Turkey hunting forum for turkey hunting tips

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for some time, and I have finally gotten it to gel.  I thought I would throw it up here, and have y'all comment on it.

First off, let me throw out two basic statements:
1)  There is no such thing as hunting pressure when it comes to turkeys.
2)  There are only a few days every season where gobblers are huntable by conventional methods.

Here is my reasoning for these statements.

I hunt a single 200 acre parcel in SW Bracken County, Kentucky.  I will be starting my 14th season on the property this year.  When I got there in 2001, I still had my head filled with the standard catechisms of turkey hunting. It took me most of the early years to get those ideas out of my head and start seeing things for myself.  Chief among them was the idea of hunting pressure.  If you look back at my writing at that time, you will see that I often attributed the frequent recalcitrance of the turkeys to hunting pressure.  Indeed, I would go out on the Opener and hear a bunch of guns going off around me, and figure that had pretty well wrecked the birds for the season.  I also had to deal with the reality that my place had previously been wide open to hunting for 20 years, and local folks thought of it as kind of an unoffical WMA. When I was not there, it was a favorite spot to go.   Over time that changed, but the turkeys did not.

My main reason for coming to believe that hunting pressure is illusory is that I have realized turkey have very little memory.  I have a great spot on the back of the house, and we can sit out there and listen to turkeys on the roost as well as see turkeys out in our pastures.  Even though we are out there day after day and night after night, we continually have close encounters with turkeys.  In one episode, I had three gobblers come inside 100 yards of the house  three nights running.  The dominant gobbler and two acolytes came up the main N/S road and came closer every night only to suddenly discover my family enjoying Happy Hour on the back of the house.  The experience was fresh to them each time, and they showed complete surprise and utter terror.  Those sorts of things happen all the time at our place. I cannot count the number of times I have come in from scouting or hunting to find fresh gobbler tracks crossing mine in the curtilage. I do not think turkeys have the capacity to brain out the idea of a string of similar events having a pattern. If they do, it is far more attenuated than our own.

I do not mean to say that turkeys do not clam up and adjust their habits.  I am just saying hunters do not cause it as much as we think. What does cause it?   I am not sure.  Bear with me while I explain my second statement.

I have never been enamored with my own calling prowess.  Some folks think I am a pretty good caller, but I always feel like I am like a foreign tourist stumbling with a phrase book.  I need to find the toilet and I end up asking for the nearest brothel.  Accept that assessment for a moment. Take it as given that I am not that great a caller.  There are still a few days out of the season where I can bring them in on a string. How can this be?  I have called up gobblers while suffering from what turned out to be pneumonia, coughing hard enough to pass out.  I have heard of fellows calling in gobblers with a rusty nail and a flower pot.  How can this be?  My assessment is that there are only a few days out of the season when gobblers get this way. On those days, nearly anything will work.  The rest of the time nothing works.  A skillful caller might be able to squeeze a couple days out of a season, but the turkeys are either going to come or not. Mostly, they are not going to come.  That is how the illusion of hunting pressure works its way into our minds. 

I have 3-4 active groups of turkeys on my place during season.  I say groups, because there are more than 1 flock involved in each group. They act somewhat independently of each other. That is to say the group at the north eastern corner of the farm my be "ON" while those on the southwest may be "OFF."  The effect of being "ON" can be very localized.  In talking with my neighbors who hunt properties away from our ridge, I know that my turkeys can be totally OFF while turkey as little as a few miles away can be ON.   If you are a normal sort of hunter, it would be easy to ascribe this to hunting pressure.  What happens when you go out and find the turkeys in an OFF mode?  You go elsewhere, right?  For some it means going to a different farm or different WMA.  For some it means packing off to the next state.

However, what happens to that OFF property?  I only hunt that one 200 acre plot, so I am stuck with finding out that answer.  What I find is that once you remove the idea of hunting pressure from the mix, you see something far more complicated.  Flocks and gobblers do not get wrecked for the season in that way.  Instead, they may switch back ON at any time.  It can be very limited too.  I have seen it be bad in the morning and then get hot in the afternoon.  I have seen one end of the farm dead while the other is seething with turkey lust.

I have gotten a lot of flak over the past few years as I tried to state these ideas.  Guys will tell me I'm crazy.  One fellow did so and then went on to say that he would go out and take the turkey's temperature and if it was not to his liking, go home and drink coffee.  Isn't this what I was just saying? I have also had fellows claim they could call in a gobbler any day during season. It was just knowing how, and then come up with a list of exceptions and provisos a mile long explaining why they did not and could not bag a bird every time they went out.  Top of these guys' lists are funky weather and hunting pressure. For me, that sounds like point and match.

What can ON be like?  Usually, I can say that for where I am, these ON episodes are most likely to occur before our spring season usually starts.  Kentucky does not allow calling before season, but I have had gobblers run across the field, because they heard my knees and boot tops moving in the leaves.  I have had a flock of gobblers come to me and go into full strut while I was sitting on a boat cushion, drinking coffee in a field. I have seen lone gobblers roaming the fields gobbling down the tops of hollows. This is that early breeding season just after the big late winter super flocks break up.  After that, the switch from OFF to ON can happen any time.  In general, I find warmer-than-usual days are the most likely.   However, I've seen it happen after a late season snow with 25 MPH winds. Go figure. 

Assume what I am saying is true, what difference does it make?  The biggest difference is once you remove hunting pressure from your list of assumptions, the possibility of hunting heavily hunted grounds makes sense.  Just because you drove out to one plot or one WMA and heard nothing the Monday after the Opener does not mean that place is played out for the rest of the season.  It might turn ON at any time. If you buy into what I am saying, it means you have to be content to be satisfied with  a couple-three days a year to hunt with conventional "by calling alone" methods or think about something else.  For me, I will not call it "ambushing," because it is not.  However, most days I try to set up where I think turkeys are going to come later in the day and then wait. I call, but location and set-up are my primary focus. The most important thing is to not give up. A given property may turn ON on any given day. It should not find you at home watching Netflix.

One other thing my theory means is that the idea of hunting a mature gobbler may not be such the great feat we claim.  If you look back on my weblog, you will see I have my share of 2 year-olds, jakes, and a few old veterans. Truth told, the old ones got fooled just as quickly and completely as the sophomores. Their ON switch was just as certain. I am not saying there are not wary turkeys out there, but I think they could be wary by nature and not experience.

Please feel free to rip this theory apart.  I'd love it it if someone set me straight. 

lost me at    here is my reasoning

100% right on the absolute button! The best advise is to go and go often. Excellent essay.

I'm not gonna rip you apart but I believe pressure is real, obviously felt and changes habits. Turkeys in my opinion react to pressure on them. Early season it's very very easy to watch them in a field. They display, feed and fight in plain view. After a bunch of knuckleheads mess w them from that road they often stay further away from the road at the least n often move off when they see you.
Now if your reasoning is correct, since they gobble so easy at a kid with a box call sitting in his truck before the season than they will do that even after it's been done a bunch of times. Well by me that don't happen.
I agree with the on and off again thing.,there are days every guy you know kills a bird. They were easy to call. Some days it's tough. But go have a bunch of guys in a calling contest around them, shooting too far, in general just screwing them up n you have different birds.
Now doing tv shows why do you think they leave farms alone til the "killer" gets there? Be it deer, turks, beaver or even coons being trapped. Dumber is better in my opinion. Goes for every single animal. If it didn't theyd soon go extinct.
Turks may not have a giant brain but in my opinion they do respond to pressure put on them

Another thing to think about. At my other place I had a flock that woukd come n go. I enjoyed seeing them n would never hunt there. I used to put some feed out for them. Got to the point if I was on the deck grilling and hadn't yet set the feed they'd come out of the woods to the spot, then approach me. Got to where I could feed them from feet away.
The minute anyone else showed up, my wife, that miserable woman, ok she's gone so back to the story, a friend could show up etc n they'd take off for the woods. Why? They were never harmed near my place, why'd they feel comfortable with just me? I believe at least some small reasoning powers gave them a sense of security. The same reasoning could obviously make em  feel the "pressure" of someone or a bunch of someones trying to kill them. Why are "public" birds tougher than ones behind someone's place that have never been hunted?
To me it shows they do feel the pressure

Quote from: FullChoke on March 08, 2015, 10:07:37 AM
100% right on the absolute button! The best advise is to go and go often. Excellent essay.

This is how I have been hunting the last few year,only come out for a little bite to eat then right back in.It takes a lot of patients because towards the end of the year but the second you get a response its all worth it.The more time you put in the more chances you have.

Shaman, that last statement got me...wary by nature and not experience. Have you ever seen a old, mature, heavy looking at a distance, thick long rope dragging ground, other toms staying there distance from him and think he got that way by not being wary and paying no attention to hunting pressure put on him, I want to come over and hunt some with you and just see one of these birds for myself. I have been at this thing for a long time and when you get ole big boy to show up, it is always a little different experience and most of the time you will get "out smarted again"....why?...because he is old, smart in his own way, and in most cases knows something just don't seem right...better not go over there...call it pressure, wary, not my day to breed that hen, just will play hard to get today, whatever....that is just a turkey being a turkey as Tom Kelly says. Sure, there are certain days of the season that all "hell breaks lose" and birds gobbling every where...exactly why I will be out there tomorrow because yesterday was a bust....happens every season..on every track...pressure or no pressure...but that does not mean that I will sit back and try to figure which days are no good to go today because of whatever.....enjoy all of them to the very last day because the older you get you will realize that next year you may not be able and I want to get all of this I can, while I can. Good hunting and let the young ones walk...you need some seed for next year.

I agree with Bowguy and Uncle Tom. If anything pressure affects turkeys MORE not less than most people estimate in my opinion. The longer you hunt and the more experience you have the more this is true in my experience.  I am talking hard hunted Easterns/Osceolas here. It may be different for Rios/Merriams, I do not know. I think pressure affects them more with each passing year. The longer they have been hunted the more it will affect them in a given area, making them harder to hunt.

Some of the guys with 30/40/50 years plus chime in on this please.

Have you ever been to a state park? county park? Where turkeys are but cannot be hunted.
You can call them to your truck bumper, walk right by them on a trail. Sit in a picnic shelter and they will feed right by you.
You don't have that happen in a WMA or where you can hunt on private land. That has any real pressure year to year. :z-twocents:
Same thing with deer or even tree rats.

I believe they have memory capacity.  I don't think they find a pile of corn every day by happenstance.

I am sure I'm not going to give anyone an epiphany here.  I just figure we all need to try to see things in our own way and speak it the way we see it.  Otherwise, I'd still be trying to hunt turkeys like an old Ben Lee tape.

Let me address the mature gobbler issue first.  Yes, I've hunted some very mature birds. Some I know exactly how old they were, because I hunted their granddaddies.  What I've seen is that that tough old unhuntable bird often has tough unhuntable progeny.  That's sometimes a guess, I know.  However, After 13 seasons, I see patterns.  There is a bird (or more precisely a family line) that will take up residence in a tree behind our tobacco barn.  When they do, they will waste your whole  season.  On the other hand, when I've bagged a mature old man, he's seemed to fall for my calls every bit as much as the youngsters. Maybe I'm missing a subtlety, but  a gobbler's been totally had if he's strutting inside 15 yards of the end of my barrel, regardless of age.

There's one new blood line on our ridge that showed up about 2007, Mister Moto.  I'm probably hunting Moto's grandchildren this season.  I call him Moto, because of his motor mouth-- gobbles all day, 365 days a year.  He also never comes to calls.  The original Mister Moto used to roost on my neighbor's property, but now the Moto clan has moved south onto mine and the other surrounding farms.  He's good for hunting, because he's a natural shock call.  On the other hand, if you know where one of the Motos roost, you know to stay clear.  They gobble and strut, gobble and strut, but will not come to calls.   I   had exactly one encounter with the original Mister Moto.  He caught me napping one day, mid-afternoon. He busted me from 80 yards out.  I can't believe Moto sat his children down one day and explained things to them. However, all the mini-Motos have had this extreme wariness.  Eventually I hope Moto ends up breeding with more gullible bloodlines.  There was a hint of that last spring.  We had what could have been a Moto decendent come to a call for my son. More likely it was another gobbler who heard my son conversing with the recalcitrant gob and interjected himself.

I will admit that I have less experience with public land and  heavily trafficked property.  However, I have seen instances where my neighbors have really mucked things up with things like over-calling, leaving the plug out and blasting 5 rounds at fleeing birds, and running and gunning all over the place.  By the next weekend, I've bagged one of those same birds.  On the other hand, I have gone all season with birds in the OFF mode on my ridge and no calling, no how, no way, would bring them in.  Whether you disregard the idea of hunting pressure, or not the important thing to remember that you should not count the birds out. 

Quote from: dejake on March 08, 2015, 11:36:42 AM
I believe they have memory capacity.  I don't think they find a pile of corn every day by happenstance.

That's a good point, and dusting places are another thing that draws them.  I have an old barn that my turkeys use  for dusting.  I've sat inside one door while turkeys were dusting just inside the other.  If they had no memory, they would not be able to find the door every day.

I have an answer, and that is that I think turkeys can play by very simple rules. Let's say I'm right for a moment.  A turkey could discover a certain place (food, dusting, pond, etc) and then retire from there to a roost tree. The next morning, they flop down, follow simple rules to look for food and at some point the food, the dusting place, whatever appears. From there, they have a simple rule of where to go when they are done. That leads to the roost tree eventually and the process starts over again.  The rules are set by instinct.

The best defense of this way of looking at turkey behavior is what I see on the farm.  Terrain and structure seems to dictate turkey behavior more than anything.  I will see generation after generation of turkey do the exact same thing. They come out of the trees at the same spot, move across a given pasture, feeding is just the same way, and then disappear into another treeline.  Probably the location of the barns, the pastures, and such have not changed in a century and a half.  Another thing that happens is I get generation after generation of the same cast of characters.  Mister Natural struts in the strut zone of his forefathers while Silent Bob and the 2 (sometimes 3 ) Jakes  stay at the bottom of the pasture and watch.  They roost in the same trees. They feed in the same fields.  It is like watching Hamlet or Macbeth over and over again -- different actors playing the same roles.

Quote from: ridgerunner on March 08, 2015, 12:48:28 PM

Years later, one of my family members developed a piece of this land to build a house..and he built a house, had kids, they ran 4 wheelers all over, had a target range and done a bunch of shooting of guns etc...the turkey hunting went down hill big time in a matter of a few years...all due to pressuring birds.

Okay.  I'll buy that, but on the other hand,I've seen  turkeys roosting close to freshly plowed fields.  What's up with that?  I can't believe they can tell the difference between farm machinery and  recreational vehicles.   Turkeys can become fast friends of a tractor. I've also seen turkeys feeding on a rifle range. There's got to be something odd going on there.   

To answer your question,  my immediate next door neighbors for several years were absolute cretins.  They ran ATV's everywhere, killed every large tree within 100 yards of their house, shot guns with negligent abandon and generally raped what had been  prime turkey property.  All through this dark decade, the turkeys roosted in the same trees on their property and on the adjoining plots.  I could call to them, and they would answer. The best answer for the difference between your experience and what happened with my neighbors is that my neighbors had the sense to throw out seed for food plots as they were pillaging the land. The new owner evicted this trash a few years ago, bulldozed their shack and started using the property as a weekend retreat. If the turkeys ever got tired of humans, they never showed it.

Most people use tractors to farm and do not generally hunt from them. Target shooters are at the rifle range and pose no threat to turkeys, no reason to fear that area.  None of this seems odd to me at all.

Turkeys like other wild animals identify predatory behaviors vs. recreational behavior and respond accordingly.

We have had this and similar discussions on OG,...and every other turkey hunting forum there ever was, has been, or will be,...before.  They are usually under the guise of "call-shyness" in one form or another.  It is usually the same sides chosen up,...and I can pretty much summarize the "human psychology" involved,...which I will leave for a future post, if this gets to the point where it is needed.  Suffice it to say,...it is not pretty,...and would get some folks feathers ruffled.

Here, however, is the summation and gist of the matter (forgive me in advance for repeating myself again in this thread as I have done so many times before): 
Human studies on animals/living organisms have shown, without the slightest chance of question, that pretty much every living organism (and members of the animal kingdom, in particular) are capable of learning.  That learning is often simply a function of "positive" or "negative" reinforcement,..."something good happens, I'll do it again,...something bad happens, I won't do that again".

That is how species survive,...and turkeys are no different.  To state that turkeys are incapable on learning to associate distant turkey calling or other interactions with humans after they have had one or more negative interactions with those, is absurd.  Anybody that makes that statement is denying science, period. 

I can,...however, give a pretty accurate explanation as to why some here choose to do that.  Like I said, if I do so, it will ruffle some feathers,...and likely start another war here that is not needed,...and is hopeless.

Finally, this is not to totally discredit some of the fundamental ideas presented by others on this topic.  Fundamental truths are not always without exceptions.  Just make sure not to dispute "undisputed scientific facts" when pointing those exceptions out.

The End   :D ;D

Okay, it seems that we have a majority as to the first point.

On the 2nd point, saying that there are only a few days each year that gobblers can be killed by conventional methods is absolutely not true. There are some days when a turkey is more hot than other days, no doubt. Different tactics/strategies may be called for depending on the time of season and stage of the breeding cycle and a multitude of other factors to numerous to name them all. To suggest that there are only a few days where conventional methods will work is more absurd than the first point about hunting pressure. Like Gobblenut said, this has to be related to human psychology, how these ideas could be suggested.

Reading through what people are writing I see how they believe different things. However it may be someone's interpretation of pressure. Normal seasonal activities that don't directly affect a turkeys safety , such as farming, logging, hiking, etc in my opinion will never tremendously affect them, nor will shots next farm down. It does not affect them. Only pressure exerted first hand on the turks will change them. We're all entitled to dif beliefs but where I live pressure is no myth

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 08, 2015, 02:10:05 PM
Okay, it seems that we have a majority as to the first point.

On the 2nd point, saying that there are only a few days each year that gobblers can be killed by conventional methods is absolutely not true. There are some days when a turkey is more hot than other days, no doubt. Different tactics/strategies may be called for depending on the time of season and stage of the breeding cycle and a multitude of other factors to numerous to name them all. To suggest that there are only a few days where conventional methods will work is more absurd than the first point about hunting pressure. Like Gobblenut said, this has to be related to human psychology, how these ideas could be suggested.

If the 2nd point is absurd, then exactly how many days a season are you actually successful on a given plot?  Could you limit yourself to one 200 acre plot like me and fill the same number of tags, or would you feel like you needed to move around?  If point #2 is incorrect, conceivably a good caller, knowing enough about turkeys should be able to use conventional methods of calling and be successful most days. On the other hand the reality is that most hunters, most days come home with squat. 

What I'm saying is that most days, it is wretchedly hard to get a gobbler to come in, even for a good turkey hunter. That is one reason they call it the hardest game in North America.   What I see, from consulting our telecheck records is  that outside of the Opener my county sees  mostly low single-digit harvests most days of the season. However, there will be bursts of activity on odd days. Now some of this is the preponderance of harvests on weekend days, but some days in mid week will have burst of double-digit harvests. These are the days were I think just about anything seems to work. Other days are dead. In looking over those records I see a fairly consistent  ON or OFF kind of situation for the whole county.  0-4 birds most days and double digits on a very few.  I can't believe those double-digit days are just when the experienced hunters decided to all come out.

