The Myth of Hunting Pressure

[g8rvet]

I will not be able to hunt that bird until Wednesday of next week

Dang, hope we are not hunting the same bird, cause I can't go til Wednesday either!   

[Ihuntoldschool]

Pressure affects hunters more than it does the turkeys.  Some gobblers lives are saved from a standpoint of having a setup or a hunt busted by another hunter whether it was intentional or not.   The turkeys are still going to be turkeys.  They have to communicate to breed. Gobblers are not going to avoid a hen calling just because he has some pressure put on him. He will still breed hens and if he failed to respond or shied away from their calls he would have a tough time doing that.

They are not deer, they don't have the option of going nocturnal.  The movement in the study where the birds were tracked means nothing. It is common for birds to travel miles a couple of weeks before the season, when they are moving from their fall/winter range into their spring range, closer to hens and their nesting sites which are chosen based somewhat on food/water sources that will be available during nesting and after hatching.  Think spring green up may be a factor in changing food sources which causes birds to shift their home range?  Take a look at the habitat on public land vs. many private land which includes farms and pastures, easier to find food sources after green up.  I hunt a lot of public and private and they all receive pressure from other hunters.  You just have to get it done. I am not going to use pressure as an excuse.

[Honolua]

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for some time, and I have finally gotten it to gel.  I thought I would throw it up here, and have y'all comment on it.

First off, let me throw out two basic statements:
1)  There is no such thing as hunting pressure when it comes to turkeys.
2)  There are only a few days every season where gobblers are huntable by conventional methods.

Here is my reasoning for these statements.

I hunt a single 200 acre parcel in SW Bracken County, Kentucky.  I will be starting my 14th season on the property this year.  When I got there in 2001, I still had my head filled with the standard catechisms of turkey hunting. It took me most of the early years to get those ideas out of my head and start seeing things for myself.  Chief among them was the idea of hunting pressure.  If you look back at my writing at that time, you will see that I often attributed the frequent recalcitrance of the turkeys to hunting pressure.  Indeed, I would go out on the Opener and hear a bunch of guns going off around me, and figure that had pretty well wrecked the birds for the season.  I also had to deal with the reality that my place had previously been wide open to hunting for 20 years, and local folks thought of it as kind of an unoffical WMA. When I was not there, it was a favorite spot to go.   Over time that changed, but the turkeys did not.

My main reason for coming to believe that hunting pressure is illusory is that I have realized turkey have very little memory.  I have a great spot on the back of the house, and we can sit out there and listen to turkeys on the roost as well as see turkeys out in our pastures.  Even though we are out there day after day and night after night, we continually have close encounters with turkeys.  In one episode, I had three gobblers come inside 100 yards of the house  three nights running.  The dominant gobbler and two acolytes came up the main N/S road and came closer every night only to suddenly discover my family enjoying Happy Hour on the back of the house.  The experience was fresh to them each time, and they showed complete surprise and utter terror.  Those sorts of things happen all the time at our place. I cannot count the number of times I have come in from scouting or hunting to find fresh gobbler tracks crossing mine in the curtilage. I do not think turkeys have the capacity to brain out the idea of a string of similar events having a pattern. If they do, it is far more attenuated than our own.

I do not mean to say that turkeys do not clam up and adjust their habits.  I am just saying hunters do not cause it as much as we think. What does cause it?   I am not sure.  Bear with me while I explain my second statement.

I have never been enamored with my own calling prowess.  Some folks think I am a pretty good caller, but I always feel like I am like a foreign tourist stumbling with a phrase book.  I need to find the toilet and I end up asking for the nearest brothel.  Accept that assessment for a moment. Take it as given that I am not that great a caller.  There are still a few days out of the season where I can bring them in on a string. How can this be?  I have called up gobblers while suffering from what turned out to be pneumonia, coughing hard enough to pass out.  I have heard of fellows calling in gobblers with a rusty nail and a flower pot.  How can this be?  My assessment is that there are only a few days out of the season when gobblers get this way. On those days, nearly anything will work.  The rest of the time nothing works.  A skillful caller might be able to squeeze a couple days out of a season, but the turkeys are either going to come or not. Mostly, they are not going to come.  That is how the illusion of hunting pressure works its way into our minds. 

