Public land defensive schemes

[WV Flopper]

 Simply answer.

[eggshell]

I do not spend my time trying to thwart other hunters. I go early, but not real early and I respect other hunters if they have beaten me to a certain gate. I assume no one will honor my position and try not to get pissed off when they run over me. I will leave if I get pressure around me and move on. I often save my best spots for late morning after "Ronnie race everyone to the back" is worn out and leaves. I talk to other hunters at the gates and offer to split up the area. If asked I either say, I don't share my hard earned information or I tell them the truth. I ask them to honor my position and hard work on a certain bird and if they are insistent on being butt holes, I scare the living crap out of the bird and leave. I learned a long time ago, that I hunt for the joy of the outdoors and the interaction with the turkeys. When I start letting others rob me of that joy, my unhappiness is my fault. If the pressure is so bad I can't enjoy hunting, I go fishing. No turkey on earth is worth my joy or dying for....yeah I learned that the hard way too. 

[EZ]

Remove all "turkey" stickers from your vehicle.

[guesswho]

I often save my best spots for late morning after "Ronnie race everyone to the back" is worn out and leaves. 

That's why I wear Crocs.   I make pretty good time.

[eggshell]

I put that in specifically for you Guesswho....thought you'd get a chuckle

[guesswho]

 

[sasquatch1]

I kill the ones 100 yards from the parking area that everyone walks by on their 5 mile hike away from the crowds.

You mean E-Bike trek? It's 2023 man nobody walks anymore


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[guesswho]

You got that right.

[Neill_Prater]

I relate more to eggshell in this conversation. I got really ticked off when new to turkey hunting and others, just as green as I was, messed me up, but learned to get over it. I will get somewhere early if I have a specific bird, or area in mind, and in a few cases, really early. That said, if someone else is already there, I try not to let it ruin my day. More than once, I have had to resort to plan B, and ended up killing a bird.

I've also, more than once, put another hunter onto a bird that I didn't manage to outsmart. This usually happens on an out of state hunt after I have either tagged out, or more often, simply have to leave. It isn't like the bird is tied up, and I see nothing wrong with letting the other guy know that there's a gobbler in the area.

I do have a story though. A family I got acquainted with in Kansas 3 decades ago while hunting public land after sharing a campsite my first year out there had a son employed at Coleman. He was a foreman or something, and every new piece of equipment they produced, they would give him an example, so he had a boatload of camping equipment.

Back then, KDWP would allow you to camp pretty much anywhere on the management areas. This guy would go a quarter of a mile or so up the road from where we all camped and set up a complete fake camp, even leaving a Coleman lantern burning all night, so no one else would try to hunt the area.

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[GobbleNut]

Back then, KDWP would allow you to camp pretty much anywhere on the management areas. This guy would go a quarter of a mile or so up the road from where we all camped and set up a complete fake camp, even leaving a Coleman lantern burning all night, so no one else would try to hunt the area.

Although I have seen the fake-camp ploy pulled a time or two, I haven't done that, but have contemplated it on a few occasions.  That does bring to mind another problem we are seeing more and more of on public lands, though.  That is, a lot of folks just out camping during the turkey season that are not turkey hunters.  It's hard to tell who is hunting and who is just camping out.

Every year nowadays, we pass up hunting gobblers in places because there are camps nearby only to find out later that they were doing something else besides turkey hunting.  At 0-Dark-Thirty in the morning, waking someone up at a camp to ask them,..."Hey, are you guys turkey hunting?"...after hearing gobbling nearby, can be an "iffy" proposition.  I haven't had the ballinskis to try it,...and I suspect the results of doing so could get somewhat exciting.    

[deerhunt1988]

I used to carry a decoy with me on my travels, even though I don't actually hunt with them. A "dummy" decoy! I'll never forget hunting a Florida WMA in 2010. I had roosted a gobbler that could be gotten to from 2 different roads/trails that ran into each other. The bird was straight in front of the intersection. My dad dropped me off at one trail, then went and parked on the other. I placed a hen decoy in the middle of my trail I was on, about ~400-500 yards from the roosted turkey. Now most turkey hunters wouldn't be driving down these sketchy trails trying to turkey hunt and potentially busting roosted birds in the process. But in Florida, they'll drive down anything legal or not! And sure enough, 10 minutes after my bird starts gobbling, I hear someone laying down on their horn back at my hen decoy.  Fortunately they didn't continue forth on their path and I was able to get the gobbler.

