Turkey behavior questions

[nbadger23]

Hello... I'm new to the forum and kind of new to turkey hunting. I have hunted for 5 years and have been lucky enough to take a bird each year but the first 3 years were the kind of hunts you dream of... Hear birds gobble in the dark, pick a place to sit down, have a friend with who is a great caller, have the bird come in to 15 yards and make the shot. The hunts were a lot of fun but my total time spent turkey hunting was about 2 hours so I really didn't learn much about them.  I've been on my own the last two years and although my calling is getting better the reality is that I need to understand much more about their behavior to have success.  I've gotten birds the last two years by intercepting them on the way to their roosting site because that's the only thing I knew about their behavior "for sure." 

Here's some of the things I've picked up reading posts here and on various other sites and questions I have.  If anyone would want to share their opinions I'd be grateful.

Hens go to the toms instead of toms going to the hens - I've read that in various places and it made me scratch my head because the number one tactic people seem to use is calling like a hen.  If the tom isn't go to the hen how is that successful?  My guess is that the calling gets the tom's attention and his preference is to gobble or strut to show the hen that he's there and hope she comes to him but if she doesn't, curiosity may get the best of him and he'll come looking?  I've read a couple of different places that the yelp a hen makes is a locator call and if a hen locates a tom with a yelp and can see the tom, she's not going to yelp as she goes to him but will likely only cluck as she makes her way to him. If she loses sight of him she may yelp again to locate him?  On the flip side, if a tom knows where the yelp is coming from (I assume can visually see the hen making the yelp) he likely will wait for her to come to him?

What do turkeys do all day?  One thing I like about turkeys is that unlike deer, they aren't going to bed down. They are literally going to be on their feet all day so there shouldn't really be a lull in their activity during the day.. is this true?  From what I read, if the hens are receptive to breeding they'll likely be looking to get that done in the morning hours??   Do they become less interested in breeding as the day goes on and more focused on feeding/drinking/dusting?  I'm trying to figure out if I should focus on patterning hens in the mid afternoon because the toms will be with them or if they kind of split up during the mid day and I should focus more on patterning the toms. 

Once the breeding season starts, is a tom ready to breed at any part of the day?  I've seen them strut for an hour in a spot in the later evening - would the goal of that be to bring a hen in at that point to breed? 

This question feels kind of stupid but I'll ask anyway.  I know hens lay multiple eggs because I see them with more than one young one later in the summer.  Do they have to get bred each time to lay an egg or does getting bred one time lead to multiple eggs?  Do they lay all the eggs at the same time or is it spaced out over days? 

I apologize for the long post.. I really want to learn more and as I find bits and pieces of info it seems that it leads to more questions!  I'm really looking forward to this year's hunt as I will finally be able to spend quite a bit of time in the woods and hopefully learn a lot and maybe even shoot a bird! 

[nbadger23]

2ounce.. thanks for the reply.  I should have mentioned that I'm hunting in South east Minnesota and Western Wisconsin as like you said, regions and species play a big part I would imagine.  It's interesting you mention the shade thing because given our unseasonably warm and dry spring I had been doing some reading regarding turkey behavior and higher temps.  I've been thinking about sitting next to some water sources during the middle of the day if the temps possibly get into the 70's during my season. Sounds like if it was a shaded water source it would be a decent idea.

Your comment about calling a tom that is in sight is very helpful.  When I think back to the 3 birds that I killed in the morning, the key factor we had going for us was that we were sitting on the corner of a small woodlot that had field around it for as far as you can see. With the terrain and the cover of the woodlot and field, you literally can't see what's "around the corner" until you get there and that's what each bird did... came busting around that corner thinking a hen should be there. All three got real nervous when they didn't find a hen around that corner and thankfully the shot presented it self quickly. 

I'm thinking that patterning the hens in the morning would be a good idea for me as I'm not going to be able to compete much with them to pull a tom away so I'll hope to get in the way of the hens and have them bring a tom in. Then, after the hens leave to go back to the nest, depending on the weather, I may move off the open field (if there's no shade left and it's warm) and focus on a couple of logging roads/open areas and possibly water sources.  It sounds like in this case I'd likely want to kind of be "where the tom's want to go".. i.e. strutting areas, water.  For the later part of the day I'll likely focus on a couple of key funnel points leading to the roost that I've been successful on before.

I wasn't sure if the toms would be open to breeding all day long or not.If so, then I can see where that mid-morning time would be a great time as the yelp of a hen would be a very welcome sound to them if their girls may have left them.

[jakebird]

2 ounce did a good summary for you. I will add a very simple piece of advice. Read the forum of questions for dr lovett williams. That man knows turkeys like no one else alive. Not sure why he seems to have gone absent, but the archived questions and answers are worth reading and any of his books are excellent, as is his feature column in turkey and turkey hunting magazine, which imo every turkey hunter should subscribe to. Educational and entertaining as well. You are on the right path, friend. Welcome to the board, and i wish you much luck this season!

[fsu33952]

I figure Mr. Williams is off turkey hunting somewhere and that is why he hasn't been on here. Back in the days before 3 inch and 3.5 inch shotguns you had to set up so that a turkey was at about 25 or 30 yards when he got close enough to see you. Like 2 ounce said about the turkeys in South Carolina if you call and can see him then you are shooting yourself in the foot. He will smell a rat and be gone. The turkeys here in Alabama are the same way as South Carolina. You have to keep in mind that the turkyes down here are for the most part hunted super hard by turkey hunters that are lots of times descendants of generations of turkey hunters so they have been educated. As far as I know we have had turkeys around here when turkeys were unheard of in lots of places. But keep in mind that no matter how educated and smart they seem they will still do some stupid stuff occasionally. But for every one stupid thing he does, you will probably do ten.