Calling VS Experience/Woodsmanship

[GobbleNut]

Another pre-season topic for discussion (mostly for the newer hunters among us):

We tend to discuss turkey calls and calling a great deal. My impression is that some folks might begin to think that calling ability is THE key to turkey hunting success. Now, I tend to agree that the more realistic somebody's calling is, the better. I have concluded over the decades, however, that calling ability is secondary to what we generally classify as "woodsmanship".

To me, that term can best be summed up as knowing what to "say" to a turkey, when to say it, why you are saying it, and where to say it from. Unfortunately for most of us, learning how to pull that off on a somewhat regular basis often requires a learning curve that is only accomplished with significant time spent in the turkey woods...and generally with quite a few failures front-loaded onto that learning curve.

Quite honestly, learning to make all of the sounds a turkey makes with adequate realism with the tools available today is the easy part. That other element of experience and woodsmanship? ...Not so much.   

[eggshell]

Your right about one thing Gobblenut....this is mostly for the others on here, not the G.O.A.T.S 

In all seriousness, calling is like putting mustard on a hotdog. It's always a hotdog and sandwich and you can eat it plain, but mustard makes it a whole lot better. Good calling is putting some mustard on something that is already done. Woodsmanship is what kills the most turkeys and that entails a whole lot of things. From reading a birds mood, to positioning, to how and where you move, knowing turkey language and what to say when. The number one problem with may inexperienced hunters/callers is too much mustard. Too much Mustard ruins even a hotdog.

[Yoder409]

I get into this one with an old buddy (accomplished turkey killer) at least once a year.

It becomes obvious, eventually, that it's easier to call a bird to a place he WANTS to come to.  THAT.... being in that spot.... is your woodsmanship.

So, that being a given..... out of two guys that have equal woodsmanship skills.... my premise is that the guy who calls with more realism will kill more birds.

He disagrees.   He's allowed.

[CALLM2U]

It doesn't really matter what quary you're hunting, if you have good woodsmanship, your sucess chances go way up.  Squirrels, deer, turkey ect. 

Where I grew up, there was a old man who was well known for his sucess in turkey hunting.  He rarely called.  He just understood turkeys and how they moved.  So he was often where they wanted to be and never made a call. 

While it's impossible to deny his sucess, I do enjoy the communication aspect of turkey hunting.  I want to have a conversation with one and fool him. 

[GobbleNut]

I do enjoy the communication aspect of turkey hunting.  I want to have a conversation with one and fool him. 

I would take this one step further. I want to have that conversation and KNOW that the reason I killed him was BECAUSE he came to my calling.

Now, I have killed gobblers where I knew I would have killed them if I had never made a peep but that is not what I play the game for. The "reward", if you will, in turkey hunting for me is having that conversation and knowing that he came looking for me because he thought I was a real turkey (of the feathered variety, that is). 

[WLT III]

Sit down to em wrong, and 9 out of 10 times, your toast, no matter how REAL your calling is.

[YoungGobbler]

I like your topic. To me, for the places that I hunt, calling is almost overated, if I can say so... I hunt Ag. country and turkeys are easy to observe and study and they become very predictable on their territory. Woodsmanship to me is knowing where they roost and where they go after that and by knowing that, you can "almost" (to not say pretty much, depending on the case) hunt them without making a sound when you know they will pass right there, or roam around there... Visual is also something I learned last year. A good decoy well placed will attract them, without you even needing to make a sound. I still use calls, but knowing where they will go is much more important than making realistic calls. I try to make realistic calls, but if you are where they will pass, it won't matter that much if your calls are a little bit off... And on the other hand, your calls can be perfect, but you won't call them from the neighboors land if they don't want to go where you are.

[eggshell]

Your right youngGobbler. A lot of birds are killed this way. It's deer hunting only the deer have feathers and gobble. Around me there are hundreds of deer bait sites and the turkeys have learned where they are. The deer hunters quit putting out corn when season ends in January or February, but the birds still come back and scratch out the leftovers. They learn to hang in the area too. I know hunters who go sit in those blinds and then claim they called a gobbler in, I think that is only marginally true. They steered or speeded up a gobbler that would have been there anyway. In essence they shot a bird over bait. This is legal as long as the bait had been removed for 30 days. I don't believe it's ever removed to the animals. We feed deer in our yard and watch deer come and check even in the summer when there's been no grain for months. This is not woodsmanship or calling in birds. Woodsmanship is being lost

[YoungGobbler]

Some would throw stones at me for not hunting them with calls and not having a conversation with the tom I'm hunting... But I am not baiting turkeys either. I'm a hunter and that's it... I enjoy when I set-up right on a game and get them...

[EZ]

I think woodsmanship and good calling go hand in hand. If a hunter spends years honing his/her woodsmanship skills (aimed towards killing turkeys), it would stand to reason that person has learned a whole lot about turkey language. If they haven't, then they haven't been paying attention.

[mountainhunter1]

Woodsmanship is everything. If a man has a ton of woodmanship, which includes knowing not only where to call but when and when not - his calling can be barely average and he will be just fine. And do not miss this - the man who says he is a good woodsman, yet he does not have a wheelbarrow or patience, he is just kidding himself. Patience is a key part of any notion of woodsman skills.

A true woodsman has one objective far beyond killing a turkey that day - and that is to leave the truck, go hunt, and then return to the truck without alerting the turkeys to the fact that you were there. Everyone spooks a turkey at some point, but the idea is to get from the truck and back to the truck and to hopefully not spook a turkey that day. Using deep drains or steep bluffs for entry and exit to avoid them knowing you are there takes far more effort, but that is much of what woodsmanship is all about.

Today, we have a lot of hunters who can run a diaphragm or a pot call like a scolded dog, but they are flailing their way through the woods and struggling to draw turkeys to the gun barrel on a consistent basis. Most will tell you that they are killing it in the woods if you ask, but if you sit back and observe what is happening on public land where I live - 80% of those are more in charge of killing prevention than turkey killing. So many guys just flail and flush the woods from the time they leave the truck to the time they arrive back at it to go home. And maybe that is a good thing since the Wild Turkey numbers are not what they used to be.