As to hunting pressure, let me say again, I realize I'm fighting a basic catechism here.  However, how does a hunter distinguish between birds being silent due to supposed hunting pressure versus them having and OFF-kind of day like I'm suggesting?  If the majority is right, it should be fairly easy to explain without resorting to circular logic.

The conclusion one draws from the "hunting pressure" scenario is the birds are bugged and it is a state they will probably be in for the rest of the season. By asserting the reality of hunting pressure, are you  suggesting that it is reasonable to write off a given plot, because it has been hunted before?  All I'm saying is that the process may be reversible, because  some other causes may be at work.

I also don't want y'all to get the idea that I think turkeys are incapable of learning.  I just think it is sharply attenuated compared to humans when it comes to a thing like this.  Any human would know as soon as he saw a pack of lions sunning themselves under a tree to avoid that tree in the future. It would not take three trips. He would go home and tell his whole family "There's lions under that tree!"  Heck, he'd probably move to the other side of the county for that matter.  From what I've seen of turkeys, they can go to the same patch of ground for a week, encounter humans and still come out on  the next Monday expecting something different.

If there are truly unhuntable gobblers and they learn this from contact with hunters, how does anyone kill a mature gobbler?  If it is only due to the superior skills of the hunter, then how in the heck would any mature gobbler fall for my schlock?  This is still my big aching question.

Shaman,

If sex doesn't work, sometimes a fistfight is in order.
Some days you can promise them things that would make a sailor blush, but all that sailor wants to do is bust a beer bottle over someone's head. Fighting purrs and gobbles can change the game.
Hitting them on those days is the trick.
My son and I had a gobbler we named solo that wouldn't even turn his head to a hen call.
We went up on his mountain, hit him with a gobble followed with a yelp, and it was like a light switch went off! He hit me with a booming gobble that I will never forget.
We tried pulling him back to a killable area, but I was too inexperienced. I made the fatal mistake of sitting down wrong, and was already beat.
It didn't work out, but I learned a ton about turkey behavior that day.   

I have hunted spring gobblers for fifty years, including this one.  Although, compared to some on these forums, I have not hunted as many places as others, I will state that I have hunted all of the five subspecies of wild turkey in North America, and under varying conditions and hunting pressure. 

I have been fortunate enough to hunt turkeys in places where they had never been hunted before,...at least by "modern" spring gobbler hunters using todays tactics.  I have also hunted many public, wide-open grounds where the turkey hunting pressure was "maxed out", so to speak, on the birds there.  And I have hunted many places that were somewhere between the two extremes.

I can state, without hesitation, that there is a direct correlation between how much hunting pressure is put on an area by hunters using conventionally-accepted spring tactics,...calling in particular,...and how difficult they can become to kill.  I have seen it occur time after time after time.  I have discussed this phenomenon with many others,...and almost without exception, they will agree.  Those exceptions also seem to still think the earth is flat.

Sure, any turkey can be killed,...under the right circumstances and conditions,...by anybody at any time.  I could write a book full of accounts of hunters of all skill levels finding themselves in those circumstances and killing gobblers that everybody had decided were unkillable.  With very few exceptions, those success stories were the result of the hunter being in the right place at the right time.  I have stumbled into those myself over the years.

I can also tell you many, many more stories of some pretty darn good turkey hunters,...some of them champion-level callers and hunters,... that have been humiliated by gobblers they were convinced they could kill. 

So what is my point here?  The point is that there are lots of new turkey hunters that frequent this forum and others that do not understand that they can spend an entire season hunting a gobbler and calling to it, thinking it will somehow decide, out of the blue, to come pay them a visit just because it is a new day.  There are plenty of gobblers out in them thar woods that are never going to come to see you when you call to them.  ...And there are almost always more of those kinds of gobblers in places that get hunted hardest than there are in the ones that don't.

 :popcorn: I believe that turkeys have a short memory as well. But they do change their habits if their routine gets spooked. Biggest bird I have ever seen vanished the day after opening day after one of his offspring got to close to the hedgerow where a young hunter was hiding. I had dozens of hours scouting on him and hundreds of trail cam pics. I could tell you within 100 yards where he was from fly down to noon on any given day and he was never seen again in that piece of woods. The farmer never heard another shot that day, maybe he moved on, maybe he met his end prematurely. Who knows. Only my 2 cents. Good luck everyone.

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 08, 2015, 01:50:54 PM
I can,...however, give a pretty accurate explanation as to why some here choose to do that.  Like I said, if I do so, it will ruffle some feathers,...and likely start another war here that is not needed,...and is hopeless.

Go ahead, ruffle some feathers and start a war ;D

Good topic. 

I think turkey can learn BUT I'm not sure it's to the extent that most believe.  For example,  say you go out and call to a turkey one day before the season, he comes in and doesn't find a hen so he eventually leaves because he doesn't find a hen. Not spooked, just leaves.  Some guys would tell you that you just "educated him".  I don't buy that this will make him any less killable because I don't think turkey have the ability to reason and logic.  I think turkey are turkey and are naturally wary....some more so than others. Which brings me to my thought on "pressure" being real vs. perceived. 

I think toward the end of the season, guys go out to a particular farm and they hear fewer turkey than they did at the beginning of the season.  If the place has been hunted fairly hard then it stands to reason that there are probably quite a few less turkey in the woods and the more aggressive birds (the ones that readily come in to calling) end up getting themselves culled out.  Just like people, or dogs, or even domestic chickens,  turkey all have different personality characteristics.... some are more vocal. Some are more aggressive/less wary, some are more quiet and less likely to socialize, etc. etc.    In the turkey woods,  a guy sees a gobbler who wont come in to his calls, and that turkey gets labeled as "educated", "call shy", "an old bird", when in reality it could just be that the turkey isn't interested in mating that particular day but maybe something else would have worked to get him in. 

Early season can be easier on hard hunted places because, in a lot of cases, there are still more eager toms in the woods. Later in the season, a lot of the dumb/aggressive ones are in someone's freezer and what your left with are the ones that are naturally more wary.  Basically I don't think wary turkey are wary as much because of "education" from hunters, as much as I think that a lot of them are just the ones that were born more submissive/less vocal/less aggressive during breeding season.  There are probably exceptions (like turkey that have been shot at and wounded) but I think they are the exception to the rule. 

I'll give you two examples -  One was last season in Bama on a heavily hunted lease I'm on-
I got a bird in CLOSE (like 3yds close) in a thicket, and couldn't get him out of strut, so I took the shot and absolutely blew it and missed. I knocked the tips off of a pair of his feathers in his fan when I shot right over his head.  2 days later, I called him in again, about 250yds from where I'd missed him the first time but I didn't miss on the second go round.   Now, 2 days before, I'd come within inches of ending his life and he took off flying to what looked like the next county. If that's not an experience you'd think would stick with a turkey, I don't know what is... 


I'll give you another example of what most would consider an "educated" turkey -  a few seasons ago, I was hunting a bird that most would assume was "an old bird" who knew the game and wasn't going to come in. He was always wary, never responded to calling and rarely gobbled. I'd tried calling to him multiple times with hen calls and no luck. Couldnt really even get him to check up and give me a look. Anyway, one morning I had him roosted on the edge of a big field and went to set up on him. No decoys and I wasnt all that well hidden, relative to what I'd normally like to be, due to lack of good places to set up. Anyway I decided to see if some gobbler talk would work because nothing else had.  Waited till he flew down, gave him a few gobbler yelps and he headed my way and I ended up killing him.  He was a 2 year old...   Moral to the story is that he wasn't some wise old bird with years of experience skirting hunters. He was just a turkey doing what some turkey do and, on that particular day, he wanted to hang out with the guys instead of being with hens.  This is just one example but I think this kind of thing happens all the time and since we don't always understand it, some guys just assume the turkey is "educated". 

Hunt Pennsylvania public land and you will discover that hunting pressure is NO myth!

 

Quote from: guesswho on March 08, 2015, 08:10:11 PM

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 08, 2015, 01:50:54 PM
I can,...however, give a pretty accurate explanation as to why some here choose to do that.  Like I said, if I do so, it will ruffle some feathers,...and likely start another war here that is not needed,...and is hopeless.

Go ahead, ruffle some feathers and start a war ;D

:TooFunny:  I had a feeling that a certain someone would be chiming in on this eventually.... ;D :toothy12:

Surely you weren't thinking of me! :TooFunny:

Gobblenut, I would be the first to admit:

1) For the past 13 seasons, I have been a complete shut-in on my own property
2) My turkeys now go largely unhunted except for the paltry efforts of myself, my one buddy and my two sons.

. . . so I am by no means an expert on the subject of supposedly pressured gobblers on public land.  However, I often times see exactly the same recalcitrance as what other say they see on public land.  I was certain for years it was a sign they were being hunted by others, and I redoubled my efforts to sweep my plot clean of the certain poachers.  In the end, I realized I was chasing phantoms.  I did have a few incursions over the years, but my turkeys are largely mine to hunt. 

I would agree that calling to the same gobbler, day in and day out is folly.  I also stopped devoting my attention to just one gob. That's the surest way to not fill a tag.   I learned that long ago.   On the other hand, there are ways beyond just calling that can change the outcome.  As I said, I don't ambush, but I often leave recalcitrant gobblers to their hens at flydown and try to go to the places they'll be later in the morning.  I see my turkeys as acting a lot like bass.  You hunt one structure at sunrise and then try another as the sun gets higher.  Eventually I connect.  If I see a gobbler strutting in a pasture two days running, you can bet I'll be there on the third and well ahead of him too.

So no, I would not conclude from what I've said that you should bang away at a gobbler hoping he'll change his mind one day.  However,  I would not rule out any place with turkeys gobbling on the roost, simply because it has been hunted. Nor would I automatically assume that silence in a place known to be a regular turkey haunt is a sure sign of over hunting.

Sounds like an isolated property, with a very small sampling....

Can't say I agree with any of the premises, but certainly don't hunt any properties like the one mentioned....

Lots of data proving pressure....


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I've hunted the same public since 1995. The pressure was almost non existent on Kansas turkeys back in those days. I could drive a 6 mile loop and see 200ish birds. Fast forward to today. Last year was by all accounts the worst year for pressure on turkeys I have ever seen here. The folks employed at this particular spot will attest to that. What is missing? The turkeys. Sure we have had some pretty crappy hatches for many years now. However you just don't see birds on the public like you used too. You see them on private surrounding it, but after a couple weeks they all get run off of the public.

Turkeys follow a pattern. I haven't set foot on the public for turkey hunting since before may of last year. I can walk you in there right now and tell you exactly which trees they will roost in. I saw a bird strutting in a field last year 3 days straight. Day 4 I got off work early and I was waiting for them. They started gobbling 30 minutes before I saw them, but I ultimately ended up missing. Same bird got into a pattern again and I got him 3 days later. Watch them, figure out what they do, and the rest is usually pretty easy.

I hunt a few species of birds, and the one single thing that I have found they all have in common, is that they react negatively to hunting pressure...

Ducks, quail, turkey, pheasant...  All of them become more difficult to kill after having been exposed to hunting pressure.

There are certainly days, or periods when turkeys are more vulnerable to hunting...  I also know there are guys that can consistently get birds into shooting range better than most.

I believe that throughout the season, that there are times of the day that can be more productive, and that these time can vary greatly.

I also believe that in my area, if there is a receptive hen, that toms will breed...  Which to me means, that somewhere, someone can probably trick that bird...  Probably not me though.

Quote from: mudhen on March 08, 2015, 10:45:17 PM
Sounds like an isolated property, with a very small sampling....

Can't say I agree with any of the premises, but certainly don't hunt any properties like the one mentioned....

Lots of data proving pressure....


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I would not call it isolated.  I'm in an area of mostly farms.  I can see other folks' lights.  The area of the county is also well hunted.  If you're out at the right time, you'll see trucks parked and guys in camo on the road.  The numbers I was discussing earlier are for the whole county, and turkey-wise we are the top producer in the NorthEast region of the state. 

I think this is true of a lot of places: half of the harvest for the season is on the first weekend.   Now if you're a hunting pressure advocate, that would indicate that there are a lot of hunters out, they all shoot their guns and it queers a lot of birds for the rest of the season.  On the other hand, what I see on my place is that there may be one of those ON events a week or three before season, the Opener on my ridge is kind of quiet, and then there is a huge burst of activity in the middle-to-the-end of the first week.  I usually hunt all that first week, and the gobblers can get pretty hot. From there on to the end of season it can be pretty dead, but there are always the odd flyers. 


ADD: I got to thinking about this on my way into work.

One thing that strikes me is that the advice I see from folks on how to hunt "pressured" turkeys, dramatically resembles the advice I'd give for hunting my "OFF" gobblers. That is: lay off the heavy calling and use woodsmanship.  That, to me, says a lot.  If "pressured" and "OFF" are handled in the same way, then they may be the same thing.  I guess the big question is whether human interaction has anything to do with it.  My contention is that it might not; turkeys are just normally ornery. 

The important thing here is that a hunter should never throw in the towel just because he thinks hunters have been there before him.

ADD: I'm in a meeting this AM, arrived early to get some email cleaned up.  While I was in there, the resident cardinal showed up.  He lives in the trees by the conference room. He's back for another year.  Every day he beats himself silly fighting with the reflection in the window. 

That makes me wonder:  exactly how much do birds ever learn about anything?

Just a thought.

There are a lot of good turkey hunters on this forum. To answer your questions, I could easily hunt one 200 acre piece and fill all of my tags without a problem, especially if the pressure/turkey population is like what you describe on it. I have done so multiple years.  I am no better than ALOT of the other members on this forum and I am not hear to brag. I cannot stress enough this forum has ALOT of REALLY GOOD turkey hunters. There are hunters here LEGALLY taking 8-10 birds a year in different states (maybe more?)  Do not underestimate the ability of some turkey hunters.

The spikes you are seeing on these certain days you talk about may be weather related. It is well documented that weather affects the number of hunters and hunter effort greatly. All gobblers do not magically say, I am only going to respond to those hen calls on these 3 or 4 days this year. That is ridiculous to believe that. Breeding begins in February in many areas and has been observed during the 4th of July weekend that I am personally aware of. Gobblers may respond to hen calls before or after this and any particular day in between. You can call birds up before the season opens(without a weapon obviously), any given day during the season, and even after the season goes out(again without a weapon). Everyone can make up their own mind about when to hunt or whether they want to hunt a bird after taking his temperature or go home and drink coffee. Just know that just because someone took his temperature and decided he wasn't "hot" enough and went to drink coffee, someone else may very well call him up and kill him. I don't think anyone is going to kill a bird every time they hunt. But I will say this there is a huge variation in the success rate among turkey hunters from the least successful to the most successful, as far as days hunted/birds harvested.  Turkey hunting is so much more than just harvesting a bird though, and that is not the only way to measure success by a long shot. You are WAY underestimating the ability of some turkey hunters.

QuoteThe spikes you are seeing on these certain days you talk about may be weather related. It is well documented that weather affects the number of hunters and hunter effort greatly. All gobblers do not magically say, I am only going to respond to those hen calls on these 3 or 4 days this year. That is ridiculous to believe that.

It IS ridiculous. I'm not trying to say that, and I agree that weather would be the first thing I'd think of as a cause for the spikes. I do not think there is anything magical about it. Quite the contrary.  If you look at all the various factors at play, weather, hen receptivity, etc.  There are going to be a lot of days  on a given plot where it is going to be hard to call up a bird.  You say 3-4, I'm saying 2-3 days. You're probably a better caller than me.  The next guy on here is going to swear 4-5, and we're all right.  I'm just saying there are maybe a blessed few days in given season on a given plot  where  everything comes together and the average fellow has a really  good chance of calling in a gobbler. The rest of the time things are not quite as good.   What's to argue about?

I also don't think I underestimate the folks I'm talking to.  8-10 birds a year sounds about right, given the number of states and the number of days a lot of y'all hunt.  Now whether you can call up a bird on the 4th of July or the Ides of March is somewhat immaterial to this discussion. I've called one up on the Feast of Saint Sabas.  2-3 days of prime hunting out of an average  three week season in Kentucky is not all that bad.  I've read a lot of articles from a lot of distinguished turkey hunters who've had their butts kicked in Northern Kentucky, and a lot of them will talk about how the action only turned hot on the last day, or how a cold snap in the middle of their stay put the birds down for 3 days straight.  I also don't think the Trans-Bluegrass Region is all that different from other places. However, there was a time there where it seemed every outdoor writer had to write the obligatory 1200 words about being beat up on a early season Kentucky hunt. 

I am trying to put this all into some kind of perspective.  Somebody goes out to the local WMA, does a little shock calling and . . . dead silence.  To me, that doesn't sound like hunting pressure.  That sounds like just an OFF kind of day.  The same thing could happen on my property. It's going to require a different set of tactics, but there are birds to be had.  Tomorrow, they might be hot again.

I also agree that someone who tries to take a turkey's temperature and then goes into drink coffee when he's not satisfied is not getting the full picture.  A lot of days my hunting only picks up after 0900 or after 1000 or well into the afternoon, and it can be very localized. That is, it may be just one hillside in one pasture that has any action.  The rest can be completely silent, or it can be one bird on the whole property sometimes that will honor a call, even though I know for a fact that a dozen gobblers or more call it home.

I just think that a lot of what folks call "hunting pressure," is just the natural ornery nature of the bird showing itself. There have been a lot of otherwise perfect mornings I've gone in scratching my head. Then again, there have also been miserable days I would only wish on my ex-wife that have had birds practically crawling up my legs.

I write a simple essay meant to get folks to stop thinking about hunting pressure and start looking at the positive possibilities and the ceiling caves in on me!

Quote from: shaman on March 09, 2015, 06:36:15 AM


ADD: I got to thinking about this on my way into work.

One thing that strikes me is that the advice I see from folks on how to hunt "pressured" turkeys, dramatically resembles the advice I'd give for hunting my "OFF" gobblers. That is: lay off the heavy calling and use woodsmanship.  That, to me, says a lot.  If "pressured" and "OFF" are handled in the same way, then they may be the same thing.  I guess the big question is whether human interaction has anything to do with it.  My contention is that it might not; turkeys are just normally ornery. 

The important thing here is that a hunter should never throw in the towel just because he thinks hunters have been there before him.

ADD: I'm in a meeting this AM, arrived early to get some email cleaned up.  While I was in there, the resident cardinal showed up.  He lives in the trees by the conference room. He's back for another year.  Every day he beats himself silly fighting with the reflection in the window. 

That makes me wonder:  exactly how much do birds ever learn about anything?

Just a thought.

:TooFunny:  Yeah,...you see stuff like that and it does indeed make you wonder.   One afternoon I was driving out from our cabin for a look around.  Reaching the main highway,...which is bordered on each side by a five foot high, five-strand barbed wire fence to keep the cattle off the road,...I looked over to one side and there was a hen turkey walking on the fenceline about thirty yards away. 

