I will give you my opinion but you are more than willing to disagree. I hunt public land in PA and NY regularly, both are know for decent/high amounts of hunting pressure. I do not buy into the notion that the only way to kill public land birds is a ultra finesse hardly call style. Its really hard to kill a bird that never hears you, if it takes aggressive calls to find a bird or get him fired up i'm gonna give it to him regardless of public or private. I change nothing about my calling approaches between public and private the only thing I change is I never use decoys or gobble calls on public and that's more for my safety than anything with the turkeys. If a birds is close or coming i'm gonna keep it soft and if i'm looking for a bird or trying to fire up a disinterest one I will fire away with aggressive calling. I was able to killed 3 public land birds last year using scratch boxes on all 3 but I called the same as would any turkey. Two were right off the roost where i floated some tree yelps to get a gobble, answered his gobbles with a little excitement and got quiet once on the ground a few cluck and purrs got him heading the right direction and the call was put away once the bird was in sight. The 3rd was a late morning bird I struck with aggressive box calling, once I knew he was headed my direction but hung up on the other side of a deep ditch trying to get the hen to him. I answered with some light scratch box calling and when he gobbled I cut him off with a few popping cutts and he crossed the ditch and came looking.
A good scratch box can be very realistic, I don't think of them as a call that sounds less like hunters but as a call that sounds more like turkeys.
