Aggressive cold calling

[younggun]

I tend to be very aggressive when cold calling but in short spurts. If you have been hunting long enough you have heard a hen get fired up for no apparent reason but it is usually shortlived. That is what i try to mimmick and then shut up for a bit. No really set time frame just when it feels right I call. Here in TN it is getting late and the birds have heard it all so I have added a Gobble to the end of my sequence the last two hunts and had a Longbeard take a ride home both times. One responded by gobbling all the way to the gun barrel and the other never made a sound. Don't be afraid to try new things, old man once told me act like a turkey!

[Skeeterbait]

One thing I think a lot of guys, including myself in the past, overlook when running and gunning is the ground you have covered.  It is not unusual for there to be a silent bird trying to catch up with you, particularly in timberland.  If you are walking a logging road calling, stop every few hundred yards, set up, and watch back down the road the way you came.  I learned this by accident one time when I sat down to rest and here came two silent gobblers running up the road from where I had been trying to catch up with that group of hens they thought was traveling the road.  Set up and watch back the way you came for 30-45 minutes periodically and you will kill a bird occasionally trying to catch up with you.  Has worked for me several times.

[mikejd]

Ok here's my take on it. Again as I often say the way I learned much of my tactics were from watching and listening to hens themselves. With that said here you are on a quiet day with no gobbling at all yet you are a hen who is ready to breed. She however the same as you cannot find a gobble because he is not gobbling so what does she do she starts calling like crazy I've seen it dozens of times. Usually you think its a hunter but then here she comes almost in a frantic state walking fast back and forth all because she needs an answer to. So if its good for them its good for me. So I often call loud and hard and I do feel it works better than soft,quiet and accasional. If I no birds are around that's a different story but if its been real quiet I turn it up.

[savduck]

Holy crap......you sat in one spot for three hours?


Congrats on a nice hunt. Nice to see youth score.

[Turkey Trot]

Holy crap......you sat in one spot for three hours?

I was thinking it, but you said it.   

35 minutes is a long time in one place for me if I am prospecting (don't know there is a bird close or pattern of one being there at a certain time) and have not heard or seen anything.  As one of my S. GA friends says, "I can't hardly stand to try to hunt a turkey like hunting a deer."

[Ol'Mossy]

I got to hunt some private land today with a friend of mine. It was quiet this morning, I thought I heard a gobble this morning but wasn't sure. We decided to run and gun for awhile and made a big loop back to where we started. It was 9 am. I told him we'll just sit here until 12 and i'll call every 15 to 20 minutes. I would throw in a mix of calls like loud cutting, yelping, soft purring and clucking. I was swithching it up between a mouth call and slate call. About an hour and a half later, I got a feeling something was behind me. Never heard anything, leaves were wet from last evenings thunder storms, I turned my head to look around me and heard alarm putts. Never did see what is was either.  

[Thunderbolt]

When if i'm cold calling it's in an area that,i don't know the  or someone is taking me too their spot...and i'll ussally won't get agressive...I'll start out just clucking with a soft yelp thrown in...and if i do hear a gobbler...I'll let him set the tempo....if he wants to hear it and he keeps gobbling when i don't call...he'll get an earful..otherwise it's soft calling...Thunderbolt

[snapper1982]

my buddy has a place that gives us trouble alot. we have set up many times and called. the first few times we did the soft thing with no results... then one morning we set up and started with the soft stuff. nothing for about an hour. then i got loud and super aggressive and using a box and mouth while he worked a pot call. a bird fired off about 200 yds away. 2 minutes later and still calling virtually non stop he fired off again from 100 yds. a few minutes later again at 50 yds. we softened our calling but was still being super aggressive and almost non stop. his next gobble was at 30 yds. just over the lip of the hill. he was already on the gun and i shut up. 30 seconds he was standing in the deks. i called. his head shot up and boom bird flops. 1 3/8 inch spurs 11.5 inch beard 22 pounds.
since that hunt we have used the aggressive calls alot and they have worked about 75 percent of the time compared to 0 percent for the soft calling. some times it is just jakes that come sometimes toms but no matter it is better than nothing responding. oh and most of the time they have came silent.

[barry]

I've fired up many a bird late morning with some hard cutting