check it out when his hens leave. I always just pray he comes back before 1:00 when time ends here in missouri. I know if I was more patient I'd be more successful but I love the thrill of the flash hunt, and the hard gobbling kamikaze's that are usually involved.
Knowing when to sit tight and when you need to move, and sometimes move very quickly is a key to being more successful. Some of it comes with experience, for sure, alot of it boils down to gut instincts or simply making a judgement call and sticking with it. It may end up being the right choice or the wrong one, but only time will tell. Thats the thrill of the chase. One of the few times ive ever truly moved fast, a buddy and i had to scramble to get on a hot bird that fired up after heavy rain stopped in midmorning. He had moved down into a plowed field and gobbling like a fool. We had only minutes before he either attracted a hen or another hunter. No time to think it over, we pulled out and moved fast. Five minutes later we had a beautiful three yr old floppin in the dirt, he came in on a run. Had we lingered in our original set up, who knows? We took a gamble, made a critical move and scored. Patience is a virtue and a general rule, but its far from concrete.
If the birds have left, I'm gone. You will have much more success if there are toms there to shoot. If the birds leave, I go find more birds, and preferably toms that are aggressive! :anim_25:
I have no idea. I'm probably more impatient than I should be. If nothing is happening, I try to make something happen. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Quote from: talltines on March 05, 2012, 07:36:00 PM
Depends. If a bird will continue to talk to me I will usually keep messing with him. If you know he has hens with him my favorite thing is to try to get the hens to start calling back to me. I will call real aggressive and get them fired up and "sometimes" they will come in to investigate and bring mister Tom with them. Sometimes by staying patient and calling to a bird I have had other gobblers sneak in that I didn't even know were there. I can tell you one thing for sure though I have spooked way more birds by getting up and moving around than I would have if I would have just sit tight and been patient.
Agreed. :icon_thumright:
You'll learn just as we did with experience. There is no EXACTLY wrong or right answer because ALL gobblers are going to respond a little different. Personally I like to be patient and a little more quiet and it works for me more times than not. When my hunting partner comes along he likes to get aggressive and that often works too but overall ive killed and called in more birds than he has. Its personal preference, if one thing isnt working for you for a week, change it up and do something else the next! :boon:
Quote from: Bigmiah22 on March 22, 2012, 06:32:52 PM
You'll learn just as we did with experience. There is no EXACTLY wrong or right answer because ALL gobblers are going to respond a little different. Personally I like to be patient and a little more quiet and it works for me more times than not. When my hunting partner comes along he likes to get aggressive and that often works too but overall ive killed and called in more birds than he has. Its personal preference, if one thing isnt working for you for a week, change it up and do something else the next! :boon:
X2
patience is a great hunting tool
I think turkey hunting is a constant pace of decision making. The days you make the right decision to sit or move are the small critical difference between killing birds or going home empty handed. What works one day, may not work the next.
I remember in the beginning of the learning curve (still learning) experimentation is the best tool.
"How patient should I be on a gobbler"....the only real answer takes years of experience to learn.
If a gobbler is gobbling and holding his ground....he most likely can be called in. If you have the patience and don't call too much.
If he goes silent it means one of two things to me....he could be coming or he could be just standing there on one leg testing your patience.
If you go towards him he'll most likely move away gobbling....timing your calling is everything when it comes to calling turkeys.
Ben Lee said it best...."Are you talking to the turkey or is he talking to you ?"
Figure that out and the rest is a walk in the park.
This question is tough to answer b/c I am not in the woods with you to give you my opinion on this bird on this day at this time in the morning.
I would rather be patient and miss out on killing him today, then be over aggressive and spook him. usually if you do not bump him they will return to the same area... you might get him tomorrow and you might know where he is headed.,
A friend says "dont leave a bird thats gobbling to look for one thats not". He kills a lot of turkeys. He didn't say sit still, you may have to relocate or change calls, be silent, but if he is answering you are in the game!