I have 3-4 active groups of turkeys on my place during season.  I say groups, because there are more than 1 flock involved in each group. They act somewhat independently of each other. That is to say the group at the north eastern corner of the farm my be "ON" while those on the southwest may be "OFF."  The effect of being "ON" can be very localized.  In talking with my neighbors who hunt properties away from our ridge, I know that my turkeys can be totally OFF while turkey as little as a few miles away can be ON.   If you are a normal sort of hunter, it would be easy to ascribe this to hunting pressure.  What happens when you go out and find the turkeys in an OFF mode?  You go elsewhere, right?  For some it means going to a different farm or different WMA.  For some it means packing off to the next state.

However, what happens to that OFF property?  I only hunt that one 200 acre plot, so I am stuck with finding out that answer.  What I find is that once you remove the idea of hunting pressure from the mix, you see something far more complicated.  Flocks and gobblers do not get wrecked for the season in that way.  Instead, they may switch back ON at any time.  It can be very limited too.  I have seen it be bad in the morning and then get hot in the afternoon.  I have seen one end of the farm dead while the other is seething with turkey lust.

I have gotten a lot of flak over the past few years as I tried to state these ideas.  Guys will tell me I'm crazy.  One fellow did so and then went on to say that he would go out and take the turkey's temperature and if it was not to his liking, go home and drink coffee.  Isn't this what I was just saying? I have also had fellows claim they could call in a gobbler any day during season. It was just knowing how, and then come up with a list of exceptions and provisos a mile long explaining why they did not and could not bag a bird every time they went out.  Top of these guys' lists are funky weather and hunting pressure. For me, that sounds like point and match.

What can ON be like?  Usually, I can say that for where I am, these ON episodes are most likely to occur before our spring season usually starts.  Kentucky does not allow calling before season, but I have had gobblers run across the field, because they heard my knees and boot tops moving in the leaves.  I have had a flock of gobblers come to me and go into full strut while I was sitting on a boat cushion, drinking coffee in a field. I have seen lone gobblers roaming the fields gobbling down the tops of hollows. This is that early breeding season just after the big late winter super flocks break up.  After that, the switch from OFF to ON can happen any time.  In general, I find warmer-than-usual days are the most likely.   However, I've seen it happen after a late season snow with 25 MPH winds. Go figure. 

Assume what I am saying is true, what difference does it make?  The biggest difference is once you remove hunting pressure from your list of assumptions, the possibility of hunting heavily hunted grounds makes sense.  Just because you drove out to one plot or one WMA and heard nothing the Monday after the Opener does not mean that place is played out for the rest of the season.  It might turn ON at any time. If you buy into what I am saying, it means you have to be content to be satisfied with  a couple-three days a year to hunt with conventional "by calling alone" methods or think about something else.  For me, I will not call it "ambushing," because it is not.  However, most days I try to set up where I think turkeys are going to come later in the day and then wait. I call, but location and set-up are my primary focus. The most important thing is to not give up. A given property may turn ON on any given day. It should not find you at home watching Netflix.

One other thing my theory means is that the idea of hunting a mature gobbler may not be such the great feat we claim.  If you look back on my weblog, you will see I have my share of 2 year-olds, jakes, and a few old veterans. Truth told, the old ones got fooled just as quickly and completely as the sophomores. Their ON switch was just as certain. I am not saying there are not wary turkeys out there, but I think they could be wary by nature and not experience.

Please feel free to rip this theory apart.  I'd love it it if someone set me straight.

Provocative for sure...there's some good stuff here. I agree with most of it...

[g8rvet]

You just have to get it done. I am not going to use pressure as an excuse

Recognizing it occurs is far different from using it as an excuse. I hear what you are saying, but I want to know what the birds do and why they do, as much as I possibly can, because that makes me a more efficient, better turkey hunter. 

My nephew shot at and missed a bird on Wednesday on his very small lease.  He called in a bird this morning and shot him - he was part of a pair and he is pretty darn sure it was the other bird that did not get shot at (both were there, one was leery). They then proceeded to check out another spot on the lease and my other nephew connected on a nice gobbler. Can't get much more pressure than that.  I am talking a 400 acre lease and two green plots not 500 yards apart. My nephew called me last night and asked if he should hunt there after missing one 4 days ago and I said "heck yes, it has rained for 2 days solid and is clear and cool this morning, they will be gobbling". 

This has been a very interesting topic.  I do find it very interesting that some very successful turkey hunters see situations differently and yet still do very well.  Maybe that means understanding them is not as important as being where they want to be! 

[Youngturkey]

I agree. I just killed a bird yesterday morning that I hunted 5 days straight. I thought for sure he would've been super educated. But sure enough this time he didn't hangup came in to 40 yards and got the longbeard xrs. Imo you have to hunt quite a few consecutive days rather that every weekend to be extremely successful.

