Turkey hunting forum for turkey hunting tips

I heard a guy on the radio this morning.  He has an outdoor tv show and is fairly well known around here.  I'm not going to give his name, but he was answering turkey hunting questions on the show this morning.  A couple things made me laugh and some I agreed with. 

The first question he was asked about turkey hunting is what the biggest mistake a turkey hunter makes.

He answered that most turkey hunters think a turkey is stupid.  But they're wrong, he said turkeys are VERY intelligent.  I chuckled at this, because I believe turkeys are stupid.  I think they appear smart because of their strong survival instincts.

What's your opinion?

I prefer to think of them as simple-minded and stubborn. 

I don't think they're stupid, if they were everybody would kill one  :gobble:

I think they are like people, you have some dumb ones and some that are smart. And fortunately for us some that thought they WERE smart!!!

I think most turkey hunters are dumb. 

Turkeys are just keenly aware of their surroundings and have acute survival instincts.

Quote from: VaTuRkStOmPeR on March 06, 2012, 03:20:49 PM
I think most turkey hunters are dumb. 

Turkeys are just keenly aware of their surroundings and have acute survival instincts.

Well said

Anything with a brain the size of a pea is not going to be a candidate for Mensa. I believe that they are on the dumb side with better than average eyesight, and great survival instincts, as do most animals that get hunted by humans.

I think turkeys have sharply honed instincts but I would not call them smart. They cannot reason away problems.  Sometimes turkey hunters think they can though. :lol:  IMO wild turkeys go thru their entire life scared of everything and curiosity does not enter their mind. If something does not look right they are GONE and I mean like RIGHT NOW! :newmascot:

As a newbie hunter I often said "I got outsmarted" but since then I have come to realize that its more of "I out smarted myself" with turkeys. Turkeys don't plot, plan, or decipher calls as hunters.

They are simply the most Paranoid, moody, and unpredictable game animal. Like taxes there's an exception to every rule in the turkey woods.

Me thinks they have eyesight and hearing we as humans can't understand, but they are so dumb they can't reason so they are scared to death of every thing.  If something goes wrong their solution to every problem is to putt and run.

If I had to choose between them being smart or stupid I'd go with stupid without a doubt.   Many things I've witnessed confirms this in my opinion.   Come to a hog wire fence and walk back and forth when you have wings, try to mate with a plastic or blow-up doll, although some people do this,  watch your buddy get his brains blown out then beat him up when the shooter is still there and there are many more examples.   Actions of stupid or smart?

They are programmed to survive and breed, they react instead of process.

Quote from: CASH on March 06, 2012, 03:31:48 PM

Quote from: VaTuRkStOmPeR on March 06, 2012, 03:20:49 PM
I think most turkey hunters are dumb. 

Turkeys are just keenly aware of their surroundings and have acute survival instincts.

Well said

x2

Turkeys are stupid. People make em out to be some super smart animal that's tough to kill. Most people overthink it and that's what makes em hard to kill.

See below

Quote from: VaTuRkStOmPeR on March 06, 2012, 03:20:49 PM
I think most turkey hunters are dumb. 

Turkeys are just keenly aware of their surroundings and have acute survival instincts.

Agreed. 

I think for the most part, turkey just walk around doing what turkey's do and some people who cant figure out why they do certain things, write them off as be"intellegent".   

Very dumb animals with very strong instincts.

There is one bit difference betweem turkeys and people. They/we learn to live and servive in their/our surrounding. I would have to lean toward people being the dumber ones, because it takes us longer to learn what we need to, to survive than it takes a turkey.

Quote from: Gooserbat on March 06, 2012, 03:49:07 PM
Me thinks they have eyesight and hearing we as humans can't understand, but they are so dumb they can't reason so they are scared to death of every thing.  If something goes wrong their solution to every problem is to putt and run.

Agree!

Stupid.

I think that VaTurkStomper said it correctly.

They don't even have eyesight that is as good as a human's (in most respects).  Turkeys have eyes on the side of their head, not frontal, binocular vision.  They have different rods and cones internally.  They have to turn their heads to see an object with both eyes.

But they have excellent peripheral vision and can see movement very well.  If they come in quietly and see you moving, you are licked. They also apparently hear pretty well, it is hard to slip up on them in most circumstances.  If they are strutting or fighting they are not paying as much attention to surroundings, and you can get closer--until one (perhaps a spectator) sees you moving or hears you.  