Remember Turkeys are on their own time, they feel no pressure to get things done the way you do. If he's moving try to anticpate his destination or likely strutting areas.
every bird is different I but I hardly ever walk away from a gobbling bird. if he is henned up I will get aggressive and get the hens pissed and sometimes that works. some birds are just tough. patience is a very important thing in turkey hunting and I learned that the hard way. if you just cant take it no more take mental notes and set up different next time. but more times the not at some point that bird will loose his hens and then its game on.
Quote from: gunnerj on March 12, 2012, 06:41:35 PM
If the birds have left, I'm gone. You will have much more success if there are toms there to shoot. If the birds leave, I go find more birds, and preferably toms that are aggressive! :anim_25:
Being many older birds remain silent how do you know a bird has" left"...? With spring foliage and a silent bird hard to say if he " left " or just went silent...If I scouted the area prior to the hut and know birds are in the area I have the patience of a rock. Killed a lot of birds that just showed up I never knew were there until I seen them.. they were dead silent, gave no indications they were anywhere around until the materialized out of the woods.
It's like poker .."you got to know when to hold em' know when to ....."
Experience , will teach you that you are to sit tight , or bust a move
Wait till they hit the ground , determine their motives and if they have hens - a couple of times hunting the same area will teach you what to do
Years of hunting in areas where I knew there were turkeys taught me , to use the terrain to my advantage , if I can get away with it , I will go into a very slooooow sneak , I stand straight up and move very slow , no moving arms .... No turning head .....just a smooth slow , slow , slow, walk - through a area I will walk at a near crawl of a pace , stoping to scan the area gun in hand , we are talking exceptionally slow pace like 10 minutes to go about 40- 60 yards moving at the pace of a sloth - you have to keep your body movement to a minimum and scan.... I'll slip into a area 150 - 200 yards away sit down .... Call wait 5 minutes get up drift to the next spot repeat -- let's say it's 10 am and your parked a mile away from your truck and quitting time is 1pm you can hunt the entire area productively an the way back to the truck - you have to pass trough the area like " smoke " just quietly drifting , no loud sounds or movement - Its hard to emphasize how slow to move , about the pace that turkeys feed
The goal is to sneak up to within calling distance ( quietly ) to a gobbler and surprise him with hen calling and get him to shock out and gobble -- sit down , and by that no big ordeal slip up to a tree and sit down no moving branches , sometimes I'll sit In front of a bush or cypress knee and call him right in - you have to be a very quiet walker and scan, scan , scan
I'm not a big fan of cut and run because it does not work well in Florida , the birds sit in the tree for long periods and walking fast even walking at a regular pace makes too much noise , when your walking down a fire break or trail and a regular pace , a gobblers hearing is so accute it can hear you and see the movement hundreds of yards before you even thought he was in the area
I once asked an old turkey hunter, How long should I stay knowing a bird was somewhere in the area? He said " Until 1:00". ( that's as late as we could hunt)
Quote from: bmhern on March 23, 2014, 10:51:16 PM
I once asked an old turkey hunter, How long should I stay knowing a bird was somewhere in the area? He said " Until 1:00". ( that's as late as we could hunt)
Smart guy.. I sit all day quite often. These old time turkey hunters will tell, or you'll soon find out.."Patience is paramount in turkey hunting..."...If you're not patient or have ADD ADHD and can't sit still very long..you'll miss many opportunities. Kinda like the Old bull young bull story. You can run out there and try to force it to happen, or sit down and let it happen.
My approach is simple. If he's walking and talking away I move. If he goes silent I get my gun up and wait.
Quote from: Gooserbat on March 24, 2014, 05:31:32 PM
My approach is simple. If he's walking and talking away I move. If he goes silent I get my gun up and wait.
I like that approach a TON!! :icon_thumright:
Exactly... unless you know he is moving away, wait on him. If he is moving away and you can circle ahead of him move. Don't just follow after him, calling him back to somewhere he has already been is low odds. I can't tell you how many times I have had a subordinate bird come in silent as a boss bird moved away though.
Some of the more successful turkey hunters I know won't work a turkey for more than 20 or 30 minutes. If he's not coming they'll keep looking until they find one that is. That works well and usually gets them tagged out before most.
But I'm like a lot of other turkey hunts in that I'm proud and don't like being whipped by a bird. I'll hunt a bird day after day and not give up. It can be an exercise in frustration, but looking down the rib at a bird on the fifth time you've hunted him is rewarding like few other things in life.