[shaman]

I had to go down to Turkey Camp this weekend.  I could of stayed home, but the forecast suddenly changed and I had to run down to keep the pipes from freezing.  I got up this morning and was greeted by a gobble coming out the back door.  It was 17 when I put on my coat and the temp dropped a bit before the sun started warming things.  However, I was pondering this issue and decided to make a podcast out of it.

Getting Thoughtful at the Thoughtful Spot

Thank you IHunt' for the kind words. 

[Ihuntoldschool]

I really enjoyed the podcast, this whole thread has been rather interesting.  Now, Mr. Shaman and myself have come to an agreement on some factors regarding hunting pressure, being overused as an excuse or an explanation for why a turkey or turkeys acted a certain way.  There are few things on which we still differ and I cannot totally agree with Mr. Shaman.

One in particular, Mr. Shaman would have you believe that you call up a 3 or 4 year old mature gobbler, vs. calling to a 2 year old or a jake gobbler. Mr. Shaman suggests, what is the difference, they are the same.  Well, I see it differently. In my experience turkeys acquire more patience and a greater expectation that the hen will come to them with age. It is my contention that a 3 or 4 year old gobbler is used to having the hens come to him and when he hears your calling, he fully expects that at any moment the unseen hen is going to show up if he stays out there and gobbles/struts/, is drumming.  If he does commit to your calls, he will be much more patient and cautious in his approach compared to your 2 year old gobbler on average. That 2 year old has less opportunity to breed and less of an expectation that the hen will come to him. He will be less patient in his approach and more likely to commit to an unseen hen. Now, is this learning from experience, well maybe.  Some of it is also development with age.  Just like your 3.5 or 4.5 year old buck is different from your 1.5 year old buck, the same is true with turkeys.

Now, do these turkeys magically find a corn feeder everyday? To me this suggests some learning and memory is going on here. How about the experience gobblenut, related where the turkey jumped up on the feeder and knocked the corn loose so it would fall to the ground? I cannot with good conscience ignore the story about the gobbler who had been shot at being leery and reluctant to approach an unseen hen, whereas the other bird was not so cautious and came right in.  I cannot sit here any longer and suggest that this was coincidental or by happenstance. I have to believe that a bird that has been shot at and missed or even worse if he was peppered with a couple pellets is now a tougher bird to call back to the gun. Now, if he didn't learn or remember the experience, how could he be any tougher as a result of the experience?  Now, could it be that an experience like that is easier to remember than merely strolling thru the woods and noticing a hunting cabin, and then a human?  Could it be the more traumatic the experience, especially if it caused him physical pain, the easier it is for him to remember?  Could it be that the turkey did not feel threatened by seeing Mr. Shaman at the hunting cabin and erased it from his memory?
Maybe these birds learn and have memory but the physiological urge to breed overcomes what they have learned and remember at times.  This is where other things come into play besides hunting pressure, such as the availability of the hens and what stage of the breeding cycle they are in. But these other factors are always at play, the hens are very important here.

One thing I want to address on the 2nd point, Mr. Shaman has made, that there are only about 3 days each season where gobblers can be hunted by conventional methods.  Now, I am not a big fan of calling things "ON" vs. "OFF" days, but these are the terms Mr. Shaman uses to characterize them. Spring breeding seasons are rather short and timing is critical, so turkeys don't take many off days.  In Mr. Shaman's home state, the season opens at about the peak time when the majority of the hens are starting to sit the nest.  Now, because of this and the fact that his season opens on a Saturday coupled with the fact that Sunday hunting is and has been legal for some time, it is not to hard to see why 50 % of the kill occurs during the 1st weekend, especially when your season is only 3 weeks total with a 2 bird limit. I suggested that if his season opened 1 week earlier, the kills for the 1st weekend would be substantially less than the 50% he sees now.  You would see the kill totals even out a lot from the 1st weekend thru the 2nd weekend.  Timing is important here. So, while he may see more days that are somewhat "ON" it is unlikely that any 2 days will be as "ON" or as intense as that 1st weekend.
This brings me back to a point that I made in my first reply to this topic.  Let us not underestimate the ability and influence of the hunter here. Some hunters are going to have more of Mr. Shaman's definition of "ON" days than other hunters.  The ability of the hunter to turn an "OFF" day into an "ON" day cannot be ignored.  Calling has the ability to change a birds mood, and turn him from "OFF" to "ON"  And on any given day some birds will be hotter than other birds.

