Fall hunting strategy and calling ?

[topnotch]

I never had the time before, but this year I'm going give the fall hunt some serious time.
What calls and methods work best ?
Any advice welcomed.

[eggshell]

Fall hunting is all about food. Turkey's movement is related to food first. You will hear every sound a turkey makes. Higher pitched calls work better. LOng strings of yelps for gobblers. Yelps, purrs and kee kee runs for flocks. I don't like the bust them up strategy, I just call to flocks and individual birds. Find the food they're  going to and you'll find birds. Get ahed of them and you can steer them off course a little, but they won't pay you any attention if your not along the path they want to go. They will be very vocal, just repeat what you hear.

[GobbleNut]

To preface: I am not really a fall turkey hunter, although years ago I dabbled in it a bit.  Point is, don't take anything I say on the matter as expert advice.  However, for those that hunt gobblers in the fall, here is a quick story from my experience just this last November while on an elk hunt that really turned on the old light bulb in my turkey hunting brain.

Me and a friend were walking down an open-bottomed canyon headed back to our cabin about midday, glassing ahead as we walked, when I spotted a flock of gobblers feeding in the bottom about a quarter mile in front of us.  We waited until they fed out of sight around a bend and then walked on down towards them. 

We eased around the bend carefully and spotted them about seventy five yards in front of us.  I pulled out a mouth call and hen-yelped at them to see how they would react.  They looked up for a second and then went back to feeding and kept moving away from us down the draw.  I made more series of hen-type yelps, each time with the same reaction.  They pretty much ignored me.

They moved on down the draw out of sight again and we kept sneaking down the draw behind them until we could see them again, still about seventy five yards in front of us.  I called again with "standard" hen yelps in several varying-length and pleading series.  Again, total lack of response from the gobblers.

They gradually moved out of sight down the draw and again we moved closer.  I looked at my buddy and said,..."let's see what happens if I switch to coarse, gobbler-type yelping next time we catch up to them".  We rounded a corner where we could see them again and I called again with a few coarse gobbler yelps.  The reaction from those gobblers was instant.  They all raised their heads and looked in our direction, their posture changed, and immediately they started walking on a bee-line right for us. 

There were ten of them, and two or three went into strut as they marched straight at us.  Again, we were making no effort to conceal ourselves, but they just kept coming right for us.  They got to about twenty-five yards before they noticed something was amiss, and then angled up into the trees above us, but still acting like they were looking for this intruding gobbler they heard.  The fall turkey season was on, and we could have easily killed any one of those birds had either of us bothered to buy a fall tag. 

The moral of this story is that simply changing from hen yelping to gobbler yelping completely changed their attitudes.  Was it an anomaly?  I don't know for certain, but that experience does have me thinking about buying a fall turkey license this year for the first time in probably twenty-five years.  Come November, we'll see....   

[eggshell]

That is not an exception Gobblenut. I should have said strings of course yelps in my post. I hunt gobblers in the fall and that is my go to series. Gobbles work as well and the finisher is often a very sharp and course cluck. Often they will answer that when nothing else works. They fight a lot in the fall and fighting purrs work too, but in most cases a long string of course yelps is the ace. I hear a fair amount of gobbling in the fall. If you bust a gobbler flock up they are more apt to come then hens, but don't even try for 1.5-2 hrs or more. I can pick out a gobbler yelping 300-400 yards out, they are that incessant when they are looking to hook up. 

[fallhnt]

Hens with poults may ignore you. The brood hen is more into survival and keeping her brood out of trouble.
Outside of gobbler flocks gobbling on the roost ,you may mistake them for hens. They seem to soft call on the roost.
They get all wound up when roosted with hens.
I too don't bother to try and bust flocks in fall. I found it to be a waist of time. Just set up and call. Even blind calling works in midday. It's a rush when you hear them cluck. Sounds like two boards being smacked together.
Flocks of gobblers are fun to hunt. They come to the call fairly easy.
Decoys will work well in fall. If hunting hens and poults,I use multiple decoys. I will also gobbler yelp with hen decoys out because they will come into hen decoys.
They gobble, strut,I've heard them spit and drum in fall too. Fighting is a daily thing too. I enjoy fall hunting over spring. I get to shoot deer that get too close while bow hunting turkey.
Last September I was squirrel hunting when a gobbler flock started gobbling and headed my way. I finally slipped out the other way and had a great weekend hunting them October 1st.
Do some scouting so you have a plan.
Good luck and be safe.

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