I stopped to watch for a couple of minutes as she wandered back and forth trying to get through the fence to cross the highway.  Of course, the longer I sat and watched her, the more nervous she got and soon was running frantically up and down the fencelne, back and forth, trying to get through. 

I finally yelled "you dumb-" and drove on down the road.  I was gone for a couple of hours and was on my way back to the cabin about an hour before dark.  Came to the same corner,...and guess what?  The same freakin' hen turkey was still walking up and down the fenceline trying to get through it! 

I drove past her, stopped about fifty yards away, got out of the truck, and starting walking towards her.  With every step I took towards her, the more panicked she got,...but would still not go through or over the fence.  She just ran back and forth,...going about twenty yards one way and then back the other.

I finally walked up to within a few feet of her,....she was going nuts by that time,...literally darting and flying along the fence,...but she still could not figure out what to do.  Right before I reached her, she flew up high enough to see that she could just fly over the fence,...which she did without any effort whatsoever, and flew across the road and up the hill on the other side.

I just turned and walked back to my truck, mumbling,.."you dumb-"....

Yes, there are definitely times when you have to wonder what's going on in that little pea-brain of theirs...

Quote from: shaman on March 09, 2015, 05:10:13 PM
I write a simple essay meant to get folks to stop thinking about hunting pressure and start looking at the positive possibilities and the ceiling caves in on me!

Been there, done that!  ...Don't want you to think that I was "piling on" you shaman.  I always enjoy your meanderings on these forums.  Please do not stop. 
I will say that, in this particular instance, I am not in agreement with you on your main premise.  I think hunting pressure very much influences success in turkey hunting,...given all other circumstances being equal.  As many have suggested here, there are an awful lot of circumstances that can come up that obviously cloud the issue, however.
The bottom line is that bringing up topics, concepts, and philosophies for discussion is what makes these forums entertaining and educational.  If we all agreed on everything all the time, heck,...what fun would all of this be?!   ;D

I agree with you that "hunting pressure" can be falsely labeled as the reason for an unsuccessful hunt and it very well could be the gobblers being "onery'" as you put it. No doubt they can go cold for days at a time or be hot for days at a time. But another thing, just because one gobbler is "cold" does not mean they all will be. One gobbler may gobble his head off one morning and go totally silent the next morning. However, when he goes totally silent that day, there can be another gobbler gobbling his head off, and maybe he was silent the last two days. Each individual bird is different. And I agree with you they can go from hot to cold or cold to hot within  minutes, not just days.  So alot of what you are saying now, I agree with.

Now look at what you posted though, Hunting pressure is a myth.  NO.
There are only a few days each season where they can be taken by conventional methods. NO.  There may be a "peak" of only a few days, where they are easier to call up, I can agree with you there.     But your statements as you first posted them as absolutes are just not true.

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 09, 2015, 05:25:36 PM
If we all agreed on everything all the time, heck,...what fun would all of this be?!   ;D

The only way we will all ever agree is if everyone finally realizes that I'm right!

I would even argue that in some cases you dont catch turkeys on one of their "OFF" days but in an "OFF" hour.I've gone out on several occasions where i've roosted birds the night before just gobbling like their lives depended on it,only to find dead silence the next morning. The next thing you know about 9:00 the farmers cows start bellowin and low and behold for some reason known only to turkeys they light it up,and even answer calls.Ive pretty much given up the notion on trying to figure out what a turkeys thinkin cuz to be honest i'm not even sure he knows.Kind of like my 5 year old son,mad at the world throwin a fit over who knows what then somebody does or says something funny and hes laughing his butt off because he forgot he was mad.I chase em everyday I can,"GOOD" or "BAD" days.You never know when that moment will come when an old gobbler forgot why he wasn't playing fair and changes his mood.

As far as pressure goes,i'm sure negative interactions can turn a bird off to an extent,but how many of us have shot at a bird and missed only to reposition and call him back in and kill him? How many times have 2-3 birds come in and one get jellyheaded right there in front of his buddies only to have his buds come over and flog him when hes down.Not much more negative than an extremely loud blast and a dead buddy floppin in front of ya.I just take pressure for what its worth and adjust accordingly.Birds can and will die if you're willing to adjust and keep after em regardless of the situations presented at times.Just my  :z-twocents:

Quote from: guesswho on March 09, 2015, 05:35:15 PM

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 09, 2015, 05:25:36 PM
If we all agreed on everything all the time, heck,...what fun would all of this be?!   ;D

The only way we will all ever agree is if everyone finally realizes that I'm right!

You are right once in a while,...on those rare occasions when you agree with me... :TooFunny:

By isolated I meant unique, not far away....


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Turkeys learn, but not in the sense that we do.  Ducks learn to migrate.  It is not instinct - proven time and time again.  Their parents teach them.  Birds raised in Florida do not migrate. 

What a turkey cannot do is say "that sounds funny, therefore I will stay away from that sound".  They may just be wary of calling that does not sound like a hen they have heard before.  There is no logic as we employ it.  If they were able to be logical, we would probably never kill them. They learn from experience, not from logic.   

Survival as a species depends more on breeding than it does on survival of the individual.  Without that very strong breeding instinct, the species dies off. It would be much safer for a gobbler to only breed hens he happens upon, while never gobbling.  But that would not be an efficient way for the species to propagate. He needs to gather the girls.  But he does not think about it, he just does it.  That is their weak point.  Also being a social bird in the fall (scatter and call).  That is why those tactics work.

I too believe in pressure. I also believe it is a crutch for many of us that are not as skilled.  I have a few friends that are turkey killers.  They hunt harder, smarter and think like a turkey.  And they kill turkeys where others strike out. 

I also agree that some birds are OFF sometimes. I hunt public and a 400 acre farm and there are some days the birds are just not receptive to calling.  I get a lot more satisfaction out of out thinking a bird and being where he intends to be and calling him in the last few yards to kill him.  You can call that ambushing, but I call that hunting.  Of course, the "gobble a ton and fly down off the limb" hunts are fun, but when I tagged out one year with a bird that never said a word all season (at least when I was there), but I knew he was there because of his tracks and his strut marks.  I called him in after noon (all day hunting on private) by being more stubborn than he was.  I was more proud of that bird than the one I called in gobbling earlier in the year. 

Turkeys are wary, random and frustrating as all get out and I am counting the days until the season opens. 

Quote from: guesswho on March 09, 2015, 05:35:15 PM

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 09, 2015, 05:25:36 PM
If we all agreed on everything all the time, heck,...what fun would all of this be?!   ;D

The only way we will all ever agree is if everyone finally realizes that I'm right!

Ronnie, didn't you make a mistake once when you thought you were wrong? ;D

Quote from: mudhen on March 09, 2015, 06:36:52 PM
By isolated I meant unique, not far away....


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I don't think my situation is all that unique either.  There are a lot of us out there that only hunt one property, and I don't think my property is all that unique from others-- not in the Trans-Bluegrass and not in the Ohio Valley.

I do think my hunting experiences in Mississippi were considerably different. I think the weather is  much more favorable on a lot more days down south.  It took a lot of years for me to sort out the differences.  Most places to in the deep south don't get "Hail" as a forecast for the day. Our little patch of heaven will on occasion, and indeed for hours on end there will be fits and spurts of small ice balls falling from the sky.  You can usually figure that to be an "OFF" kind of day.  Ditto for the 40 degree temperature drops and 30 mph winds we sometimes get Opening Week.   On the other hand, I've been in bathing trunks, camped out in front of the air conditioner Opening Week.

I hunted Southern KY for a number of years, about 200 miles south of where I am, and it was all public ground  and it was all  kind of "OFF" .  Back when 600 feet of altitude difference on a morning hunt didn't mean much to me, and my goal was to find gobblers who'd never been called to.  I found them all right.  However, I realized no matter how motivated the gobbler was, it was hard to close the deal with a 50 foot cliff in the way.   I also found out virgin gobblers can be just as recalcitrant as war veterans.

And I've been all over Southern Ohio, where I learned to recognize    what it's like to get gobblers shot out from under me, and what it's like to be hunted by another hunter.  Crowded? Yes, Pressure? Yes, but somebody was still was killing turkeys. You could hear shotguns going off every morning.

My point is that I just don't see a whole lot of difference between what folks call "hunting pressure" and the overall ups and downs of turkeys. The difference becomes even less meaningful when the strategy for both is basically the same.   If you'd asked me a decade ago, I would have told you my turkeys were all call-shy, deke-shy, shell-shocked and suffering from PTSD. I would have ascribed all manner of human-induced terror.  Nowadays, I just see them as turkeys.

This is great fodder for keeping the mind pre-occupied and the doldrums at bay for those of us that are still a few weeks away from actually getting to go hunting for turkeys.  My theory is,..."if you can't go turkey hunting, talk about turkey hunting". 

Not wanting to get into my usual lengthy, long-winded diatribe, I will try to be brief,...as much as it pains me to do so.  Hence, I submit the following formula regarding the subject at hand.  Feel free to dissect it and tear it apart as one sees fit.

Hunting Pressure = more people in turkey woods "impersonating turkeys" = more encounters by turkeys with people "impersonating" them = more negative reinforcement to turkeys that they should avoid said impersonators = turkeys associating danger with getting too close to impersonators = turkeys deciding that unless they want to be converted to turkey nuggets that perhaps they should avoid all impersonations of turkeys = gobblers never approaching any turkey impersonation, accompanied by an attitude of,..."if you want some of this, you are going to have to come over here to me so I can see that you are a real turkey".

You know, something strikes me in all this.  Again, I'm still questioning hunting pressure as a concept. 

However, it dawns on me that half of all turkeys harvested in a given season are taken on Opening Weekend.  That's at least true in the OH, IN, and KY. Your states may be different, but I don't monitor those states' statistics.  Opening Weekend is when EVERYBODY's out, or so it seems. It could just be that what we call hunting pressure is when all the truly gullible birds get nailed.  By the time Monday comes around, what's left are the ones that were too ornery to come to a call.

Fishing has long had a similar argument.  The old timers used to be able to drag a cut-off silver teaspoon through the water and fill the boat with bigguns.  Nowadays you have to be pretty shrewd to get a 10th of that kind of haul.  The idea is that sportsmen have selected all the stupid ones and gotten them out of the gene pool. What's left are wary and the wariness grows over time.  I don't mean to argue the validity of the argument.  I don't know.  However, I would speculate that something similar happens with turkey.

It would certainly be the case that on heavily hunted property, whether learning is main driver or not, after the Opener, there are going to be much fewer gobblers about.

Pressure is real, it is just given more credit than it deserves.

the only a few days that any one bird can be called couldn't be more off in my mind. Birds that are easy to call in or are more gobble prone die early, then they are gone. if those birds were allowed to walk they would come back in the next day and the day after that.

All in all, birds aren't overly hard to kill as long as they are there and you spend some time in the woods.

QuoteHunting Pressure = more people in turkey woods "impersonating turkeys" = more encounters by turkeys with people "impersonating" them = more negative reinforcement to turkeys that they should avoid said impersonators = turkeys associating danger with getting too close to impersonators = turkeys deciding that unless they want to be converted to turkey nuggets that perhaps they should avoid all impersonations of turkeys = gobblers never approaching any turkey impersonation, accompanied by an attitude of,..."if you want some of this, you are going to have to come over here to me so I can see that you are a real turkey".

I agree with everything except the Bold Underlined.  I think you were being tongue in cheek though.  Turkeys don't "decide" anything.  There is no complex thought, just positive punishment - (not negative reinforcement)- they have a behavior and there is a negative outcome. It is a common misuse of the term though.  You described positive punishment- a behavior is met with a punishment (interaction with human) and then is avoided.  Negative reinforcement would be the turkey avoids the call and thus avoids the interaction.  They would not have the logical ability to avoid the call without the positive punishment. 

If you touch a hot stove, you will get burned (positive punishment).  You make a logical decision before you ever touch the stove to avoid it (negative reinforcement)-they have to touch the stove to know it burns them. I don't think that can happen with a turkey without the positive punishment.  My wife and daughter are education majors and have taught me this.  This also explains easy to kill young birds or easy to kill birds that have not been exposed to hunting much (no positive punishment). 

Fun topic.

Combination of things. Less gobblers left after opening weekend, Absolutely.
Less hunters after opening weekend, Absolutely, hence lower kill totals.
Less hunters after say the 1st week of season, Absolutely, again contributing to the lower kill totals.
Hunting pressure being wrongly blamed for why someone didn't get the bird, Sure that happens alot.
Hunting pressure a myth, NO It is real.
Difference between pressured turkeys vs. turkeys that have never heard a call/seen a hunter YOU BET.

Who can say for certainty what thought processes Wild Turkeys are capable of.  Perhaps the only thing holding them back is the absence of an opposable thumb

Read "Illumination in the Flatwoods" by Joe Hutto if you want to be impressed by the complexity of the wild turkey

I can assure you here in Pennsylvania pressure affects turkeys. I have seen over the years in the fall seasons. When flocks of young of the year were busted up for the first time and called very little if at all. Why, probably because of the brood hens in the flock. Hence it is breed into generations. In the last 10 years, I can't tell you how many coyotes my friends and I have called in during the fall, calling turkeys. The birds feel and react to the pressure from the coyotes.I hunt a lot of public ground. There is nothing that compares to harvesting a hard hunted, pressured gobbler on public ground. They are a different breed for sure. I know I will probably get hammered for this, but if you don't believe pressure affects turkeys than you haven't hunted turkeys that have been pressured enough.

One thing is for sure. Guys I know who kill pressured turkeys year in year out never say the turkeys are over hunted, call shy, henned up, bad weather or whatever excuse people who pursue turkeys come up with. They just get it done.

Time for a "reality check".

There are lots of ways to "get it done".  Some like to imply that they kill turkeys because they are somehow superior callers than most of us.  Although that is true in some cases, the fact is that the newer generation of turkey calls available make it so that anybody that has the least bit of inclination to do so, can become great turkey callers. 

So where that leaves us is that the guys that "get it done" on highly pressured lands are most likely just better with their "woods skills" other than turkey calling.  What that ultimately means is that those that get it done do so by learning to call very little,...and set up in places where gobblers are likely going to show up. 

That has very little to do with calling skill and often, even woodsmanship.  What is does say about those hunters is that they have a lot of patience, know the country they are hunting very well, and are willing to just wait until a gobbler shows up.

They are not necessarily superior callers,...they just know when not to call more than anything else.  Almost without exception, the guys that kill birds on really heavily-pressured areas,...not the guys that just think, in their minds, that the areas they hunt are heavily pressured,...suggest that they kill those birds by calling very little and calling very softly.

That is all well and good, but what that tells me is that they are basically killing birds by setting up in places they know turkeys are going to eventually come to,...and then ambushing them. 

I get a kick out of the guys that say,..."Yeah, you can't call normally to these birds.  You got to use soft, subtle calling.  I kilt this here gobbler cuz I clucked and purred once every half hour and he came sneakin' in to my calls. ...Just the way you got to hunt 'em here".

The reality check is this:  That guy killed that gobbler because he set up in a spot he knew turkeys would eventually show up.  It had nothing to do with calling other than he knew that he could not call often or loud enough for any turkey in the area to hear him.  It was an ambushed bird pure and simple.  He killed a bird that he (or anybody else) would have killed without every making a peep on a call. 

Anybody that wants to prove to me that they are a great turkey hunter,...and not just a good turkey ambusher,....is going to have to go to a place that really gets heavily hunted.  That is a place where lots of hunters do lots of calling of all kinds to the gobblers there day in and day out during the season.  Go to a place like that, carry on a real, live conversation with a gobbler that comes to your call because he hears you calling to him and thinks you are the real deal.  If a guy can do that, and do it on a regular basis, then he will get my respect as a great turkey hunter.   

So, now knowing the woods and taking the time to learn where the birds want to be is ambushing?  Let me get "the rules" right here.

No 41 yard shots.
No blinds.
No decoys.
No sitting and blind calling (ambushing).


Have I missed anything? 

(not picking on you alone Gobble, just a lot of rules to keep up with)
I have broken 3 out of those 4 - never used a pop up, unless a ground blind counts, then I have broken all 4. 
:funnyturkey: :drool:

What's the word I'm looking for?   Oh yeah, inept!

Some of you "experts" take yourselves too seriously.  That's cool.  I am a duck hunter, goose hunter, turkey hunter, redfish catcher and a couple of other hobbies.  2 birds a year disagree with "inept" and they taste fine to me.  I just have fun. 

Quote from: g8rvet on March 14, 2015, 05:28:07 PM
Some of you "experts" take yourselves too seriously.  That's cool.  I am a duck hunter, goose hunter, turkey hunter, redfish catcher and a couple of other hobbies.  2 birds a year disagree with "inept" and they taste fine to me.  I just have fun.

The inept comment was a private poke at Gobblenut.   Most on here who know me will tell you taking myself too serious is something I've never been accused of.   And rarely accused of expert.  Sorry if you took the inept comment personal, it wasn't meant to be.     

Fall toms is right on the money about the reality of pressure. Now the more experience you have, the more you realize this in my opinion.

Turkey slayer is right on the money about guys just getting it done despite pressure, overhunted birds.

Gobblenut, to some extent I agree with you about ambushing. But in this case in my opinion turkey slayer is a great hunter and deserves that respect you talked about. He is not one to cheapen the turkey hunting experience, but rather respects the bird and adheres to the highest standards as far as fair chase/fair play and ethics. I also share this, as do many others on this forum.  Being from the same state, I know a bit about the terrain/pressure in this part of the country. I honestly do not believe the guys he talked about are "ambushers", but rather truly great hunters. One point on calling, knowing when not to call is a part of being a good/great caller.

Quote from: g8rvet on March 14, 2015, 05:28:07 PM2 birds a year disagree with "inept" and they taste fine to me.  I just have fun.

I noticed where your a duck hunter too and forgot to ask.  Your 2 birds a year, are they both ducks, turkeys, or one of each? :D

So I have a question.
If you are calling to a bird, and he doesn't come to your calls and is going away from you, the next move in the chess match is to use terrain and get to a spot that he wants to be, and kill him there.
Is that considered ambush, or tactical adjustment? You can easily say the bird is not killable, yet if you by happenstance on the following day set up in the spot where he was going to and kill him, with the same call, what does that mean? Were you lucky, or did you use the lesson you learned the day before to help you have success.
We all know of birds that will not come to calls, but will have a favorite spot be it a strut zone or dusting bowl, etc.
I am truly not being sarcastic, just confused about what the definition of ambush means in relation to hunting turkeys.

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 14, 2015, 03:40:20 PM
Time for a "reality check".

There are lots of ways to "get it done".  Some like to imply that they kill turkeys because they are somehow superior callers than most of us.  Although that is true in some cases, the fact is that the newer generation of turkey calls available make it so that anybody that has the least bit of inclination to do so, can become great turkey callers. 