[Ihuntoldschool]

One other thing, a point was made about voice recognition and the ability of a gobbler to recognize and differentiate between different hen sounds and individual hens within the flock, or a strange hen that has not been heard, or a that same strange hen that is always heard but never seen.  Let me say this, I agree 100%, how many times have you been working a gobbler that was coming your way until he heard "his" hen and then went to her instead. This is a real occurrence and it happens alot.  I don't know what all that suggests or means, but their hearing is exceptional and there is no doubt in my mind about their ability to recognize the sound of one hen vs. another.

[deerbasshunter3]

For what it is worth, I think we tend to treat deer and turkey like mythical creatures that hear, see, know everything that goes on in the woods. There is no doubt that they know what goes on in their home (woods), but they are not magic. Many a deer, and many a turkey, have been killed with the most rudimentary equipment known to man. Look at the camo that people used to wear. Look at the decoys that used to, and continuously today, fool turkeys, ultimately leading to their death.

It is my untested opinion that once a deer/turkey experience something, that is what they focus on and not something that happened before. For example, say a deer is shot at by a guy with a bow, and the guy misses. The deer knows that something happened that startled him, and will move away from the area that it happened in. But as soon as that deer comes up on some food, it will start eating again, and not even be thinking about looking around for what may have startled it earlier.

[owlhoot]

on and off days ?? Seasons open one week earlier would give substantially less kills?

Our Missouri season starts close to the same date every year. However the time of the season can change things dramatically , some years greened up good , others barely started.
Sometimes toms are all over the hens in March, some years still at it in June.
Kills have been easy some openers, some not. Weather seems to be a factor.

[WV TURKEY THUG]

just read the whole 8 pages lots of good info

[Garrett Trentham]

The bottom line is that pressure does have a negative effect on calling in turkeys. At the very least, it can make turkeys use different areas with less human presence. At the most, it can make turkeys more suspicious of everything they encounter to include a hen calling at them from a distance.

It's impossible to scientifically prove that hunting pressure makes turkeys harder to kill. That being said, anecdotal evidence from the past 100 years of modern turkey hunting says that pressure in fact does make turkeys harder to kill.

Sure, claiming excessive hunting pressure is an easy out when a turkey gives you the slip on public land. And yes, there are sooo many variables that have a much stronger effect on how hard turkeys are to kill on a piece of land on any given day. The adult gobbler to hunter ratio on a property probably has the biggest effect on how easy the hunting is. This ratio allows that killing turkeys on heavily hunted public land with lots of turkeys can be easier than hunting private land with very few turkeys. This has certainly been the case in areas that I have hunted. Many of the trucks at the parking spots each morning will have hunting club stickers on their windows, and there's a reason for that.


Turkeys are also easier to kill on some days than others, no doubt. I think this is more situational than just random timing. For example: you've been hunting a gobbler every morning and he just won't leave his hens. The day after his last hen starts incubating her eggs in the morning, he comes running to your calls. You hypothesize that it was just an "ON" day, but the truth is his hens were gone and he was lonely. There's always a reason, but we so rarely know what it is.


In regards to older gobblers being just like 2 year olds. The older a turkey gets, the more habituated they become. They have a routine and even a way of approaching situations that have allowed them to live longer than others and they rely on those routines heavily. I highly doubt this is learned behavior, they probably acted the much the same way when they were a 2 year old (that's how they got old). The gullible younger turkeys get killed by humans or other predators and don't grow old. Thus, in any location that has predators, older turkeys will be harder to kill.

[shaman]

Let me clarify my opinion.  I do not mean to say that a mature bird is just like a 2 year old or a jake.  The first distiction is a point IHunt' makes.  The older birds usually have a bigger harem, are getting satisfied more, and are less likely to walk in front of a muzzle on the Opener. Later in the season, after all the hens have left him, a mature gob may become more willing to come to  strange calls.

Second, the older bird is older for a reason.   My theory is that the older birds are, by nature, more cautious.  I used to work for large poultry company.  We had turkey jerkers , whose job it was to harvest semen from the prize toms.   They would tell you each one was different and each had his own likes and dislikes.  Some took a lot of work.  Others would pop off as soon as he saw the vial coming his way.  Needless to say, the latter did not stay too long in the breeding lab. You could not teach a turkey to be patient.  There are similar things going on in the wild.  However, I do not think it has to do with learning.  A gobbler is what he is for the most part.  If he has an ornery nature to him that keeps him shy of strange calls, he's going to survive longer and make it through being a  jake and a sophomore. 

