Early Scouting, Preparation, Final Strategy

[TrackeySauresRex]

A few decades ago, I always made time to scout prior to the season. Unfortunately, the closest areas with turkeys are a minimum two-hour's drive. On the other hand, those places are really big areas of public land with turkeys scattered throughout...and are relatively easy to locate. In addition, over the decades, we have found that they pretty much stick to the same places year after year.

The problem here is we never know when someone else is going to show up at any spot we have decided to hunt on any given day. So, our tactic is to move quickly from one spot to the next until we find birds that nobody is on already...and more importantly, are in a location that we think other hunters probably would not have made the effort to get to. I suppose it is the common public-land-hunting dilemma that a lot of us face.

Because of the above, I rarely end up hunting the same place twice during the season...and often have no clue as the any sort of pattern or movement habits a bird I might be hunting might have. I almost invariably have to sort that out "on the fly".

Most public land hunters around here are very adept at boogering gobblers up to the point they are scared out of their wits very quickly. I usually can tell pretty pronto if a gobbler I am on has reached that point when I am hunting him, and I don't waste much time on him.

My personal theory is that there is a gobbler somewhere out there that wants to play the game the way I want him to. I will spend most of my hunting time trying to find that gobbler rather than trying to outsmart any single bird that has shown me he doesn't want to play the game "right".

Of course, I understand that there are lots of hunters that don't have those same options to just keep looking for those responsive birds and must match wits with one or two gobblers over a season. I am happy to say that ain't me. 

Everything in this post is exactly right concerning public land.I also hunt public land but it's only a few minutes away. I'm am somewhere on that ground every morning for 2 weeks before season. EXCEPT!!! the 2 weekends before opening day .. those are the youth seasons and I won't go out and potentially mess up 1 of our up and coming turkey hunters....oh yea.. i don't want them shooting me either.
Good luck to everyone....April 7th is the day .

I love the season prep. From dusting the vest out in the garage, giving the pot calls a spin,  patterning and scouting. I saw two birds on state land today and they saw me! I knew they could run fast... but I didn't know they could run that fast!