So where that leaves us is that the guys that "get it done" on highly pressured lands are most likely just better with their "woods skills" other than turkey calling.  What that ultimately means is that those that get it done do so by learning to call very little,...and set up in places where gobblers are likely going to show up. 

That has very little to do with calling skill and often, even woodsmanship.  What is does say about those hunters is that they have a lot of patience, know the country they are hunting very well, and are willing to just wait until a gobbler shows up.

They are not necessarily superior callers,...they just know when not to call more than anything else.  Almost without exception, the guys that kill birds on really heavily-pressured areas,...not the guys that just think, in their minds, that the areas they hunt are heavily pressured,...suggest that they kill those birds by calling very little and calling very softly.

That is all well and good, but what that tells me is that they are basically killing birds by setting up in places they know turkeys are going to eventually come to,...and then ambushing them. 

I get a kick out of the guys that say,..."Yeah, you can't call normally to these birds.  You got to use soft, subtle calling.  I kilt this here gobbler cuz I clucked and purred once every half hour and he came sneakin' in to my calls. ...Just the way you got to hunt 'em here".

The reality check is this:  That guy killed that gobbler because he set up in a spot he knew turkeys would eventually show up.  It had nothing to do with calling other than he knew that he could not call often or loud enough for any turkey in the area to hear him.  It was an ambushed bird pure and simple.  He killed a bird that he (or anybody else) would have killed without every making a peep on a call. 

Anybody that wants to prove to me that they are a great turkey hunter,...and not just a good turkey ambusher,....is going to have to go to a place that really gets heavily hunted.  That is a place where lots of hunters do lots of calling of all kinds to the gobblers there day in and day out during the season.  Go to a place like that, carry on a real, live conversation with a gobbler that comes to your call because he hears you calling to him and thinks you are the real deal.  If a guy can do that, and do it on a regular basis, then he will get my respect as a great turkey hunter.

I didn't post that to offend anyone. It's just a truth. I do agree people define heavily pressured different. The place I hunt in Ohio is considered to have a ton of hunters. I would consider it having your own mountain here. My areas in Tennessee and Virginia gets hunted way more. Doesn't matter if it's the 3rd week of the season on a Wednesday. There's people hunting every day. Sometimes I wonder if anyone works lol. I hear more "owls" in a day than real ones all year.

I'm not referring to ambushing either. Hunting in a rifle state is a good way to get a bullet sent your way. Patterning? What's that lol. I have rarely seen a bird do the same thing 2 days in a row. They rarely roost on the same ridge but are usually in hearing distance. This is all mountain and no fields so your mileage may vary.

I place calling on the bottom of the list. Sounding realistic can't hurt but click on the turkey hunting videos on YouTube and I'm in disbelief a turkey would come to that noise. Not all of em but several for sure. A guy on here, can't think of his name, has some good videos.

You also have to look at the population density. A novice will look good in a turkey rich environment. It's just the odds are more in your favor the more birds you hear no matter the pressure.

The point I was trying to make in my original post was I never hear any of the good turkey hunters I know complain or make an excuse. They will find a way to get it done and I deff wouldn't bet against them just the way I wouldn't bet against some guys on this forum. Is the season open yet :D

Quote from: chatterbox on March 14, 2015, 06:54:29 PM
So I have a question.
If you are calling to a bird, and he doesn't come to your calls and is going away from you, the next move in the chess match is to use terrain and get to a spot that he wants to be, and kill him there.
Is that considered ambush, or tactical adjustment? You can easily say the bird is not killable, yet if you by happenstance on the following day set up in the spot where he was going to and kill him, with the same call, what does that mean? Were you lucky, or did you use the lesson you learned the day before to help you have success.
We all know of birds that will not come to calls, but will have a favorite spot be it a strut zone or dusting bowl, etc.
I am truly not being sarcastic, just confused about what the definition of ambush means in relation to hunting turkeys.

I have a lot to learn about turkey hunting, but I do know that I have to make the most of my time in the field...

So my question would be why is he moving away?

If I spooked him, or bumped him off, I would look for another bird to hunt.
If he is with and following a hen, or group of hens, I would either try to get around them, and try again, or if they are somewhere I cannot follow, I would once again look for another bird.
If he is simply being a bit cagey about wanting to come in, I might try and walk away from him and call (if he is within 150 yards), or I might try to get above him and angle slightly up and away from him while calling (if he is further away).
If he is long ways off, I might try to cut the distance, and see if I could arouse his interest...

A lot of what I would do would depend on why he is moving away, and the terrain and property I am hunting (most of my access is fairly steep, but still climbable).

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 08, 2015, 07:45:53 PM
I have hunted spring gobblers for fifty years, including this one.  Although, compared to some on these forums, I have not hunted as many places as others, I will state that I have hunted all of the five subspecies of wild turkey in North America, and under varying conditions and hunting pressure. 

I have been fortunate enough to hunt turkeys in places where they had never been hunted before,...at least by "modern" spring gobbler hunters using todays tactics.  I have also hunted many public, wide-open grounds where the turkey hunting pressure was "maxed out", so to speak, on the birds there.  And I have hunted many places that were somewhere between the two extremes.

I can state, without hesitation, that there is a direct correlation between how much hunting pressure is put on an area by hunters using conventionally-accepted spring tactics,...calling in particular,...and how difficult they can become to kill.  I have seen it occur time after time after time.  I have discussed this phenomenon with many others,...and almost without exception, they will agree.  Those exceptions also seem to still think the earth is flat.

Sure, any turkey can be killed,...under the right circumstances and conditions,...by anybody at any time.  I could write a book full of accounts of hunters of all skill levels finding themselves in those circumstances and killing gobblers that everybody had decided were unkillable.  With very few exceptions, those success stories were the result of the hunter being in the right place at the right time.  I have stumbled into those myself over the years.

I can also tell you many, many more stories of some pretty darn good turkey hunters,...some of them champion-level callers and hunters,... that have been humiliated by gobblers they were convinced they could kill. 

So what is my point here?  The point is that there are lots of new turkey hunters that frequent this forum and others that do not understand that they can spend an entire season hunting a gobbler and calling to it, thinking it will somehow decide, out of the blue, to come pay them a visit just because it is a new day.  There are plenty of gobblers out in them thar woods that are never going to come to see you when you call to them.  ...And there are almost always more of those kinds of gobblers in places that get hunted hardest than there are in the ones that don't.

Saved me a lot of typing...

I too have hunted spring gobblers for over 50yrs...last 30 or so only on open public land. When I started I knew one other turkey hunter and he lived over 100 miles from me and there were plenty of easy (non-pressured, never hunted) turkeys to be found. My deer hunting buddies didn't know you could hunt turkeys in the spring time. There's a whole lot of difference in hunting educated turkeys..pressured...and seems like to me it takes about three classes..or being seen by them in their woods with vile intent..they seem to know.

Quote from: guesswho on March 14, 2015, 06:49:16 PM

Quote from: g8rvet on March 14, 2015, 05:28:07 PM2 birds a year disagree with "inept" and they taste fine to me.  I just have fun.

I noticed where your a duck hunter too and forgot to ask.  Your 2 birds a year, are they both ducks, turkeys, or one of each? :D

2 ducks?  I wish.  I usually get flipped 2 birds a year for being an arse.  Sorry for taking offense, all my posts were meant to lighten the mood on every side.  I should have known with your avatar you have a good sense of humor.  Monkey butt.  lol 

My $0.02

Your two statements are false.

Looking at it just from your perspective, I see how you could have come to those conclusions. For some reason, either known or unknown, turkeys can be easier to call in by conventional methods on some days than they are on others. Weather, breeding phase and yes, even pressure can have an effect on this as well as countless other unknown causes. Maybe the gobbler got bit by a copperhead the day before and isn't feeling well. Who knows?

Hunting pressure has an effect on turkeys no questions asked. Go scout a popular piece of public land a month before the season opens. You'll find tracks, feathers, droppings, and often turkeys on the roads and paths around the property. Go there two weeks after the season has opened. You'd think every gobbler, hen, and jake had been shot and hauled off. Turkeys were using an area that was easily accessible and now they aren't. Hypothesis disproved. 

Now, hunt those same woods every day for the first two weeks of the season. Things get stale. You may hear one or two distant gobbles on the roost then it's dead silent. You wouldn't believe there was a turkey in the area if it weren't for that one feather you found near the back property line. Then your buddy Richard comes with you. Richard's one of those "turkey guys." He shot a deer one time when he was 13, and hasn't been in the woods with a rifle since. He's been pure turkey 365 days a year since 1982. After two hours in the woods with Richard on that same land that was completely void of turkeys, you've got a gobbler that's ready to lift up your hat to see if that's where you hid the hen he's been hearing. Richard can call up "pressured" turkeys better than most anyone else you know. Those of us that have hunted with Richards know it's true, but wouldn't admit it in public and never to his face. Hypothesis disproved.


Turkeys get harder to kill the more they get hunted. That's why hunters that are consistently successful on public land are almost always low impact hunters that know the land on an intimate level and can think like a turkey. Heck, they can even think like a turkey that got shot at last week. It's amazing to watch someone like this operate. It can also be incredibly hard to learn from them because often their tactics and decisions go entirely against everything you think you know. But the truth is now lying right at your feet, still warm. And Richard's sitting back there with one of his famous sh!t eating grins on his face.

I don't think you've hunted much public land.

I have, and trust me a private land three year old turkey is apt to be as dumb as a public land jake.

Quote from: Gooserbat on March 15, 2015, 02:24:27 AM
I don't think you've hunted much public land.

I have, and trust me a private land three year old turkey is apt to be as dumb as a public land jake.

Agreed   
And how in the heck do you call soft enough or not enough for a turkey to not hear you. lol
:morning:

I am a beginner at this sport, and I have not read every post in this topic, but I cannot help but feel that turkeys are along the same lines as deer, as far as being pressured.

How many times have you shot a deer, only to have other deer come right back to where you just shot one? During the rut, a buck will forego all of his instincts that keep him alive, just to mate.

I cannot help but feel that a turkey will do the same thing. I think that if you shoot at a turkey and miss completely, he may not even know what has happened. He just knows that something scared him (noise) and he got the heck out of there. I would say that after an hour or so, he is no longer thinking about that noise, instead he is thinking about finding a mate. Now, if a few pellets hit him, that may be a different story all together. But then again, how many people shoot a deer, only to find that he/she still has a bullet, broadhead, or even an arrow still in him/her?

Please take everything that I have said with a grain of salt (Except about deer. I know my deer hunting.). It is just my opinion.

A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 10:53:41 AM
A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

This is true, but let me ask you this:

If a gobbler does not see or hear you (Does not know a predator (you) is around), and sees other turkeys (decoys), would he not assume all is well, regardless of how much pressure has been put on him throughout the years, or how old he is?

I don't use decoys so I cannot say on your question.  I can say a turkeys senses get better as he gets older, his eyesight, his hearing, he gets more wary, he matures and is harder to call.   My point was a jake anywhere on any type land is not anywhere near a 3 year old or older on any type land.

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 11:09:45 AM
I don't use decoys so I cannot say on your question.  I can say a turkeys senses get better as he gets older, his eyesight, his hearing, he gets more wary, he matures and is harder to call.   My point was a jake anywhere on any type land is not anywhere near a 3 year old or older on any type land.

No doubt that turkeys, as well as most living creatures, will wise up the older they get. Unfortunately, not always true for humans...

Quote from: deerbasshunter3 on March 15, 2015, 10:58:43 AM

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 10:53:41 AM
A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

This is true, but let me ask you this:

If a gobbler does not see or hear you (Does not know a predator (you) is around), and sees other turkeys (decoys), would he not assume all is well, regardless of how much pressure has been put on him throughout the years, or how old he is?

No, turkeys are never under the assumption that all is well. Never.

Here's the thing. First of, you can't really compare a whitetail's reaction to being shot at from a box stand 150 yds away to missing a turkey that was called up to 20 yds on the ground. It's almost physically impossible to call a turkey into gun range without them thinking something is off. They're already a little sketched out by the fact that the hen didn't come running to them. Do decoys have a calming affect? Sure they do, but they still realize something is off.

I could kind of see what you're saying if the situation were such that the turkey walked within gun range on their own accord (as is often the case with deer). You were sitting in a likely area and a gobbler came along, you shoot and miss. Now, I postulate that that turkey will be less "educated" by that occurrence than if you had worked him for three hours. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a turkey (gobbles, fighting purr, cutting, wing flapping, etc.), getting him within gun range and not finishing the deal (whether you miss, spook him, or he just gives you the slip) will make that turkey harder to call in again.

Quote from: Garrett Trentham on March 15, 2015, 11:17:27 AM

Quote from: deerbasshunter3 on March 15, 2015, 10:58:43 AM

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 10:53:41 AM
A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

This is true, but let me ask you this:

If a gobbler does not see or hear you (Does not know a predator (you) is around), and sees other turkeys (decoys), would he not assume all is well, regardless of how much pressure has been put on him throughout the years, or how old he is?

No, turkeys are never under the assumption that all is well. Never.

Here's the thing. First of, you can't really compare a whitetail's reaction to being shot at from a box stand 150 yds away to missing a turkey that was called up to 20 yds on the ground. It's almost physically impossible to call a turkey into gun range without them thinking something is off. They're already a little sketched out by the fact that the hen didn't come running to them. Do decoys have a calming affect? Sure they do, but they still realize something is off.

I could kind of see what you're saying if the situation were such that the turkey walked within gun range on their own accord (as is often the case with deer). You were sitting in a likely area and a gobbler came along, you shoot and miss. Now, I postulate that that turkey will be less "educated" by that occurrence than if you had worked him for three hours. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a turkey (gobbles, fighting purr, cutting, wing flapping, etc.), getting him within gun range and not finishing the deal (whether you miss, spook him, or he just gives you the slip) will make that turkey harder to call in again.

I was actually referring to deer in the sense of bowhunting (within 30 yards). rarely have any of the deer that I have shot with my rifle even been outside of 50 yards. I guess it just has to do with the spots I choose to hunt deer. I am getting off topic though.

So, is it safe to say that hens do not call to gobblers as much as we humans think that they do?

Not trying to argue with anybody, just trying to learn and put in my two cents.

No, hens call plenty to gobblers.   It is safe to say that turkeys are WAY more suspicious by nature than deer.   It is also safe to say that when a hen calls to a gobbler she does not hide invisibly beside a tree or a stump when the gobbler approaches closely.  Real hens can be seen and heard.

Quote from: deerbasshunter3 on March 15, 2015, 11:29:38 AM

So, is it safe to say that hens do not call to gobblers as much as we humans think that they do?

I would tend to agree with that. As a general rule in nature, gobblers call in the hens. Not the other way around. Now, hens do get excited and call up gobblers, especially if they're lost or can't get to the gobbler for some reason.

I encourage you to test this. Go out one morning in early spring and gobble up some hens. It's quite easy and is a great way to observe hen behavior. Now, back to the subject, by doing this you risk spooking and educating birds, but if it's on your own private land, you'll gain more from the experience than you'll loose.

Okay, as a general rule we are going against nature.

But Hens absolutely call up gobblers all the time. Hens do call loud and alot and are very vocal at certain times during the breeding season. 

How many times have been calling a gobbler who was working your way until he heard "his hen" and went to her?  Happens all the time.

Anyone who thinks hunting pressure doesn't affect turkeys. Apperantly has no idea how a pressured turkey acts. I just can't believe anyone could make such a statement. I respect your option, but your sadly mistaken. I live in PA. I hunt a lot of public ground. I know its been mentioned before, a 3 or 4 year old gobbler acts a certain way for a reason.

Quote from: falltoms on March 15, 2015, 12:34:58 PM
Anyone who thinks hunting pressure doesn't affect turkeys. Apperantly has no idea how a pressured turkey acts. I just can't believe anyone could make such a statement. I respect your option, but your sadly mistaken. I live in PA. I hunt a lot of public ground. I know its been mentioned before, a 3 or 4 year old gobbler acts a certain way for a reason.

:z-winnersmiley:

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 10:53:41 AM
A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

If you take a jake from heavy pressured public or private land and put it on a piece of property that hasn't been hunted or has little to no pressure, I would be willing to bet good money a three yr old gobbler would be easier to kill than that jake.

Being hunted by a human predator is a lot different than wild predators..for one thing wild predators don't make sounds like a love sick hen.

Jakes are not necessarily easy to kill when it comes to calling them in. They are very unpredictable and may be very timid and somewhat afraid in approaching hen calls at times.

3 or 4 year old gobblers are WAY more patient and more apt to wait for the hen to come to them, compared to younger birds regardless of where they live.

2 year olds are usually the most eager to approach a hen they have not seen in my experience.

Pressure is a factor but it ain't the only factor.   Turkeys are just being turkeys many times when pressure is blamed or used as an excuse.

I honestly thought this thread was started as a joke when I just read the 1st couple lines.

Quote from: shaman on March 08, 2015, 09:22:15 AM
First off, let me throw out two basic statements:
1)  There is no such thing as hunting pressure when it comes to turkeys.
2)  There are only a few days every season where gobblers are huntable by conventional methods.

1) Although I do not agree that pressure is what everybody thinks it is, I still feel that it can be a factor. If I shoot at a turkey and miss him, I am, most likely, not going to get another shot at him that day. Of course, there is the possibility that he will forget about it hours later and I can ambush him, but I doubt very seriously that he will be coming to any calls for the rest of that day.

2) I do not know what the OP means by "conventional methods", but I do not agree with this statement. I know for a fact that at least three gobblers were killed off of our property last year before I had a chance to experience my first turkey hunt. There were probably more that I did not know about since other people that i do not ever talk to hunt there as well. That being said, I had a shot at a gobbler on April 27th. I missed, but he was called in from a ways away in the swamp. He even flew over a creek to come to our calling. I would assume that if there were only a few days that gobblers were huntable by conventional methods, they would be consecutive days, not spread out throughout the month. Fact of the matter is, gobblers were clearly huntable throughout the season last year.

Quote from: hoyt on March 15, 2015, 12:43:26 PM

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 15, 2015, 10:53:41 AM
A 3 year old or older gobbler is what he is a 3 year old or older regardless of where he calls home, public or private.  Turkeys get tougher to hunt the older they get from their years of experience they have learned many lessons on survival in the wild. They are hunted everyday by predators.

Jakes on public land get plenty of pressure from hunters. But there is a huge difference between a jake and a 3 or 4 year old gobbler regardless of where they live.

If you take a jake from heavy pressured public or private land and put it on a piece of property that hasn't been hunted or has little to no pressure, I would be willing to bet good money a three yr old gobbler would be easier to kill than that jake.

Being hunted by a human predator is a lot different than wild predators..for one thing wild predators don't make sounds like a love sick hen.

