Here is my A-B-C's of spring gobbler hunting:
1) Scout as much as you can before the season. If you have time for "on the ground" scouting, try to locate as many birds as possible,...and especially birds that might be in places away from roads or are otherwise hard to get to. If you have time, learn where the birds roost. If you cannot physically scout the area, then use maps to try to determine areas that might be productive;
2) Learn good "roosting tactics", including the effective use of locator calls, and use them religiously at dawn and dusk until you have found a concentration of birds that you are planning on hunting;
3) Be in the woods before first light every morning,...set up on a roosted bird if you know where one is,...or use mobile, early morning roosting tactics to find one;
4) Evaluate set-ups in relation to where birds are and then set-up wisely;
5) Learn basic calling skills with the tools you are best with, and then learn to "take a bird's temperature" in your use of calling. Always start your calling conservatively,...remember, you can't take back aggressive calling;
6) If your roost set-up each morning is not successful, learn from the experience so that you will know better on what to do the next morning,...turkeys are habitual to a great degree. Don't repeat things that didn't work.
7) After each mornings roost set-up, determine what might work best for your daytime hunting. Should you set-up somewhere, be patient and wait for birds in a good area you have identified? ....Or should you move carefully through your hunt area prospecting for active gobblers with your calling?
8 Keep the faith and keep hunting hard,...don't get frustrated and give up. Stick with it during all legal hunting hours and throughout your hunt. Sometimes it takes a while for it to come together,...and that can happen at any time.
9) Repeat....