Patience has got more birds for me than running and gunning ever has.
I guess I just can't move fast enough to cut them off
I mostly use the Charles L. Jordan method. It works often enough and you're not queening every damned turkey in the County.
Patient can mean different things. I'd say you're decreasing your odds of success if you KNOW a turkey is in the process of leaving you (meaning you can hear him or see him leaving you) and you sit there. If that's patience then I'm not sure that it makes you a better turkey hunter. :popcorn:
I DO think being impatient at the wrong time of a hunt probably cost inexperienced hunters alot of birds. An example being that a bird is hung up but gobbling out or range and then goes silent. The inexperienced guy gets anxious and decides to make a move, and ends up busting the bird that was coming in.
I think experience allows you to make judgement calls on WHEN & HOW MUCH patience to exercise in a given situation.
Bottom line, I'm not going to watch one leave me and just sit back & HOPE he eventually comes back. I'd rather go actively hunt him and try to re-engage him when I see the opportunity. My odds are better like this and it's just more enjoyable to me.
Quote from: silvestris on April 03, 2014, 06:10:46 PM
I mostly use the Charles L. Jordan method. It works often enough and you're not queening every damned turkey in the County.
What is the Charles L. Jordan method, if I may ask??
Quote from: silvestris on April 03, 2014, 06:10:46 PM
I mostly use the Charles L. Jordan method. It works often enough and you're not queening every damned turkey in the County.
I believe you meant queering not "queening"
It all depends on what I'm hearing. I hunt a few hundred yards from a gas line on state forest land. Most of the line is posted so I don't have access to it. But I've killed a lot of birds calling them off it. I do have access on the upper end but there is more hunter pressure there. I sit for about 2 hours after daylight and move back to another place I've had luck at before but I stay in the same area most of the time.
Quote from: jblackburn on March 11, 2012, 02:52:16 PM
When you think you have waited long enough, wait 30 more minutes.
^^This.
I had a henned up gobbler giving courtesy gobbles to my calls as he followed hen(s) onto a neighboring property where I couldn't go. Rather than trying to get ahead of him, I held tight. I'd scouted the area well enough to know he liked to hang out and strut close to where I was set up. More than a full hour after my last call to him, he came in silent behind me (the direction he left) and almost blew my cap off my head with a gobble less than 20 feet behind me. My insides jumped though I managed to stay still. I busted him at 7 yards as he headed past me.
I have a bad back from a vehicle collision a number of years ago, so I use a comfortable chair (gobbler lounger). Being able to sit comfortably for hours helps improve patience.
More than a few times I'd been considering moving because it had been too quiet and nature was calling. I'll scan the area good, ease up to pee, then sit back down for another 30-45 minutes. One day, I was preparing to move and had just relieved myself. I was considering gathering up my calls when I heard wing flaps from some hens fighting about 80-90 yards in front of me. There was four hens together with a stud gobbler following. A few clucks and some leaf scratching brought them in easy range and the gobbler ended up wearing my tag home.
Jim
Quote from: guesswho on March 05, 2012, 05:57:53 PM
You can patience yourself right out of a kill if your not careful.
Very true
I learned to turkey hunt many years ago from an old timer. He tought me how to call them in but some things he let me learn for myself. He said I would remember them better if I learned from experience. We would set up on the first bird and he would walk off gobbling or go silent. I would get bored in about an hr and go after another bird I heard or try to get ahead of the bird as it was leaving. I started seeing a trend!! I would leave and one of several things would happen. He would call the bird back after he was done with his hens. He would call the bird in that I went after. The bird would come back where he heard the hen where we had started that morning. I told him after one of his successful waits that I was going to stay put from now on. He just smiled and said that you never know how many birds you spook off that you never knew were there. It's kind of funny now because I do the same thing to young hunters now. I'm not saying you should never move. Sometimes I will move just a little if my setup isn't quite right. Or if a gobbler moves off and won't come because they are henned up off the roost I will head for his strutting area and get comfortable and wait him out there. Patience has killed me many more birds then moving ever has.