Young birds are taught by the old mama hens(you know them that keep the other young turkeys away from you during the fall and lead the gobblers away from you in the spring)? These know the dangers in the lands they live on.  Go to an area that cant be hunted at all, State or county park for instance. You can walk up on them , old toms and hens alike , they are not afraid of the human. I've done it many times.  Called the toms right up many times while standing in the trail with shorts and a white t-shirt.  Deer do the same thing, Monster bucks stand there and look at you. Squirrels run the trails all around you. County park last spring i called 3 of the mighty 3 -4 year old toms gobblin their fool heads off to my truck bumper while i sat in the back drinking coffee.  Go to a conservation hunting area and try that. Even the young toms and hens get a glimpse of you they are gone. Squirrels hide or run into holes. All you see is whitetails heading out even after season has been over for months.
But the predator thing is another story , take your dog to the park and the critters will go bye now.

Quote from: g8rvet on March 14, 2015, 09:37:29 PM
I should have known with your avatar you have a good sense of humor.  Monkey butt.  lol

It was either that or a picture of my Wife, so I opted for the Rump Monkey!

Quote from: owlhoot on March 15, 2015, 01:15:47 PM
Young birds are taught by the old mama hens(you know them that keep the other young turkeys away from you during the fall and lead the gobblers away from you in the spring)?

This statement brings up another point that really hasn't been discussed much.  I think one big factor in calling in gobblers is the number of hens that might be with them,...and how many times the hens have been through the wringer with hunters. 

How many times does it take for a hen turkey to come to a caller and watch the gobbler that is with her get blown away before she realizes distant turkey calling is a danger,...and begins to shy away from it and take a perfectly willing gobbler with her. 

This may be the biggest factor of all in a lot of places that get hunted much.

Excellent point!  How many times?  Once.  But the other gobblers learn from this as well not just the hens.

Quote from: deerbasshunter3 on March 15, 2015, 01:13:28 PM

1) Although I do not agree that pressure is what everybody thinks it is, I still feel that it can be a factor. If I shoot at a turkey and miss him, I am, most likely, not going to get another shot at him that day. Of course, there is the possibility that he will forget about it hours later and I can ambush him, but I doubt very seriously that he will be coming to any calls for the rest of that day.

2) I do not know what the OP means by "conventional methods", but I do not agree with this statement. I know for a fact that at least three gobblers were killed off of our property last year before I had a chance to experience my first turkey hunt. There were probably more that I did not know about since other people that i do not ever talk to hunt there as well. That being said, I had a shot at a gobbler on April 27th. I missed, but he was called in from a ways away in the swamp. He even flew over a creek to come to our calling. I would assume that if there were only a few days that gobblers were huntable by conventional methods, they would be consecutive days, not spread out throughout the month. Fact of the matter is, gobblers were clearly huntable throughout the season last year.

I will address what you said, and it might make it a little clearer to everyone -- second point first. My  experience is those "ON" days are generally not consecutive.  There may be a day or so where the gobs are partially "ON" leading up to an "ON" day, but my experience with my turkeys has been seasons that are mostly "OFF" with a few "ON" days sprinkled in.

Given that, what you give as an example goes to prove what I'm saying about hunting pressure.  The gob got shot at, he flew off, and then turned back ON later in the week. 

Let me also try to clarify my "by conventional methods" definition.  To me, "conventional"  means sitting with your butt against a tree, calling a gob off the roost  or more generally  using calls alone to call in a gobbler.  Unconventional?  Ambushing, decoys, long distance shooting, afternoon hunting --basically  all the stuff that gets the old schoolers worked up. 

Now, let me address some of the other criticisms.

1)  I might be crazy, deluded, or just plain wrong.    Well, that might be.  However, I am doing my best to describe to you what I see.
2)  My turkeys might all be pressured.  This is possible too.  Everyone hunts around me.   Half the turkey taken in the season are taken opening weekend. I am assuming the turkeys on my 200 acres are not all that bothered by the hunting.  I could be wrong
3)  Everybody knows turkeys can learn not to come to calls.  Look, I might have retarded turkeys, but the mature gobs I've killed just seemed to be having a brain-dead morning when they walked into the end of my shotgun.  Maybe I'm a better hunter than I think, but these birds fell to my calls every bit as much as the 2 yr olds. 
4)  There are more than 2-3 days a year where turkeys are callable.  Yes, but my season in Kentucky usually starts during the Latent Phase of the turkey breeding cycle.  There are plenty of "ON" days on my place, for weeks before season, but it is all before the hens and gobs actually start hooking up.  I had a gobs this weekend I was observing that I could have easily called to the gun if  I had been allowed to have one.  Between that, screwy weather, and the other stuff that gets in the way, how many really good days of hunting do y'all get after the gobs and hens start to hook up?

Now, let me make my own criticism.  That is, for all the protestations I've seen in this thread and for all the "schooling" I've received from more experienced turkey hunters over the years, no one has ever been able to pinpoint the difference between a "pressured" gobbler and a naturally unwilling one.  Ah Ha! you say. Everybody knows that once a gobbler has been "pressured," he doesn't come to calls   willingly. He needs  to see the hen before he comes. He may not come to calls ever again.  I say that is circular logic.  I say we're pre-supposing that a turkey can be pressured, and then every recalcitrant, ornery gob we run into we call "pressured."    If someone could give a definition of "pressure" that is distinct and different from "cantakerous", "recalcitrant", "ornery" (all the things that make turkeys fun to hunt)  , or give a specific change of tactics that will kill a "pressured" bird that is distinct from tactics to kill a regular "unpressured" cantakerous,recalcitrant, ornery gobbler, and I'll be happy to call myself happily edified and thank you for the advice. 

Look, I hunt on a property in a county in a state where half of all turkeys that are going to be killed in a given year are killed on the first two days of the season.  By that standard, you can say that every bird in the state is pressured.  What I'm observing is that a lot of what I see in the first half of our season is not "pressure", but the effects of the Latent Phase of the breeding cycle, and funky weather.  I also believe that if turkeys are being "pressured", the effect does not last long.  My gobs can turn "ON" any time during the season, regardless of the shooting.

Lastly:  I keep hearing that turkeys that live in unhuntable areas are meek, amicable, and ready to  co-exist with humans.  OK.  Let's shoot 50% of them over  a 2-day period every year.  How soon will that docile barnyard nature last?  I'm not talking about "pressure" as much as I'm talking selective breeding.  I'm saying the birds we call "pressured" are pre-disposed to being wary, because they are the ones that survive The Opener. 

Breeding starts in February and has been observed as late of 4th of July weekend that I am aware. Gobblers may come to hen calls any day in between. Lots of ebb and flow during the breeding period.

A lot of turkeys you call "ornery" to me are just turkeys being turkeys.
Just because he doesn't run to your calls does not mean he is "ornery" or a "bad turkey"

It is a gobblers nature to hang up, he wants the hen to come to hen. This is the same game he plays with real hens. Some days he is more excited than others.

Most states have higher kill totals the first part of the season. This is normal. Think hunter effort may be a factor here?  Think pressure may be more of a factor the longer the season goes on? Think there may be less birds left?  None of this data you talk about on kill totals means that gobblers cannot be called to the gun on what you call "OFF" days, whatever that means anyway.

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 16, 2015, 10:37:39 AM
Breeding starts in February and has been observed as late of 4th of July weekend that I am aware. Gobblers may come to hen calls any day in between. Lots of ebb and flow during the breeding period.

A lot of turkeys you call "ornery" to me are just turkeys being turkeys.
Just because he doesn't run to your calls does not mean he is "ornery" or a "bad turkey"

It is a gobblers nature to hang up, he wants the hen to come to hen. This is the same game he plays with real hens. Some days he is more excited than others.

Most states have higher kill totals the first part of the season. This is normal. Think hunter effort may be a factor here?  Think pressure may be more of a factor the longer the season goes on? Think there may be less birds left?  None of this data you talk about on kill totals means that gobblers cannot be called to the gun on what you call "OFF" days, whatever that means anyway.

You are exactly right.  Turkeys breed for a good long time, but breeding in January or June doesn't answer how many days during a legal season a gobbler will be ready and willing to put aside his other attentions and run over to the end of a hunter's shotgun.  From Mid-April to Mid-May in the Trans-Bluegrass I've found that there are blessed few of those days. Most of those days you can blame on bad weather.  I just think hunting pressure is not one of the major reasons.

Ornery is exactly what you say-- turkeys being turkeys.  What I'm saying is that they have plenty of orneriness in them naturally. No one needs to theorize human pressure to add to it.  You can if you want, but it does not add anything to the solution.

Off days: My definition is any time you come in from the field scratching your head. Surely you have had at least a few of those, right?   There may have been zero gobbles on the roost, or the turkeys never showed up in their usual feeding spots or it may appear the turkeys jumped down a manhole and pulled the lid over them, or you tried your best to call up a turkey and they either would not honor those calls or tossed you a few obligatory gobbles and then walked the other way.  Can a turkey be called in on an "OFF" day?  Yes, but then it wouldn't be an "OFF" day then would it?

Now, if a turkey hunter cannot fathom the idea of an "OFF" day, then probably they are paying someone to stake a turkey out on a tether.   Otherwise, they are being deliberately ornery and cantakerous.  I , being a gentleman of good will and intention, will assume they are just  having an "OFF" day.

A lot of your points, I certainly agree with.  Some days are better than others, yes.
I think a lot has to do with the timing and ebb and flow of the breeding cycle, availability of the hens and that sort of thing.

I still think hunting pressure plays a role and affects turkeys.  Turkeys learn from watching their buddy get shot in front of their eyes after responding to hen sounds. Turkeys begin to realize that real owls or real hens don't drive vehicles, slam doors and immediately start calling (from the road of course).

On those off days, it can also be just an off hour, things change by the minute with turkeys, not necessarily by the day.     

Sir, I agree with a lot of what you are saying here.  This varies from state to state and depending upon when the hunting seasons are timed to open regarding what stage of the breeding cycle the turkeys are in.   Still a lot of ebb and flow in my opinion, not as hard and fast or clearly defined as we sometimes think. 

AH!  A convert! :z-winnersmiley:

and a self-professed Old-schooler as well!  Dang. I'm going to take the rest of the day off and celebrate.

IHunt, let me try to get you over the last hurdle and bring you into the light.  Describe for me in as much clarity and detail as you can exactly how a person with highly esteemed hunting abilities such as yourself will hunt a "pressured" gobbler differently than any other kind of ornery gobbler. This should be a simple task.  Simply start by typing, "When I find a gobbler is pressured, I ____________" and before you are finished typing add, ". . . This is completely different from when I discern that the gobbler in front of me is some how being otherwise uncooperative.  I know he is not pressured and only ornery, because ____________ and I do the following instead:_________________."

My point to people is this: we have this broad assumption that hunting pressure causes gobblers to be ornery, but we are always quick  to assume it is hunting pressure when they get cantankerous. On the other hand,  If a gobbler is killed on a "heavily pressured" piece of ground, does that mean :
a) The effects of the pressure wore off?  I thought mature gobblers learned.
b) The gobbler was retarded? If so, how did he survive as long as he did?
c) The gobbler somehow missed The Opener?  My guess is he was on a gambling bender over across the state line.
d) The Hunter was somehow superior to his peers and exercised a superior strategy to nail this gobbler?  See,this is the assumption that gets you invited to speak at turkey seminars. All you have to do is get up on stage and tell folks you're going to give advanced secrets on hunting pressured gobblers and then folks buy your DVD, T-shirt and coffee mugs. Of course it must be this, right?

Turkeys learn from their experience so I think this is where pressure comes in. When a bird has been called up shot at, peppered with shot, watched his brother/buddy get shot in front of his eyes he learns. Getting bumped/spooked multiple times a day all of a sudden (opening of the season). All of this makes the bird harder to call to the gun. The hens of course learn as well from these experiences.  None of these things make the bird impossible to call up, just harder.

The truth is  you cannot sit there and look at the behavior of a bird you are calling to and say with any kind of certainty "He won't come because he is pressured".   That what you were looking for?  That is my opinion.  You cannot say with any certainty  "That bird is not gobbling this morning because of all that pressure that has been put on him.   Maybe, maybe not.  "That" bird may be roosted 2 miles away from where he was yesterday morning and could be gobbling his fool head off there.  He may be dead.  He may be surrounded by hens and have no reason to gobble.  Maybe there is predator around the roost area?   There is no way to tell with any certainty that pressure is to blame.  Another thing, you cannot say with any certainty "I called to that turkey and he went the other way, because of all the pressure put on him."  Or, "That gobbler will not answer a call because of all that pressure".  You do not know that is the reason.    Or how about when a gobbler answers a locator call but will not answer a hen call, "because of all that pressure"  Nope, sorry you do not know that to be the reason.   So many other factors!

Many times, he just wants/expects even the hen to come to him.  Turkeys being turkeys, ornery, stubborn or whatever you call it.

Age structure plays a role here in my experience.  3 year old or older birds are tougher to call up in my experience. No doubt that when you fool them, you fooled them just as much as a 2 year old bird.  Some of this is learned behavior through experience. These older, more dominant birds are more likely to have hens at any given time throughout the season. The hens go to them and they know this and fully expect that to happen.  2 year olds are a little more eager and a lot less PATIENT in my experience.

By the way I am no expert at all.   I am no better than anyone else. I can only base these beliefs off my experience and understanding of turkeys.

I made the point before that a 3 year old or older mature gobbler is a 3 year old regardless of where he lives.  Now a counterpoint was made that on areas closed to hunting, parks and such you can call them 3 or 4 yr old gobblers right to your truck bumper.  I have never tried this, maybe you can?  Does this mean that 3 or 4 yr old gobblers are easy to call in unpressured areas?  Maybe, but I am not so sure?

Was this before the season opened, before the hens were actively breeding?  And if it was, who can say you could not go to a pressured area before the season, before the pressure gets put on the birds, and again before MOST hens are actively breeding (key factor here) and do the same thing?

I don't call to birds before the season, so I cannot say.  Timing makes a big difference.

Sir, I feel you to be a kindred spirit.  Many thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts to writing on this. 

BTW: I've been accused of being an old-schooler. When I first heard it, it was spit at me as an insult, and I thought the fellows making the accusation were daft, but I realize as I get on this endeavor that I share more with the old-school methods than any other.  I just have an eccentric way of looking at things.  I still feel like $.25/ round is a good price for turkey ammo.  Box calls belong in a bread bag, and a good turkey gun should increase in value once it is spray painted.  I also think turkeys look stupid in a vest, and how anyone expects them to wear one is beyond me.

Again, perhaps our individual experiences in the places each of us hunts sway our opinions on these matters. 
Your four points made at the end of your last post, Shaman, make me think that you somehow think you have the same chance of killing a gobbler (and especially an older gobbler) at the end of the season as you do at the start,...and it is based solely on his mood at the time.

From my experiences where I hunt, that is not at all true,....or at least based on all evidence I have seen. 

First of all, older age class birds,....those that are older than three,...are very seldom killed by a hunter simply calling to them and having them come to the gun.  We're talking about hard-hunted, public land gobblers here.  Some of them do get killed,...but the circumstances are almost invariably due to circumstantial luck on the part of the hunter.  When somebody returns to camp with an old gobbler here, their story is always one of,..."I was in the right spot at the right time",...and conversely, it is never one of,..."I called to him, and he came to me just like a young bird".  ...And I mean NEVER.

You might rightly say,...Well, isn't that because there are just a lot fewer older gobblers around?  No, it is not.  Where I hunt there is a significant carry-over of older-age-class birds every year.  I know this because I see them year-round. 

We hunt the crap out of our birds around our place.  Lots of hunters, and with many having great hunting skills and calling ability.  We kill lots of gobblers, but almost all of them are two and three-year-olds.  We watch the birds before the season and we know what we have around and where they roost.  Without exception, the birds that are left at the end of the season are the older birds,...and of course a smattering of the younger ones that have survived. 

It's not that we don't try to kill the older birds,....we do.  They just are not susceptible to the same hunting tactics that the younger birds are,...and that is at the start of the season all the way to the end of the season.  They have learned, over time, what they have to do to stay alive,...and the most basic of those lessons appears to be to stay away from any kind of turkey calling they hear.

I could go into great detail about how I have come to the conclusions I have about this over the last fifty years, but it would take a book.  Suffice it to say that it is based on a clear pattern of behavior that our turkeys have exhibited over decades and generations of birds. 

I have killed a few older gobblers on hard hunted public land by calling them in not being in a right spot or ambushing them or anything like that. Note, I said a few not many.   The right spot patterning thing is a joke in this part of Appalachia where I hunt.

Do they come to the gun like younger birds?   No not really, usually it is more of a longer, drawn out battle with many chess moves. They are tough but not impossible.  PATIENCE.  I am not willing to say you can NEVER call an older gobbler to you on hard hunted public land.   

Interestingly enough, most of my older age birds, public or private have been LATE in the season not early.   What does this say about hunting pressure?   Late season means more hens on the nest and less available to breed with those older birds that are generally covered up in hens earlier in the season.

Quote from: GobbleNut on March 16, 2015, 03:10:47 PM
Again, perhaps our individual experiences in the places each of us hunts sway our opinions on these matters. 
Your four points made at the end of your last post, Shaman, make me think that you somehow think you have the same chance of killing a gobbler (and especially an older gobbler) at the end of the season as you do at the start,...and it is based solely on his mood at the time.

From my experiences where I hunt, that is not at all true,....or at least based on all evidence I have seen.   

No.  I don't think that.    Mind you, my experience with older birds is maybe 3 out of the last 20 were obviously mature birds.  Mostly, they just don't live all that long in our area.   I don't claim great expertise in this arena. 

I also agree that as the season wears on, there seems fewer opportunities regardless of cohort. However, I can also point to years where the "ON" state for the gobs did not happen until the last week of season, and I can distinctly remember one old bird that came running to me the week after season ended. He was obviously confused. I was just walking across the pasture and he came trotting up like a lost dog and broke into a strut.  However, these are exceptions.  No, it is not just individual mood.  That gobbler must have had Alzheimers. 

What I can say is this.  In my memory, every bird I have taken of any respectable age has been shot at fairly short range and was strutting for me prior to being shot.   To me that says he bought into it. I would also be the first to say any day a gobbler buys my line, I am blessed with incredible luck.

I really believe that gobbling and coming to calls is dependent upon where the birds are in the breeding cycle. Sometimes hen calls work, sometime gobbler calls work.
If you go to where a gobbler wants to be instead of trying to pull him to where he doesn't want to go, your success will improve.
Now, quite a few years ago, my son and I were working a bird. He was on a string, coming to my calls, till 2 guys on mountain bikes drove right by him, spooking him. Now, I find it hard to believe that every time that bird hears a hen call, he is gonna think of 2 strange looking things riding along the side of a field. They do not have the capacity to reason. I also feel that right around the hours of 10-12 in the morning later in the season, is a great time to kill one.
I will give another example. My FIL and I were pre season scouting and had a hen go right by our blind yelping to beat the band. She finally left. About 10 min later, a tom was in the middle of the field gobbling his head off. Now the hen never reappeared, and the tom lost interest and walked off. He wouldn't have known any different if it was a hunter or a real hen making those noises.
My point is, I also feel gobbling has peaks and valleys. The key is to know how to hunt both.
By no means can I do it with consistency, but you see guys that kill birds regularly no matter what part of the season it is.