[Tom007]

The most important "Defensive Scheme"  on a serious note on any land, public or private is safety and a strong awareness of your surroundings. There was an incident posted on our forum last year where a members friend got peppered with TSS. It was pretty bad, the shooter shot at movement I believe. There are many other incidences where this happened, especially when decoys are involved. I hunt very little public land but when I do, I yield big time to parked cars that get there before me. I have no interest in entering the woods that has other hunters. My "scheme" here is move on to another spot where I am alone. I can't enjoy myself if I am competing with other hunters. If I had to hunt solely public,  I would wear a blaze orange hat when moving on crowded WMA's. This could prevent that accidental "shooting at movement" episode. Control what you can control by being extremely aware of your surroundings, move away from crowds and over-all, just employ safety tactics whenever you encounter others in the woods.....

[eggshell]

You offer some good advice Tom007. I absolutely do not like being around other hunters and will leave at a fast pace if hunters crowd me. Of course I deal with more paranoia than most ( for good reasons you all know). I also carry a hunter orange stocking cap and it goes on my head if I am moving around other hunters. I don't deal with many other hunters however, as I hunt almost exclusively private property and most of it is behind locked gates and I am the only one allowed inside the gate on days I hunt. I still have run into trespassers and we have a zero tolerance for them. If you enforce trespass laws and hunting without permission then word gets around and you get very few trespassers. I know that makes me very fortunate and in a blessed position, but my family and friends have worked 150 years to secure all this property and I am grateful for my ancestors. If I had to hunt solely public in my area, I might just quit turkey hunting. Public is very limited here. Now I do hunt public out of state where there are huge chunks of national forest. Usually I can find a less traveled block there. Give me one gobbler all to myself and I am happy. I have no desire to hunt 10 gobblers along with 15 hunters.

[Tom007]

You offer some good advice Tom007. I absolutely do not like being around other hunters and will leave at a fast pace if hunters crowd me. Of course I deal with more paranoia than most ( for good reasons you all know). I also carry a hunter orange stocking cap and it goes on my head if I am moving around other hunters. I don't deal with many other hunters however, as I hunt almost exclusively private property and most of it is behind locked gates and I am the only one allowed inside the gate on days I hunt. I still have run into trespassers and we have a zero tolerance for them. If you enforce trespass laws and hunting without permission then word gets around and you get very few trespassers. I know that makes me very fortunate and in a blessed position, but my family and friends have worked 150 years to secure all this property and I am grateful for my ancestors. If I had to hunt solely public in my area, I might just quit turkey hunting. Public is very limited here. Now I do hunt public out of state where there are huge chunks of national forest. Usually I can find a less traveled block there. Give me one gobbler all to myself and I am happy. I have no desire to hunt 10 gobblers along with 15 hunters.

Amen my friend, the orange cap is a great idea that just might save your life.....be safe

[GobbleNut]

Much of the country I hunt here in the west does not have the situation many folks apparently have back east where you have to park at certain places to hunt public land...or at least it seems that way from the numerous comments suggesting that is the case.  Out here, hunters (and non-hunters) generally park wherever they want. 

That creates another situation not mentioned.  Many public lands out this way have pretty extensive road systems.  Add to that the fact that gobblers can often be heard from a mile away or more in this open country.  We have quite often heard a bird we thought we had all to ourselves in that nobody else was parked in the vicinity only to find someone else on that bird who had come in from another direction.  This is continuing to get to be worse over time as our public lands get more and more hunting pressure. 

Anymore, taking steps to try to avoid other hunters is becoming more and more of a crapshoot over time.  I still have a spot or two that I figure I can go to where I won't have competition, but every time I go to one of them now, I am never certain I will be the only one hunting any gobbler I might hear.  More often than not, a gobbler can be heard from multiple access points and I never know if another hunter may be coming in from the other side.  You just have to keep your fingers crossed that there isn't.

Nowadays, we are not in a situation where if you hear a gobbler, you just head to him without considering the possibility that someone else may also be hunting him.  With every gobbler heard, with it comes the consideration of whether there is a likelihood that someone else will show up.  If the circumstances suggest the odds of having that bird to ourselves are low, we just move on. ...It wasn't all that long ago that we didn't have to have that debate.