What makes it hard on the hunter is that the natural course is for the hen to come to him.  The hunter that does not want to bushwhack is therefore largely relegated to trying to reverse nature and get the tom to come to him.

I don't think they are smart, just very wild...at least the one's I hunt are anyway.

Ive always heard when it rains they will look up and drown themselvesand then you see how they approach a setup or just wont come at all so I really don't know either way

I'm pretty dumb myself but when somebody is in my house I can pretty much pinpoint their location and tell if their supposed to be there or not. I have said this before, if you want to kill a turkey, you have to be a turkey because a turkey is just a turkey surviving his surroundings, just like you and me!

3X X 4Y + 7 = . Lets see if them turkeys can figure that one out.

TRKYHTR

Dumb, along with paranoid... bordering on neurotic. 

Remember: what we call a "fun past time" and "sport," he calls "survival."

Quote from: Hognutz on March 06, 2012, 03:42:34 PM
Anything with a brain the size of a pea is not going to be a candidate for Mensa. I believe that they are on the dumb side with better than average eyesight, and great survival instincts, as do most animals that get hunted by humans.

Agreed!

Dumb but smart enough to want to live

I would not copy his home work, but I think that the longer one lives the stronger their instincts get.  

I have ran into lots of turkeys over the years that just plain whipped me,that being said if the tables were turned and he came to my house where I live and tried to kill me I do believe (even if I were stupid ) I could get away. Turkeys are very stupid and GUESSWHO said it best,you shoot my buddy im outta there,as for the blow up doll,well that's just plain funny.

Dumb I reckon...If they were smart they would be doing the shooting not us.

I think they side a little on the dumb side. They are just so hardwired in the head to avoid anything that might remotely ever pose a threat to them that they freak out over the littlest things they notice. There is a saying written on the wall at the bass pro shop in Nashville that says it best. "To a deer every man is a stump, to a turkey every stump is a man."

I think they are stupid ,I have seen them try to breed a pile of horse dung BUT I think they are super WARY of everything that surrounds them and they watch everything including each other ,if one sounds an alarm ,justified or not its Katy bar the door .
Instincts ? Maybe ,but I think just Goofy .  :funnyturkey:

Stupid creature. Very wary and stubborn.

Would I call a turkey "smart"?  No, I don't think so.  ....But, on the other hand, would I say they are "stupid"?  I would say "no" to that, as well.  To me, they lie somewhere between those two descriptions.

They are apparently capable of learned behavior, which is part of my definition of "intelligence".  ...And here is how I justify that statement.

We have a cabin in the mountains of southern NM and in the winter months, we will set up a couple of  feeders to keep them around the place.  One of them is one of those small, five or six gallon hanging feeders.  We don't get up there much during the winter, and so the feeders run out of cracked corn sometimes before we get back up to fill them again. 

Last year was one of the times the feeder ran out.  A couple of the partners in the cabin ownership went up one weekend to check on the place.  While they were there, several mature gobblers came into the hanging feeder, which was empty except for the last bits of corn that will remain in the bottom of the container. 

They were watching the gobblers pick up a few kernels of corn on the ground under the feeder that had been jarred loose by the wind shaking the feeder a little bit.  Well, after they had scavenged all of the corn on the ground, my buddies were astonished when one of the gobblers flew up onto the feeder and starting shaking it back and forth! 

He shook some corn out of the feeder, flew back down to the ground, and all of them starting picking up that corn that he had shaken out!

Now, if that is not some rudimentary form of intelligence, someone is going to have some serious explaining to do for me to accept that it is not. 

Smart ?   No    But i do think they have really good luck making decisions .   :character0029:

Turkeys are stupid.  If you knew how many time in a row I have used a cannon net and caught the same turkey over and over.  They seem smart because everything in the woods is trying to eat them.

Quote from: guesswho on March 06, 2012, 03:50:55 PM
try to mate with a plastic or blow-up doll, although some people do this, 

only from you  :TooFunny:

Turkeys are stupid, they are scared of there own shadows and cannot reason.
They are at the bottom of the food chain.
We as hunters think they are smater then we are because we do not want to admit that something with a brain the size of a walnut can out smart us, when in reality we outsmarted ourselves.