QuoteLate season means more hens on the nest and less available to breed with those older birds that are generally covered up in hens earlier in the season

Amen!  It is also why I tend to stick it out a little later as the season goes along.  The harem is thinning and Mr Big starts looking for more chicks later in the day as the hens go off to nest. 

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 16, 2015, 02:29:11 PM
Turkeys learn from their experience so I think this is where pressure comes in. Getting bumped/spooked multiple times a day all of a sudden (opening of the season). All of this makes the bird harder to call to the gun. The hens of course learn as well from these experiences.
  So many other factors!


Age structure plays a role here in my experience.  3 year old or older birds are tougher to call up in my experience.  Some of this is learned behavior.

By the way I am no expert at all.   I am no better than anyone else. I can only base these beliefs off my experience and understanding of turkeys.

I made the point before that a 3 year old or older mature gobbler is a 3 year old regardless of where he lives.  Now a counterpoint was made that on areas closed to hunting, parks and such you can call them 3 or 4 yr old gobblers right to your truck bumper.  I have never tried this, maybe you can?  Does this mean that 3 or 4 yr old gobblers are easy to call in unpressured areas?  Maybe, but I am not so sure?

Was this before the season opened, before the hens were actively breeding?

I don't call to birds before the season, so I cannot say.

Turkeys learn from experience? Yes they do. And where do they get that experience the quickest  and the most. Well on hard hunted land i would say. So a 3 year old or older bird on land which see very little pressure more than likely has not had near the interaction with hunters or calling from them. He may come to the first human call he has ever heard and die, if there is light pressure on that land area, then maybe the 2 year olds got it first.  Now a 2-3 year old bird who has survived some on public or hard hunted land has probably alot more interaction and alot more wariness or learned behavior than older birds on un-pressured or light pressured land. And how wary are those old mama hens ( teachers)?

Owl, I agree pressure is still a factor. It has to be, turkeys do learn from their experiences.  We know this is a factor. 
But the 3 year old or older  dominant birds are still more likely to be surrounded by a harem of hens throughout the season regardless of where they live, light pressure/no pressure/heavy pressure.  Hens are a huge factor here as well, not just pressure, do you agree?

I agree the average 2 year old on an area with little to no pressure, will probably die first, compared to the 3 year old.  That 2 year old is short on patience and eager to breed, compared to the average 3 year old or older who has the patience of Job.

A 2 year old on public hard hunted land no doubt is more wary and has had more experiences to learn from than a 2 year old on light or no pressure areas. But he still is short on patience and that gets him in trouble sometimes. He is not used to having that harem of hens like your older, more dominant birds.

Pressure is a certain factor.  But I will not ignore that turkeys behave differently depending on age, and the availability of hens.

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on March 16, 2015, 02:29:11 PM
.





I made the point before that a 3 year old or older mature gobbler is a 3 year old regardless of where he lives.  Now a counterpoint was made that on areas closed to hunting, parks and such you can call them 3 or 4 yr old gobblers right to your truck bumper.  I have never tried this, maybe you can?  Does this mean that 3 or 4 yr old gobblers are easy to call in unpressured areas?  Maybe, but I am not so sure?

Was this before the season opened, before the hens were actively breeding?  And if it was, who can say you could not go to a pressured area before the season, before the pressure gets put on the birds, and again before MOST hens are actively breeding (key factor here) and do the same thing?

I don't call to birds before the season, so I cannot say.  Timing makes a big difference.

Well the story is true, sit in the picnic shelters and called them right up too. No camo and coffee in hand. White t shirt on the walking trails, all true.  I walk these trail year round. Now the tom calling is to hear the gobbles and what the strutting i like so much. Missouri season is short , days i get to go even shorter. Most time it starts after the best times to be out when gobblers are going nuts. Yep you gotta love our henned up season here in Missouri! I don't call turkeys just to kill. I only call these birds in places that don't get hunted, don't want to call shy or pressure hunting areas even if i don't hunt there. Most hunting area birds seem to be wary year round, but more when they start getting hunted. Opening day is the best chance no matter the  mode they are in pressured areas.  But if people give up it can pick back up..  hens on the nest always the best!

 :agreed: :agreed:

Quote from: WildTigerTrout on March 08, 2015, 08:38:49 PM
Hunt Pennsylvania public land and you will discover that hunting pressure is NO myth!

Agree about the hens, cant say why but a few times through out  the years i have seen jakes have alot of hens go running to them :z-dizzy: and i knew there were mature gobblers around in the area. I would diffidently agree that henned up toms are the worst to deal with anywhere you can hunt.

OK, just a few points for ya'lls edification.

Research and look at some of the radio telemetry studies done by some state game & fish depts following turkeys before, during, and after the season. I did a few years ago. It was interesting stuff. I remember one study, I believe from LA, on public hunting ground. I may have specific details incorrect here, but as I remember it, 8 birds were tagged and followed on this ground before the season. I think most were actively gobbling and breeding hens there prior to the season. Due to "scouters" walking the woods, owl hooting and yelping while looking for birds, most birds bumped into "hunters" before the season. One bird moved 8 miles to a refuge(that he probably knew from prior years). Most of the others left the public hunting ground for adjoining properties(with less pressure). Less than half the birds were there by opening day. Only 2 or 3 stayed on the property during the season. One quit gobbling and stayed right by the parking area(smart). I think 1 got shot. That tells me pressure affects them. So did the other studies I've read.

Personal experience- I scouted a powerline right of way on a deer club a few days before season and found a nice bird strutting for hens early morning. Opening day I was there with a full strut deke and two hen dekes, sitting with my back against a fat oak. The birds showed up like clockwork, coming out into the powerline 100 yards away. A few calls later and 3 hens, a jake, and the gobbler were heading my way. They got to 60 yards and the gobbler stopped. The hens and jake came right into the dekes, pecking around, purring, and checking em out. The gobbler locked up, watched em for a minute, then bolted back into the woods like a rifle shot(obviously spooked). The hens and jake kept on down the powerline and once they got 80 yards past me the gobbler popped back out and rejoined them. I couldn't figure that out for nothing. Talked to another guy in the club and found out that there had been 2 big gobblers on that powerline, but the weekend before he took his son on youth day to that same area, and called both those gobblers right into a full strut deke and the son blasted one of them. The bird I hunted was the other. And he "learned" that full strut dekes are bad news. I killed him the next day, same hunt plan, no dekes. And that is no fluke, I have had similar "survivor" birds go decoy shy on other occasions, and gone back with no deke to make it happen.

Or the guy I know who calls too much, called one in and who wounded it, never heard it again and knew it was coyote food. 3 weeks later I come down trying to help him kill another bird on the other side of the farm that he's been messing with. Wounded bird fires up and crosses a 800 yard wide field and walks right down his gun barrel. Why? Because I didn't let him call, and those birds "know" his sound. Seen it many times hunting his spot. He doesn't call if I go. Studies show turkeys recognize individual turkeys in the flock, and the subsequent pecking order of dominance, by sound or sight. They recognize individual birds-and presumably hunters imitating birds.

They learn. They remember. I've read some college studies on wild turkey behavior, and they learn, and they avoid spots where they've had bad experiences. That being said, I've missed a bird and killed him 100 feet away a day or two later, acting like he was never messed with. I've also missed a bird and never seen or heard from him again. It happens. I believe it has to do with how much they picked up on what was happening with that bad experience. A loud noise(miss) and nothing else, why leave? A loud noise and pain(a few pellets hit) followed by a big brown thing jumping up and giving chase- probably time to avoid that area from now on.

Just the opinion of a guy that's spent 400+ days chasing spring gobblers. I got nothing on the old timers. But I know a lot about turkeys.  :z-twocents:

Quote from: shaman on March 16, 2015, 01:06:51 PM


My point to people is this: we have this broad assumption that hunting pressure causes gobblers to be ornery, but we are always quick  to assume it is hunting pressure when they get cantankerous. On the other hand,  If a gobbler is killed on a "heavily pressured" piece of ground, does that mean :
a) The effects of the pressure wore off?  I thought mature gobblers learned.
b) The gobbler was retarded? If so, how did he survive as long as he did?
c) The gobbler somehow missed The Opener?  My guess is he was on a gambling bender over across the state line.
d) The Hunter was somehow superior to his peers and exercised a superior strategy to nail this gobbler?  See,this is the assumption that gets you invited to speak at turkey seminars. All you have to do is get up on stage and tell folks you're going to give advanced secrets on hunting pressured gobblers and then folks buy your DVD, T-shirt and coffee mugs. Of course it must be this, right?

I just found a small out of the way public spot with a bird that is ripe for the picken'.  I will not be able to hunt that bird until Wednesday of next week...  If someone kills that bird before I get a chance to hunt it, I have lost out...  The death toll of the easy birds, in and of itself makes public hunting more difficult...  And the dumber birds generally are the first to be harvested...  The more savvy birds are the ones that tend to survive, and they are the birds that are difficult to hunt.

Then there is the direct issue of having other people in the woods...  Some hunters do not seem to have even the most basic foundation of common sense...  Walking around, talking loudly, etc...  The activity of hunters in a given area can often put even the most eager of birds on alert, and the survival instinct still outweighs the breeding instinct.

I cut my teeth on a couple of ranches when I was in college...  Very large turkey population with considerably less hunting pressure than I now see...  I tagged out every year I hunted turkeys (including my first year hunting them), not because I was a good hunter, but because I was hunting a large unmolested group of birds...  Eventually, one would be horney or stupid enough to come in to my inept methods.

I seriously doubt I would have killed the birds I have the last couple seasons, using the tactics I used when I was learning...  I am fully aware of the fact that there are guys on this forum that would have success killing birds that have alluded and still allude me.

QuoteI will not be able to hunt that bird until Wednesday of next week

Dang, hope we are not hunting the same bird, cause I can't go til Wednesday either!   :turkey2:

Pressure affects hunters more than it does the turkeys.  Some gobblers lives are saved from a standpoint of having a setup or a hunt busted by another hunter whether it was intentional or not.   The turkeys are still going to be turkeys.  They have to communicate to breed. Gobblers are not going to avoid a hen calling just because he has some pressure put on him. He will still breed hens and if he failed to respond or shied away from their calls he would have a tough time doing that.

They are not deer, they don't have the option of going nocturnal.  The movement in the study where the birds were tracked means nothing. It is common for birds to travel miles a couple of weeks before the season, when they are moving from their fall/winter range into their spring range, closer to hens and their nesting sites which are chosen based somewhat on food/water sources that will be available during nesting and after hatching.  Think spring green up may be a factor in changing food sources which causes birds to shift their home range?  Take a look at the habitat on public land vs. many private land which includes farms and pastures, easier to find food sources after green up.  I hunt a lot of public and private and they all receive pressure from other hunters.  You just have to get it done. I am not going to use pressure as an excuse.

Quote from: shaman on March 08, 2015, 09:22:15 AM
I have had an idea rolling around in my head for some time, and I have finally gotten it to gel.  I thought I would throw it up here, and have y'all comment on it.

First off, let me throw out two basic statements:
1)  There is no such thing as hunting pressure when it comes to turkeys.
2)  There are only a few days every season where gobblers are huntable by conventional methods.

Here is my reasoning for these statements.

I hunt a single 200 acre parcel in SW Bracken County, Kentucky.  I will be starting my 14th season on the property this year.  When I got there in 2001, I still had my head filled with the standard catechisms of turkey hunting. It took me most of the early years to get those ideas out of my head and start seeing things for myself.  Chief among them was the idea of hunting pressure.  If you look back at my writing at that time, you will see that I often attributed the frequent recalcitrance of the turkeys to hunting pressure.  Indeed, I would go out on the Opener and hear a bunch of guns going off around me, and figure that had pretty well wrecked the birds for the season.  I also had to deal with the reality that my place had previously been wide open to hunting for 20 years, and local folks thought of it as kind of an unoffical WMA. When I was not there, it was a favorite spot to go.   Over time that changed, but the turkeys did not.

My main reason for coming to believe that hunting pressure is illusory is that I have realized turkey have very little memory.  I have a great spot on the back of the house, and we can sit out there and listen to turkeys on the roost as well as see turkeys out in our pastures.  Even though we are out there day after day and night after night, we continually have close encounters with turkeys.  In one episode, I had three gobblers come inside 100 yards of the house  three nights running.  The dominant gobbler and two acolytes came up the main N/S road and came closer every night only to suddenly discover my family enjoying Happy Hour on the back of the house.  The experience was fresh to them each time, and they showed complete surprise and utter terror.  Those sorts of things happen all the time at our place. I cannot count the number of times I have come in from scouting or hunting to find fresh gobbler tracks crossing mine in the curtilage. I do not think turkeys have the capacity to brain out the idea of a string of similar events having a pattern. If they do, it is far more attenuated than our own.

I do not mean to say that turkeys do not clam up and adjust their habits.  I am just saying hunters do not cause it as much as we think. What does cause it?   I am not sure.  Bear with me while I explain my second statement.

I have never been enamored with my own calling prowess.  Some folks think I am a pretty good caller, but I always feel like I am like a foreign tourist stumbling with a phrase book.  I need to find the toilet and I end up asking for the nearest brothel.  Accept that assessment for a moment. Take it as given that I am not that great a caller.  There are still a few days out of the season where I can bring them in on a string. How can this be?  I have called up gobblers while suffering from what turned out to be pneumonia, coughing hard enough to pass out.  I have heard of fellows calling in gobblers with a rusty nail and a flower pot.  How can this be?  My assessment is that there are only a few days out of the season when gobblers get this way. On those days, nearly anything will work.  The rest of the time nothing works.  A skillful caller might be able to squeeze a couple days out of a season, but the turkeys are either going to come or not. Mostly, they are not going to come.  That is how the illusion of hunting pressure works its way into our minds. 

I have 3-4 active groups of turkeys on my place during season.  I say groups, because there are more than 1 flock involved in each group. They act somewhat independently of each other. That is to say the group at the north eastern corner of the farm my be "ON" while those on the southwest may be "OFF."  The effect of being "ON" can be very localized.  In talking with my neighbors who hunt properties away from our ridge, I know that my turkeys can be totally OFF while turkey as little as a few miles away can be ON.   If you are a normal sort of hunter, it would be easy to ascribe this to hunting pressure.  What happens when you go out and find the turkeys in an OFF mode?  You go elsewhere, right?  For some it means going to a different farm or different WMA.  For some it means packing off to the next state.

However, what happens to that OFF property?  I only hunt that one 200 acre plot, so I am stuck with finding out that answer.  What I find is that once you remove the idea of hunting pressure from the mix, you see something far more complicated.  Flocks and gobblers do not get wrecked for the season in that way.  Instead, they may switch back ON at any time.  It can be very limited too.  I have seen it be bad in the morning and then get hot in the afternoon.  I have seen one end of the farm dead while the other is seething with turkey lust.

I have gotten a lot of flak over the past few years as I tried to state these ideas.  Guys will tell me I'm crazy.  One fellow did so and then went on to say that he would go out and take the turkey's temperature and if it was not to his liking, go home and drink coffee.  Isn't this what I was just saying? I have also had fellows claim they could call in a gobbler any day during season. It was just knowing how, and then come up with a list of exceptions and provisos a mile long explaining why they did not and could not bag a bird every time they went out.  Top of these guys' lists are funky weather and hunting pressure. For me, that sounds like point and match.

What can ON be like?  Usually, I can say that for where I am, these ON episodes are most likely to occur before our spring season usually starts.  Kentucky does not allow calling before season, but I have had gobblers run across the field, because they heard my knees and boot tops moving in the leaves.  I have had a flock of gobblers come to me and go into full strut while I was sitting on a boat cushion, drinking coffee in a field. I have seen lone gobblers roaming the fields gobbling down the tops of hollows. This is that early breeding season just after the big late winter super flocks break up.  After that, the switch from OFF to ON can happen any time.  In general, I find warmer-than-usual days are the most likely.   However, I've seen it happen after a late season snow with 25 MPH winds. Go figure. 

Assume what I am saying is true, what difference does it make?  The biggest difference is once you remove hunting pressure from your list of assumptions, the possibility of hunting heavily hunted grounds makes sense.  Just because you drove out to one plot or one WMA and heard nothing the Monday after the Opener does not mean that place is played out for the rest of the season.  It might turn ON at any time. If you buy into what I am saying, it means you have to be content to be satisfied with  a couple-three days a year to hunt with conventional "by calling alone" methods or think about something else.  For me, I will not call it "ambushing," because it is not.  However, most days I try to set up where I think turkeys are going to come later in the day and then wait. I call, but location and set-up are my primary focus. The most important thing is to not give up. A given property may turn ON on any given day. It should not find you at home watching Netflix.

One other thing my theory means is that the idea of hunting a mature gobbler may not be such the great feat we claim.  If you look back on my weblog, you will see I have my share of 2 year-olds, jakes, and a few old veterans. Truth told, the old ones got fooled just as quickly and completely as the sophomores. Their ON switch was just as certain. I am not saying there are not wary turkeys out there, but I think they could be wary by nature and not experience.

Please feel free to rip this theory apart.  I'd love it it if someone set me straight.

Provocative for sure...there's some good stuff here. I agree with most of it...

QuoteYou just have to get it done. I am not going to use pressure as an excuse

Recognizing it occurs is far different from using it as an excuse. I hear what you are saying, but I want to know what the birds do and why they do, as much as I possibly can, because that makes me a more efficient, better turkey hunter. 

My nephew shot at and missed a bird on Wednesday on his very small lease.  He called in a bird this morning and shot him - he was part of a pair and he is pretty darn sure it was the other bird that did not get shot at (both were there, one was leery). They then proceeded to check out another spot on the lease and my other nephew connected on a nice gobbler. Can't get much more pressure than that.  I am talking a 400 acre lease and two green plots not 500 yards apart. My nephew called me last night and asked if he should hunt there after missing one 4 days ago and I said "heck yes, it has rained for 2 days solid and is clear and cool this morning, they will be gobbling". 

This has been a very interesting topic.  I do find it very interesting that some very successful turkey hunters see situations differently and yet still do very well.  Maybe that means understanding them is not as important as being where they want to be! 

I agree. I just killed a bird yesterday morning that I hunted 5 days straight. I thought for sure he would've been super educated. But sure enough this time he didn't hangup came in to 40 yards and got the longbeard xrs. Imo you have to hunt quite a few consecutive days rather that every weekend to be extremely successful.

I had to go down to Turkey Camp this weekend.  I could of stayed home, but the forecast suddenly changed and I had to run down to keep the pipes from freezing.  I got up this morning and was greeted by a gobble coming out the back door.  It was 17 when I put on my coat and the temp dropped a bit before the sun started warming things.  However, I was pondering this issue and decided to make a podcast out of it.

Getting Thoughtful at the Thoughtful Spot (http://genesis9.angzva.com/?p=4442)

Thank you IHunt' for the kind words. 

I really enjoyed the podcast, this whole thread has been rather interesting.  Now, Mr. Shaman and myself have come to an agreement on some factors regarding hunting pressure, being overused as an excuse or an explanation for why a turkey or turkeys acted a certain way.  There are few things on which we still differ and I cannot totally agree with Mr. Shaman.

