One piece of advice

[soky]

If you had one piece of advice to give to someone about turkey hunting what would it be?

I'll start with something that I read in an article when I first started hunting and that is "When in doubt, wait it out".

Many times when I had first started turkey hunting I have been set up mid morning calling in 15-20 minute intervals, got bored, and got up to walk and try to get a bird to gobble and before i made my first step heard the unmistakable sound of that hollow putt. Unless you have a great reason to get up (i.e.-you sit down in a bed of deer ticks) then wait it out.

Post a tip of your own lesson you had to learn the hard way and maybe it can help someone this spring.

[soky]

Well since we already have a post exactly like this one it can be deleted I suppose... Its my first day

[guesswho]

My advice, only call from where you think you can kill him.   

[hookedspur]

  soky


Slow way down and enjoy it all.
When you think you have waited long enough wait some more .                                                 

[turkey harvester]

Know when to be quiet. I used to over call just to hear the gobble. If he didn't gobble I thought he was going the other way. Now if he gobbles and answers my calls I make him come looking for me.

[Gooserbat]

Get a good butt cushion and use it.  There is a time a move, and learning when and where is something that only experience will teach you, but you'll kill more turkeys being patient than you will by "making it happen"

[paboxcall]

He's no longer gobbling doesn't necessarily mean he's no longer there.

[shaman]

My one piece of advice is this:  put away everything you ever read from others regarding turkeys and turkey hunting.  Go out, find some turkeys, and learn to hunt them in your own way.  Scout as much as you can. Get around turkeys until your understand them, and then go out and kill them.

My reason for saying this is that so much of the knowledge I gained from reading the turkey greats meant next to nothing to me when it came to hunt them.  More often than not, my head was filled with preconceived notions of what I should be seeing that I could not understand what was being presented to me.  It took years for me to see turkeys as they really are.  I must always fight to see things with fresh eyes, and not judge them just as a repeat of something I have seen another year.

I'll never forget giving permission to a pair of turkey hunters to hunt my place a few years ago.  They were from Ohio, which at that time did not have turkey hunting past Noon. They were fairly new to the sport and came out for an afternoon hunt on my place.  They came in well before sundown, exhausted.

"How'd you do?" I asked. I was surprised to see they didn't have a turkey . I'd heard several shots.

"Great." said the younger one. "I was showing Pops about Running and Gunning."

"Oh?"

"Yes, " said the old man. "I've never seen anything like it.  We'd walk through the woods until we heard turkeys and then we'd sit down and call like crazy to them. If we didn't hear anything in half an hour, we'd get up and go at it again.  We had luck, but it was all bad.  Just as we got up, there'd always be a turkey just ready to come in and we'd scare him.  One of us would get a shot, but those old gobblers were sly."

"It was just like on the tape I watched." said the kid. "' Cept  the gobblers always came quicker on the tape."

As best as I could tell, they'd called in a flock early in the afternoon and scattered it with the first fusillade and then chased that flock all over my 200 acres as they tried to regroup-- all because the kid had seen this tape on Run N' Gun tactics.  The flock had finally escaped to land to our south and that is what had caused them to come in.

[Bigspurs68]

Call him to where he wants to be, not where you want him to be.

[timberjack86]

Make sure your gun is patterned!

[ridgerunner]

Scout pre-season, pattern birds, know where they are roosting, where they go after flydown once you have this figured out you just need to set up in a good vantage point between the roost and where they wanna go after flydown..subtle calls every 20 minutes, when a bird responds, go silent and wait....like some other guys here have mentioned, wait and then wait some more..patience is the key, don't try and force something to happen. Patience............

[WildTigerTrout]

Learn to be patient and sit still. I mean really sit still!! Moving at the wrong time has let ALOT of turkeys live another day.Also don't call too much. Sometimes the best move is not to call.

[J Hook Max]

My best advice is that there are no absolutes in turkey hunting. Yes, it's easy to call too much. At other times, that's  what's needed. You do have to learn to be very still while at other times you may have to make a very quick move. Like when his head is behind a tree. So many variables, but some things are consistent.
Hunt hard and hunt often ( Just try and not lose your job or wife). Walk over one more hill, even when you are tired.
When you think it's time to go home, hunt one more hour. When you think you should get up and relocate, sit another thirty minutes. Most of all, try and learn the land and scout just as hard as you hunt. It's not that complicated, don't make it so.

[Muzzy61]

When i was younger I was full of advice. Now that I'm older my best advice would be enjoy each and every day that you have in the turkey woods, and don't take any of them for granted.

[turkey buster]

I need to learn patience more myself but I'm getting there. My problem is I hunt really stupid turkeys. They never do what they do on TV lol!  In all seriousness something that was only mentioned once that should be stressed is pattern your gun. Make sure your point of aim and point of impact are the same just like a rifle. Does no good for half of your pattern to miss the bird by a foot and you kill him with a few fliers. One day that will jump up and bite you with a miss or wounded bird.