One in particular, Mr. Shaman would have you believe that you call up a 3 or 4 year old mature gobbler, vs. calling to a 2 year old or a jake gobbler. Mr. Shaman suggests, what is the difference, they are the same.  Well, I see it differently. In my experience turkeys acquire more patience and a greater expectation that the hen will come to them with age. It is my contention that a 3 or 4 year old gobbler is used to having the hens come to him and when he hears your calling, he fully expects that at any moment the unseen hen is going to show up if he stays out there and gobbles/struts/, is drumming.  If he does commit to your calls, he will be much more patient and cautious in his approach compared to your 2 year old gobbler on average. That 2 year old has less opportunity to breed and less of an expectation that the hen will come to him. He will be less patient in his approach and more likely to commit to an unseen hen. Now, is this learning from experience, well maybe.  Some of it is also development with age.  Just like your 3.5 or 4.5 year old buck is different from your 1.5 year old buck, the same is true with turkeys.

Now, do these turkeys magically find a corn feeder everyday? To me this suggests some learning and memory is going on here. How about the experience gobblenut, related where the turkey jumped up on the feeder and knocked the corn loose so it would fall to the ground? I cannot with good conscience ignore the story about the gobbler who had been shot at being leery and reluctant to approach an unseen hen, whereas the other bird was not so cautious and came right in.  I cannot sit here any longer and suggest that this was coincidental or by happenstance. I have to believe that a bird that has been shot at and missed or even worse if he was peppered with a couple pellets is now a tougher bird to call back to the gun. Now, if he didn't learn or remember the experience, how could he be any tougher as a result of the experience?  Now, could it be that an experience like that is easier to remember than merely strolling thru the woods and noticing a hunting cabin, and then a human?  Could it be the more traumatic the experience, especially if it caused him physical pain, the easier it is for him to remember?  Could it be that the turkey did not feel threatened by seeing Mr. Shaman at the hunting cabin and erased it from his memory?
Maybe these birds learn and have memory but the physiological urge to breed overcomes what they have learned and remember at times.  This is where other things come into play besides hunting pressure, such as the availability of the hens and what stage of the breeding cycle they are in. But these other factors are always at play, the hens are very important here.

One thing I want to address on the 2nd point, Mr. Shaman has made, that there are only about 3 days each season where gobblers can be hunted by conventional methods.  Now, I am not a big fan of calling things "ON" vs. "OFF" days, but these are the terms Mr. Shaman uses to characterize them. Spring breeding seasons are rather short and timing is critical, so turkeys don't take many off days.  In Mr. Shaman's home state, the season opens at about the peak time when the majority of the hens are starting to sit the nest.  Now, because of this and the fact that his season opens on a Saturday coupled with the fact that Sunday hunting is and has been legal for some time, it is not to hard to see why 50 % of the kill occurs during the 1st weekend, especially when your season is only 3 weeks total with a 2 bird limit. I suggested that if his season opened 1 week earlier, the kills for the 1st weekend would be substantially less than the 50% he sees now.  You would see the kill totals even out a lot from the 1st weekend thru the 2nd weekend.  Timing is important here. So, while he may see more days that are somewhat "ON" it is unlikely that any 2 days will be as "ON" or as intense as that 1st weekend.
This brings me back to a point that I made in my first reply to this topic.  Let us not underestimate the ability and influence of the hunter here. Some hunters are going to have more of Mr. Shaman's definition of "ON" days than other hunters.  The ability of the hunter to turn an "OFF" day into an "ON" day cannot be ignored.  Calling has the ability to change a birds mood, and turn him from "OFF" to "ON"  And on any given day some birds will be hotter than other birds.

One other thing, a point was made about voice recognition and the ability of a gobbler to recognize and differentiate between different hen sounds and individual hens within the flock, or a strange hen that has not been heard, or a that same strange hen that is always heard but never seen.  Let me say this, I agree 100%, how many times have you been working a gobbler that was coming your way until he heard "his" hen and then went to her instead. This is a real occurrence and it happens alot.  I don't know what all that suggests or means, but their hearing is exceptional and there is no doubt in my mind about their ability to recognize the sound of one hen vs. another.

For what it is worth, I think we tend to treat deer and turkey like mythical creatures that hear, see, know everything that goes on in the woods. There is no doubt that they know what goes on in their home (woods), but they are not magic. Many a deer, and many a turkey, have been killed with the most rudimentary equipment known to man. Look at the camo that people used to wear. Look at the decoys that used to, and continuously today, fool turkeys, ultimately leading to their death.

It is my untested opinion that once a deer/turkey experience something, that is what they focus on and not something that happened before. For example, say a deer is shot at by a guy with a bow, and the guy misses. The deer knows that something happened that startled him, and will move away from the area that it happened in. But as soon as that deer comes up on some food, it will start eating again, and not even be thinking about looking around for what may have startled it earlier.

on and off days ?? Seasons open one week earlier would give substantially less kills?

Our Missouri season starts close to the same date every year. However the time of the season can change things dramatically , some years greened up good , others barely started.
Sometimes toms are all over the hens in March, some years still at it in June.
Kills have been easy some openers, some not. Weather seems to be a factor.

just read the whole 8 pages lots of good info

The bottom line is that pressure does have a negative effect on calling in turkeys. At the very least, it can make turkeys use different areas with less human presence. At the most, it can make turkeys more suspicious of everything they encounter to include a hen calling at them from a distance.

It's impossible to scientifically prove that hunting pressure makes turkeys harder to kill. That being said, anecdotal evidence from the past 100 years of modern turkey hunting says that pressure in fact does make turkeys harder to kill.

Sure, claiming excessive hunting pressure is an easy out when a turkey gives you the slip on public land. And yes, there are sooo many variables that have a much stronger effect on how hard turkeys are to kill on a piece of land on any given day. The adult gobbler to hunter ratio on a property probably has the biggest effect on how easy the hunting is. This ratio allows that killing turkeys on heavily hunted public land with lots of turkeys can be easier than hunting private land with very few turkeys. This has certainly been the case in areas that I have hunted. Many of the trucks at the parking spots each morning will have hunting club stickers on their windows, and there's a reason for that.


Turkeys are also easier to kill on some days than others, no doubt. I think this is more situational than just random timing. For example: you've been hunting a gobbler every morning and he just won't leave his hens. The day after his last hen starts incubating her eggs in the morning, he comes running to your calls. You hypothesize that it was just an "ON" day, but the truth is his hens were gone and he was lonely. There's always a reason, but we so rarely know what it is.


In regards to older gobblers being just like 2 year olds. The older a turkey gets, the more habituated they become. They have a routine and even a way of approaching situations that have allowed them to live longer than others and they rely on those routines heavily. I highly doubt this is learned behavior, they probably acted the much the same way when they were a 2 year old (that's how they got old). The gullible younger turkeys get killed by humans or other predators and don't grow old. Thus, in any location that has predators, older turkeys will be harder to kill.

Let me clarify my opinion.  I do not mean to say that a mature bird is just like a 2 year old or a jake.  The first distiction is a point IHunt' makes.  The older birds usually have a bigger harem, are getting satisfied more, and are less likely to walk in front of a muzzle on the Opener. Later in the season, after all the hens have left him, a mature gob may become more willing to come to  strange calls.

Second, the older bird is older for a reason.   My theory is that the older birds are, by nature, more cautious.  I used to work for large poultry company.  We had turkey jerkers , whose job it was to harvest semen from the prize toms.   They would tell you each one was different and each had his own likes and dislikes.  Some took a lot of work.  Others would pop off as soon as he saw the vial coming his way.  Needless to say, the latter did not stay too long in the breeding lab. You could not teach a turkey to be patient.  There are similar things going on in the wild.  However, I do not think it has to do with learning.  A gobbler is what he is for the most part.  If he has an ornery nature to him that keeps him shy of strange calls, he's going to survive longer and make it through being a  jake and a sophomore. 

Now, let me clarify my distinction with mature gobs a little farther.  What I am saying is that I have not seen a huge difference in behavior when a mature gob comes in.  The selling may be different, but once a gob is sold his behavior seems to be the same to me.  As I said in the podcast, mature birds do not show up with a pre-nuptual agreement tucked under their wing. They strut the same, and they gobble the same.  Others' mileage may vary, but I would say a bird in full strut inside 20 yards of the gun barrel is completely sold.

Normally I bump into mature birds by accident. That is to say, I get a bird coming to me and I usually cannot tell he is mature until after he's down.  As a result, I cannot say I did one thing or another specifically because they were  mature.  In the past 20 years, I have had 3 mature birds.  That is a small sample, I know.  However, I have seen jakes and sophomores be just as cagey or just as smitten. 

I generally don't like to compare deer and turkey.  I think deer have a lot more brains and a lot more capacity to learn.  However, some of the same dynamics probably exist here.  The Monsters made it to Monsterhood for a reason.  A deer that prefers keeping to himself and does not get into a lot of fights and does not chase a lot of doe may survive a lot longer than those that engage in risky behavior.  Similar to the turkey situation, whenever I have taken a mature buck, he's  made a stupid mistake and come to my gun or my bow totally sold on the situation. He's come by my stand, expecting a fertile doe or a male rival and was looking for a piece of the action when I shot him.

QuoteThis brings me back to a point that I made in my first reply to this topic.  Let us not underestimate the ability and influence of the hunter here. Some hunters are going to have more of Mr. Shaman's definition of "ON" days than other hunters.  The ability of the hunter to turn an "OFF" day into an "ON" day cannot be ignored.  Calling has the ability to change a birds mood, and turn him from "OFF" to "ON"  And on any given day some birds will be hotter than other birds.

Let me also clarify my ON versus OFF idea.  Look, if you get a shot at a gobbler or get a gobbler come in most of the way. If a gobbler busts you on your 6 or gets pulled away at the last minute by hens, I'd count that as an "ON" sort of day.  If you come in shaking your head after 12 hours of hunting, the woods were dead, the gobblers jumped down a hole and pulled the lid in over the top, or every gobbler you had contact with flipped you a few gobbles over his shoulder and went the other way, I'd call that an "OFF" sort of day.  My point is saying that is that my experience is that there are many OFF days and very few ON. The ON state is very localized and the next farm over can be ON when your plot is OFF.  I'm just using this ON/OFF model as a better way of describing what is going on in a turkey's life than "hunting pressure."  My experience is that there are a lot of "OFF" days at my place and very few "ON."   Yes, a good hunter can take an OFF day and turn it around sometimes, and there is also no way to stand on a plot at sunrise and say this plot of "OFF" and especially not because it was "pressured."   ON can happen any time and only perseverance will allow you to exploit it.

I especially like IHunt's distinction regarding mature birds on public lands.  Yes, a lot of mature birds don't turn "ON" until later in the season.  Just because the local WMA had gobs of hunters through on the Opener, does not mean you can't get something there later in the season. The idea of pressure belies this truth.  Believing in hunting pressure would dictate that the smart older birds are cued not to come to calls. This is simply not so.   The truth behind hunting pressure is that there are just fewer birds left to hunt, not that the ones that remain are somehow trained  to be unhuntable.

I find myself beginning to think that turkeys in different parts of the country must have different IQ's,...based on a lot of commentary over the years on this subject.  It has been in the back of my mind for a while, but just last week I happened to run into a turkey hunter who had moved here from Kentucky a few years back.

During our conversation, he said, "Boy, the turkeys around here are a lot harder to call up than the ones back in Kentucky".  The more I hear people insisting that turkeys are not capable of learning, or becoming "call shy", the more I start to wonder if our turkeys here are just the Einstein's of the turkey world. 

Just this last weekend I was sitting, looking out the window at our cabin at a group of thirty turkeys with three mature gobblers in the group that had come to visit our feeder that is set up about thirty yards away.  They were familiar birds. We call them the "three amigos". The three of them have been around for a few years.  One is a real hoss,...has spurs pushing an inch and a half (rare as hens teeth for a Merriams in these parts).  I would guess him to be five-plus years old.  The other two are at least four.

We hunt these birds during the season.  In fact, there are probably ten different hunters that try them every spring.  The only thing we prefer those that hunt them do is to call them in, rather than ambush them,...which would be really easy to do.  Those that decide to hunt them can chase these often-gobbling birds around all day long trying to find that "spot" where they will come.  I can tell you this,...those birds will not come to your calls, my calls, or anybody else's calls.  They have learned to stay away from turkey calling, period. 

If you call to them where they can actually hear your calling,....even if they are headed right towards you,...they will alter their course around you, or otherwise turn away.  This is not coincidence or circumstance, it is a fact of life here.  Those birds will eventually die somehow, but they will be replaced by others, just as they replaced the others before them for the last couple of decades that we have owned the property. 

We have had the "superman turkey hunters" come visit us from far and wide to hunt our gobblers.  Some of them have come with the attitude that they could call in any turkey that ever lived.  Over the years, I have gotten a kick out of watching the supermen try to kill these birds.  At the end of it all, the supermen have gone back home with their tails tucked between their legs (and perhaps with a couple of two or three-year old gobblers making the ride with them),...and the "three amigos" or their brethren all show up at the feeder again after it is all over. 

From some of the commentary here, it seems clear to me that Einstein turkeys must not exist everywhere.....

I hunt solely Easterns.   I'm a bit of a shut-in, I guess.

I don't know.  However, it could be these are what I call "gay" turkeys.  Over on the T&TH forum, I used to regale folks over there with the comings and goings of what I called "The Gay Turkey Herd."  There were 10 gobblers that all came from the same cohort of birds.  They had all benefited from a visit of the cicadas . There were turkeys everywhere that next year and for years thereafter.  The GTH all hung together, would not allow hens around them and strutted like all get out, but only for each other.  The ran off any hen that came by and constantly fought and bickered among each other.   It was 10 the first Spring, then 6, then 3 and finally I stopped seeing them one Spring.  They were a stitch to watch.

They had similar habits to what you're describing-- could not stand to have hens calling to them, but you could call them in with deep throaty gobbler yelps and deep clucks.

i always wondered if some turkeys were gay. called one in one year almost inch and half spurs. i was working him all morning couldnt get him to come in to nothing finanly i said heck with it and used my gobbler call after he gobbled i would give it right to him everytime. he came in on a leash one of my most memorable hunts. he was either madder then a hornet or in love who knows lol

Sorry, I got interrupted. 

Are their Einstein turkeys?  My theory does not preclude it.  All I'm saying is that there might be a naturally occurring ornery trait that makes some turkeys less likely to walk into a shotgun barrel.

This can all get done without presupposing  learning.  An ornery bird is going to survive a good long time, and after he's past a couple of years old, his size and physical development might make him a good harem leader.

You guys are way over thinking this. It's not the turkeys IQs that save them it's the hunters IQs.

I think the ON-OFF is random (just like a turkey), affected by weather-moon phase-etc, what happened to that turkey the day or two before, presence or lack of hens.  I also think that Easterns are Easterns and turkeys are turkeys.  I think that anyone that thinks they have turkeys totally figured out is kidding themselves as a turkey is a random critter.  Some folks get closer, but generalities only work in general.  Specific birds need specific tactics and what works one day may not the next.  I think turkeys "learn" but not in the sense that we do.  They have a complex social order that is disrupted on a daily basis.  A  lot of their behavior is explained by the fact that if an animal eats meat, it will eat a turkey at some stage of that bird's life.  Like someone said in another thread, if a bird never returned to where it was "spooked" it would never leave the limb.

Quote from: turkey_slayer on March 30, 2015, 03:23:21 PM
You guys are way over thinking this. It's not the turkeys IQs that save them it's the hunters IQs.

That should just about sum it up.

I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.       

Quote from: guesswho on March 30, 2015, 06:17:49 PM
I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.     

Ahaha!

Quote from: shaman on March 08, 2015, 09:22:15 AM
1)  There is no such thing as hunting pressure when it comes to turkeys.
2)  There are only a few days every season where gobblers are huntable by conventional methods.

I basically hunt Public ground both in PA and Ohio, where to me birds are much easier to kill early in the Season than late, is this the On-Off timing you speak off? Could play a rule in it, although have killed them the last day in PA, which is a month and a half later than the start of Ohio's opener. To me they are On-Off   throughout the whole Season, but as pressure mounts, they are off more than on. I personally do see where hunting pressure has a negative effect on birds as the Season goes on . I also believe the rise in coyote numbers, play a big rule in turkey behavior also. Turkeys nowadays don't hardly gobble as much as they did years ago, which I believe is due to the rising coyote numbers.

As I said, it's much easier to kill one the opening week of Ohio, than the last week of PA a month and half later, but it can be done, where I have to disagree. And I'm not hunting South and North, which can effect timing, I basically hunt within 30 miles directly East and West covering both States. I agree somewhat with your conventional methods, but I'm not talking ambushing. As the Season goes on, one might have to leave the convential methods behind and try some more off the wall tactics to be sucessful, but to me turkeys are killable this whole span of time, just more spotty later in the Season than the start of it.
Some off the wall tactics are very basic, and not so off the wall many don't think off. One thing I've keyed in on hunting Public ground, is the "Chained to the tree Hen". I can't tell how many times I hear hunters on Public land, calling and calling from the same spot for hours. Where I honestly believe your older warier Toms pick up on this. My better birds late in the Season usually come from moving calling setups when possible , even if just a few yards at a time. Not too many hens call from the same spot for hours, and I believe they key in on this as the Season goes on. Might have to be a bit creative at times, but they are killable all Season, but that dosen't neccessarily mean everyday.

Quote from: guesswho on March 30, 2015, 06:17:49 PM
I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.     

Quit giving away my secrets. You done let the badonka donk out of the bag

Quote from: guesswho on March 30, 2015, 06:17:49 PM
I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.     

i could only believe this if i heard it from your MOM :) :wave:

Quote from: guesswho on March 30, 2015, 06:17:49 PM
I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.     

You're not foolin' anybody.Any turkey hunter worth his salt knows this only works if you setup with 1/2 dozen funky chicken decoys set up in a circle all facing in so the other birds will come in to see what their looking at.The key to this setup is to call but only and I mean only after you have mastered the squealin' hen.

Quote from: jakesdad on March 30, 2015, 09:13:15 PM

Quote from: guesswho on March 30, 2015, 06:17:49 PM
I think they roost by likely hunter entry points like gates and side roads.  They can see you pulling in and then know it's not a good day to be friendly with the hens.  They also walk roads and look for hunters tracks.  They cut a track and they avoid the direction the foot prints head.  They will recheck said footprints later and if they see tracks leading back out then they go about their normal routine.  A deadly tactic is to hunt with a buddy and avoid gates and side roads.  Once on the property get on a road and have you or you buddy walk in backwards while the other walks in normal.  The gobblers will see the tracks and figure the hunter has left for the day and then they will walk right down the road to your set-up.  But if it happens to be more than one gobbler make sure you kill them all.  If any of them escape then that tactic will be useless for the rest of the year and possibly even next year.     

You're not foolin' anybody.Any turkey hunter worth his salt knows this only works if you setup with 1/2 dozen funky chicken decoys set up in a circle all facing in so the other birds will come in to see what their looking at.The key to this setup is to call but only and I mean only after you have mastered the squealin' hen.

wonder if a turkey would come to that heck if i was a turkey and i seen a bunch of other turkeys looking at something i would come over and see. might have to try that on a slow day

I got to thinking about this again this morning.   Think about the bird that was shot at and missed, then just 3 days later two birds were called in and 1 was shot but 1 was leery. Now assuming the 2nd bird that was leery was the same bird missed 3 days earlier, what says more?  What is more striking, the fact that he was coming but leery, or the fact that there he is 3 days later responding to the hen sounds just like he did before when  he got shot at?  If he "learned" to avoid or shy away from hen  calling after being shot at, why would he come at all ?  I mean seriously, why would he sat there and think, I will come back to this same sound which caused me to get shot at 3 days ago, but instead of coming to 40 yards, I'm stopping at 50, cause I am a little "leery".  What sense would this make?   Must be a slow learner.

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
? Francis Bacon

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on April 02, 2015, 04:11:48 PM
I got to thinking about this again this morning.   Think about the bird that was shot at and missed, then just 3 days later two birds were called in and 1 was shot but 1 was leery. Now assuming the 2nd bird that was leery was the same bird missed 3 days earlier, what says more?  What is more striking, the fact that he was coming but leery, or the fact that there he is 3 days later responding to the hen sounds just like he did before when  he got shot at?  If he "learned" to avoid or shy away from hen  calling after being shot at, why would he come at all ?  I mean seriously, why would he sat there and think, I will come back to this same sound which caused me to get shot at 3 days ago, but instead of coming to 40 yards, I'm stopping at 50, cause I am a little "leery".  What sense would this make?   Must be a slow learner.

I would guess he was following his buddy.  He had enough smarts to have a bad feeling, but not enough to say "Hey, THIS sounds so familiar.  It seems like I have been here before. Slow down there Jeff, I think something might be BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM.   Oh yeah, that's what it was. Sorry Jeff."

Strong supporting evidence to Shaman's point #1 in my opinion.   Any influence that being shot at had on the bird if it did have any at all was overriden by other factors, the most important factor being the physiological urge to breed.   That and slow learners, very slow.

Maybe.  Would the bird have reacted differently if he were alone?  Also, this is private land and his human interactions are minimal.  But point taken, if it were all about pressure, he could have led his buddy away too! 

Having hunted birds myself for more than 25 years, and my dad having hunted them for close to 60 in heavily hunted areas, there is no doubt in my mind that hunting pressure adversely affects turkeys. That is not to say that an old, heavily hunted gobbler cannot get caught in a moment of weakness. He can, just like an old buck on public land can be killed during the rut. Just because they get killed, does not mean that they have not learned from past experiences and were generally harder to kill than their counterpart on a low pressure lease.

I had this experience once. My dad and I hunted the same two gobblers for four days in a row. They would answer us, but would move in the opposite direction from us down an old logging road. One day we would go to one side and they would go to the other. The next day, the opposite, and the next, and the next. Finally, dad suggested we split up about 800 yards apart on this logging road. I called, he stayed silent. The birds started off close to me, but I pushed them over dad and he killed them both without ever touching a call. They didn't have hens with them. They were simply moving away from our calls.

If you really want a test, go out to a heavily pressured public area and try to call in and kill an old gobbler in the fall. That is where a pressured bird becomes all but impossible to kill.

Pressure has nothing to do with the fact that fall gobblers are hard to call in. Mature longbeards in the fall have no concern with re-grouping like jakes or hens do.  If they do re-group it will be days not hours after a bust.  If one does come to you he will come silent, but really has no concern with coming to another longbeard or any other turkey at that time of the year.   

On the gobblers that went away from you, are you suggesting that they were call-shy?  That they were conditioned to avoid the sound of a hen? 

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on April 03, 2015, 10:12:41 PM
Pressure has nothing to do with the fact that fall gobblers are hard to call in. Mature longbeards in the fall have no concern with re-grouping like jakes or hens do.  If they do re-group it will be days not hours after a bust.  If one does come to you he will come silent, but really has no concern with coming to another longbeard or any other turkey at that time of the year.   

On the gobblers that went away from you, are you suggesting that they were call-shy?  That they were conditioned to avoid the sound of a hen?

Killed many a gobbler in the fall by calling.
Some came in a  tom group, some were with the hen and young flocks.

Quote from: shaman on April 02, 2015, 04:21:44 PM
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
? Francis Bacon

Certainties=On days are when turkeys are relatively easy to call in.
    off days=turkeys are relatively hard to call in.

And doubts = the life of a turkey hunter, why did he do that? What did i do?
And certainties again=we don't actually think we are going to figure them ole toms out.   
;)   Francis is no turkey hunter, lol

Bacon is right on in one way.

If you read books, watch videos, or just listen to old turkey hunters, you walk away with some belief, some degree of certainty about turkeys and turkey hunting.  These certainties are what work against a hunter.  You have to approach turkeys and turkey hunting with an open mind, and clear your head of certainties.

I hunted for twenty years, thinking I was doing it all wrong.   That was because I was hunting them like Ben Lee, Ray Eye, and those guys.   Finally , I gave up on all I read and watched and started observing turkey behavior --  my own eyes, my own turkeys, my own land.   Over time all the certainties fell away.  I hunt turkeys now with fresh eyes.

If I can wax philosophical here for a minute, the Taoists  will tell you there is nothing more worthless than a dead Taoist sage.  He might have been the greatest philosopher when he was alive, but now that he's assumed ambient temperature, he is like a campfire that is burned out. His bones give no warmth.  His words have no meaning. So it is with turkey hunters. 

Most of the great turkey hunters I've known personally could not tell you squat about how they did it.  They were not generally literate, let alone introspective.  They just did it.  I always find it funny.  I love being on turkey hunting forums, but at the same time most of the folks I've known that were great turkey hunters could not have understood a computer.  In fact one of them bought a computer, thinking it would be a good thing for him and his wife, and then tried to get me to buy it when he could not figure out how to put it together. 

I write.  I write constantly.  It probably kept me from a good deal of things in my life, certainly from being a big success in business.  Although I write a lot about turkeys and turkey hunting, turkey season is the one time of year when I get to put all the words aside, put on a camo ball cap and try my best to be just slightly more intelligent than a 20 lb bird. Most of the time I fail miserably. I do it to clear my head, get all the certainties out, look at the world with fresh eyes.

Nice post eggshell

#10 is the ruin of many a hunter(myself included)

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on April 03, 2015, 10:12:41 PM
Pressure has nothing to do with the fact that fall gobblers are hard to call in. Mature longbeards in the fall have no concern with re-grouping like jakes or hens do.  If they do re-group it will be days not hours after a bust.  If one does come to you he will come silent, but really has no concern with coming to another longbeard or any other turkey at that time of the year.   

On the gobblers that went away from you, are you suggesting that they were call-shy?  That they were conditioned to avoid the sound of a hen?

A heavily pressured old gobbler is even more difficult to kill in the fall than is the same bird that hasn't been pressured. You obviously haven't done much fall hunting if you think a scattered old tom isnt prone to quickly regrouping. The first gobbler I ever killed was out of a group of three old gobblers. We roosted them but couldn't get them to come in. Later that morning, we busted them. We moved a couple hundred yards, sat down, called once and the one I killed literally ran to us. Fall hunting is also about more than busting a flock and calling them back. I've called up old gobblers that I've busted, old gobblers straight off the roost, and mixed flocks of old gobblers and hens.

I do in fact believe that those gobblers were conditioned to take a wait and see approach and go the opposite way if the hen was unresponsive to him. A hen will go to a gobbler just like a gobbler will go to a hen and I believe these two birds had been spooked/ shot at a few times and learned their lesson.

Eggshell, I agree with most of what you say.  Except the part about pressure. If "pressured" bird can be killed up to the last day of season, then what is the point of considering pressure at all?

I like IHunt's read on what I'm saying. That is, that mature gobs are most like to turn "ON" in the latter part of season. To me, it is perseverance that counts.  The point is not talking yourself into thinking gobs can learn all that much.  Turkeys are mostly "OFF." When they're "ON"  it is a gift from God. Man does not have a whole lot to do with it.  I just came in from putting a bunch of gobblers to bed.  They were definately ON.  Whether they're ON during the season, 2 weeks away here in KY is anybody's guess. It was the Yute Opener here in KY-- first time in 16 seasons I didn't have a Yute to hut with.  It was still fun to put them to bed. We'll see if they're on again in the morning. If so, I'll have a whopping good podcast for y'all. 

Look, I'm not trying to tell you about Merriams or Osceolas or turkeys in Ontario or Missouri.  All I'm talking about is my turkeys in the Trans-Bluegrass, SW Bracken County  Kentucky.    You may have a whole different experience.  My point is that this is what I see. YMMV.

You proved the importance of a proper setup and that it is easier to call a turkey into a spot he feels comfortable or where he wants to go.  You did nothing to disprove Shaman's theory on point #1.

Like what turkey slayer said, IQ of the hunter not the IQ of the bird.

Quote from: Ihuntoldschool on April 05, 2015, 09:18:01 AM
You proved the importance of a proper setup and that it is easier to call a turkey into a spot he feels comfortable or where he wants to go.  You did nothing to disprove Shaman's theory on point #1.

Like what turkey slayer said, IQ of the hunter not the IQ of the bird.

Proper setup , calling a bird from below him , on purpose?
So where he wants to go.  Where he wants to go is find the dang hen making all that racket and hit that.
He really wants her to come to him, that is what all the strutting and gobbling is about.
But guess what ? He is leery about that field near the road. during the past week he has heard a racket of yelp yelp yelp yelp, cut cut cut cut cluck cluck cluck then  a pause and then all over again, Just like the hunting channel and the many dvd's for sale now. For the last 5 times he has strutted and gobbled his best and no hen came out. One time those 2 hens never moved. But they looked good! Twice now he has seen those strange upright figures near the edge of the field where all that racket has come from. And once , as he stood quietly back of the edge in the brush he saw one of the strange upright figures go and just pick up those 2 hens that never moved. OMG   . Man i better be careful around that field , but the driving instinct to breed is strong. So the next morning he is out there gobbling again, but wait there is a strutter in my field, right close to all that racket yelp, cut cut cut cut, peck peck peck yelp again. Man if he don't quit strutting i am going to go across that field and whoop his tail feathers. But he is hesitant , he knows he is bigger and badder but those hens that don't move and the upright forms are in his tiny mind.  So he pauses and suddenly another gobbler is in the field , a younger bird he knows. Suddenly the other bird races across the field and right up to the strutter and BOOOM! a loud thunderous roar and the upright figures are there,whopping and hollering in a strange talk.
Now in the meantime he has had 4 hens from the creek below come to him and had a heck of a time, they were quite , shy girls who only yelped and clucked but came to him. Two more hens he had to go to the creek to meet , they were on the other side and he could see them walking and scratching and he saw the one yelp at him, so he flew across and had a nice time. All the while the loud girls back up in the field were carrying on so, but they quiet girls acted nervous and didn't want to go up there so they went further away in the woods. He gobbled and gobbled but had to follow the girls who looked so good right in front of him. Now he stayed with the quite ones and roosted close, he didn't want to loose them as they were fun to be with but then the nesting started and they started avoiding him more and more.
They would leave him by himself and he started to get lonely, he had heard the loud hens some , but that never seemed to work and strange things going on up there, he hadn't seen or heard from a few guys he kicked around earlier in the year in those fields. And back across the creek and the strange barbed wire he hadn't seen the upright figures or heard the loud girls. But more of the quite ones were back here too. So he thought he would just stay, a few old buddies were around here too, and later when the girls were nesting or just not being nice or paying attention to him, he would like to hang out with them, maybe go get a bug to eat around the watering hole. Strut a bit with the fellas just not go crazy gobbling and for some reason the guys didn't want to go to the field?  Now the girls really slowed down and would hardly yelp back or cluck to say hi.  Then the loud ones were back and the urge to breed was strong , it had been a few days, but something just held him back. He was only 3 but pretty wise for his age as he thought , i always had success with the quite ones, and a few days ago another thunderous boom came from up in the field. So i better stay down here. But But wait a quite girl is talking again down by the creek. But i want to go to the field where is it all green and it is sprinkling so the worms and bugs are easy up there. I wonder if she will come, nope she isn't  coming this way, she is staying there , i better head down there, no need to gobble , just strut to show her what a catch i am when i get there. Oh there she is , across that barbed vine , here we go.  Wait wait what the heck is that moving, oh no!  BOOOOM , run run run hard  BOOOOOM again and that hurt but quickly as his thoughts ended .(guy was shooting Long Beards and missed the first shot at 20 yards) Got him at 40 though with the second. The old hunter had used pressured tactics to be successful, on the last day of the season he thought as he hefted the bird high in the air and admired the beard and spurs. Putting the bird in his vest  and marking his tag, he had learned that in 25 years of turkey hunting to change up things depending on conditions of the hunt as there are no sure things in turkey hunting.  As he carried the tom out he thought he needed to show the bird to his grandson , who would be 6 next spring. And figure out how to post a picture of the ole tom on Old Gobbler. As he loaded the bird in the truck, the weight off his shoulders, he turned and took a deep breath and took the green spring and the hunt all in. As he started the truck he thought , hey maybe my grandson could show me how to get those pics up on OG? he is pretty good on computers. Then afterwords we can go pick out a blind for next year when he goes.

Have a nice day!     

Good story Owl from Tom's perspective is cool.  I don't know, but I assume a lot of it is tongue in cheek.  If not, that was Disney quality anthropomorphism! 

The scenario you describe is realistic as well as the results.  The thoughts by Tom?  Not at all, not in the way you put them, but I think you are just taking literary license and I appreciate that and enjoy it.  I think a lot of folks ascribe too much ability to "think" about the situation to turkeys, instead of mostly their ability to "react" to situations.  The last 2 years running, were it legal in Florida (it is this year), I could have killed a second bird on the same day - since he was standing right next to him buddy when he died. I called one back to 35 yards, just to see if I could and also to settle him down.  Then the schmuck proceeds to gobble and strut for 90 minutes in the field and I can't leave because I don't want to spook him.  I videoed him for a while snapped his pic a bunch (now my screensaver on myiPhone). 

Sometimes they seem smart as heck, and other times as dumb as a box of rocks.  Since that is not possible, what is the difference? I don't pretend to have the answers and some do (mostly the guys on the TV shows who's ego is only exceeded by the volume of birds located on the properties they hunt).  We would all seem like a "pro" on a butterball factory.  But I think it is less because those birds are dumb and more because if they screw up (or the turkey just acts like a turkey), they have so many more opportunities to kill one.  Honestly, if you put a radio collar on one of the birds and said "Okay Mr Pro man, kill THIS bird, on THIS property and you don't get to know where he is from the GPS", it would be a different game for a lot of the "Pros".  Of course some of them would do it, but those are the humble killers, not the TV supastars. 

This has been a very cool thread and I have enjoyed all the perspectives - from the hard core killers to the noobs like me. 

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QuoteHonestly, if you put a radio collar on one of the birds and said "Okay Mr Pro man, kill THIS bird, on THIS property and you don't get to know where he is from the GPS", it would be a different game for a lot of the "Pros".  Of course some of them would do it, but those are the humble killers, not the TV supastars. 

I have a close friend who hunted the country with Dick Kirby and others. he always brought them to our area to hunt and since I ran the check station they spent a fair amount of time hanging out. I know of two distinct gobblers with identifiable markings they put Kirby and Harold Knight on and they both killed those gobblers within a three day hunt. I also personally knew one of the TV Turkey Thugs and there is not much good I would say about him, caught him tresspassing on my property and he told me to back off so they could film....aaarrrggg. They changed their mind when they found out I worked for DNR.

Harold Knight and Dick Kirby are and were some great turkey hunters, without a doubt. But let me tell you something, there are a lot on this board that given 3 straight days to hunt a particular gobbler without interference will give him the same ride in a truck. You can take that to the bank and you may be one of them.

Quotethere are a lot on this board that given 3 straight days to hunt a particular gobbler without interference will give him the same ride in a truck

Agreed.  Also a lot of dudes I know would do the same, and some of them probably never get on a computer and dang sure don't have a TV show. 

I am an avid duck hunter and have been doing it a long time.  Have been interviewed twice for magazines (back in the 90s when people read them).  Not because I am a self promoting tool box, but because in one case the state waterfowl biologist is a friend and suggested it to them and the other a friend of the writer knew me.  About 90% of the duck hunting heros on the TV are dumb.  Had a group of nationally known "experts" watching our bag each day in Canada when we would come in, (in spite of us being on the low down so they would not see it) ask if they could put in with us and film.  We told them "No thanks".  We were freelancing, not using guides and it burned them up that we were killing at a good clip.  Had to get sneaky on them and give them the slip a few times. If we had let them film, it would have been edited down to video of them "smoking" the birds without a mention or image of us for sure.  Not that I am some superstar by any stretch, just been doing it a long time and know what I am doing and how we like to hunt. 

Same for the turkey hunters I know that are killers.  It is not about promotion or fame, just an avocation for them.  I always have a bit of distrust for anyone that turns hunting into a vocation. Not all are bad, but they have to prove to me they are not first. 

Quote from: g8rvet on April 06, 2015, 05:23:41 PM

Quotethere are a lot on this board that given 3 straight days to hunt a particular gobbler without interference will give him the same ride in a truck

Agreed.  Also a lot of dudes I know would do the same, and some of them probably never get on a computer and dang sure don't have a TV show. 

I am an avid duck hunter and have been doing it a long time.  Have been interviewed twice for magazines (back in the 90s when people read them).  Not because I am a self promoting tool box, but because in one case the state waterfowl biologist is a friend and suggested it to them and the other a friend of the writer knew me.  About 90% of the duck hunting heros on the TV are dumb.  Had a group of nationally known "experts" watching our bag each day in Canada when we would come in, (in spite of us being on the low down so they would not see it) ask if they could put in with us and film.  We told them "No thanks".  We were freelancing, not using guides and it burned them up that we were killing at a good clip.  Had to get sneaky on them and give them the slip a few times. If we had let them film, it would have been edited down to video of them "smoking" the birds without a mention or image of us for sure.  Not that I am some superstar by any stretch, just been doing it a long time and know what I am doing and how we like to hunt. 

Same for the turkey hunters I know that are killers.  It is not about promotion or fame, just an avocation for them.  I always have a bit of distrust for anyone that turns hunting into a vocation. Not all are bad, but they have to prove to me they are not first.

Agree 100%. The guys I know that are flat out killers have been that way for as long as I can remember.They just have that "knack". I do pretty well but cant compare to alot of these guys.I will admit i've learned quite a few things from places like this website,but learned most of what I know thru trial and error. The killers learned it by doing it.Most of the ones I know have probably never heard of Longbeards or Hevi Magblend.I know for a fact several shoot fixed full choke guns with lead 4s and 5s.They wear camo they've had since they got out of the army or stuff they bought cheap at Walmart 20 years ago. Its not a ego contest to them like these TV guys. On equal ground i'd bet my money every time on the old schoolers over the TV "pros" on who would bring home the birds.