Now, let me clarify my distinction with mature gobs a little farther.  What I am saying is that I have not seen a huge difference in behavior when a mature gob comes in.  The selling may be different, but once a gob is sold his behavior seems to be the same to me.  As I said in the podcast, mature birds do not show up with a pre-nuptual agreement tucked under their wing. They strut the same, and they gobble the same.  Others' mileage may vary, but I would say a bird in full strut inside 20 yards of the gun barrel is completely sold.

Normally I bump into mature birds by accident. That is to say, I get a bird coming to me and I usually cannot tell he is mature until after he's down.  As a result, I cannot say I did one thing or another specifically because they were  mature.  In the past 20 years, I have had 3 mature birds.  That is a small sample, I know.  However, I have seen jakes and sophomores be just as cagey or just as smitten. 

I generally don't like to compare deer and turkey.  I think deer have a lot more brains and a lot more capacity to learn.  However, some of the same dynamics probably exist here.  The Monsters made it to Monsterhood for a reason.  A deer that prefers keeping to himself and does not get into a lot of fights and does not chase a lot of doe may survive a lot longer than those that engage in risky behavior.  Similar to the turkey situation, whenever I have taken a mature buck, he's  made a stupid mistake and come to my gun or my bow totally sold on the situation. He's come by my stand, expecting a fertile doe or a male rival and was looking for a piece of the action when I shot him.

[shaman]

This brings me back to a point that I made in my first reply to this topic.  Let us not underestimate the ability and influence of the hunter here. Some hunters are going to have more of Mr. Shaman's definition of "ON" days than other hunters.  The ability of the hunter to turn an "OFF" day into an "ON" day cannot be ignored.  Calling has the ability to change a birds mood, and turn him from "OFF" to "ON"  And on any given day some birds will be hotter than other birds.

Let me also clarify my ON versus OFF idea.  Look, if you get a shot at a gobbler or get a gobbler come in most of the way. If a gobbler busts you on your 6 or gets pulled away at the last minute by hens, I'd count that as an "ON" sort of day.  If you come in shaking your head after 12 hours of hunting, the woods were dead, the gobblers jumped down a hole and pulled the lid in over the top, or every gobbler you had contact with flipped you a few gobbles over his shoulder and went the other way, I'd call that an "OFF" sort of day.  My point is saying that is that my experience is that there are many OFF days and very few ON. The ON state is very localized and the next farm over can be ON when your plot is OFF.  I'm just using this ON/OFF model as a better way of describing what is going on in a turkey's life than "hunting pressure."  My experience is that there are a lot of "OFF" days at my place and very few "ON."   Yes, a good hunter can take an OFF day and turn it around sometimes, and there is also no way to stand on a plot at sunrise and say this plot of "OFF" and especially not because it was "pressured."   ON can happen any time and only perseverance will allow you to exploit it.

I especially like IHunt's distinction regarding mature birds on public lands.  Yes, a lot of mature birds don't turn "ON" until later in the season.  Just because the local WMA had gobs of hunters through on the Opener, does not mean you can't get something there later in the season. The idea of pressure belies this truth.  Believing in hunting pressure would dictate that the smart older birds are cued not to come to calls. This is simply not so.   The truth behind hunting pressure is that there are just fewer birds left to hunt, not that the ones that remain are somehow trained  to be unhuntable.

[GobbleNut]

I find myself beginning to think that turkeys in different parts of the country must have different IQ's,...based on a lot of commentary over the years on this subject.  It has been in the back of my mind for a while, but just last week I happened to run into a turkey hunter who had moved here from Kentucky a few years back.

During our conversation, he said, "Boy, the turkeys around here are a lot harder to call up than the ones back in Kentucky".  The more I hear people insisting that turkeys are not capable of learning, or becoming "call shy", the more I start to wonder if our turkeys here are just the Einstein's of the turkey world. 

Just this last weekend I was sitting, looking out the window at our cabin at a group of thirty turkeys with three mature gobblers in the group that had come to visit our feeder that is set up about thirty yards away.  They were familiar birds. We call them the "three amigos". The three of them have been around for a few years.  One is a real hoss,...has spurs pushing an inch and a half (rare as hens teeth for a Merriams in these parts).  I would guess him to be five-plus years old.  The other two are at least four.

We hunt these birds during the season.  In fact, there are probably ten different hunters that try them every spring.  The only thing we prefer those that hunt them do is to call them in, rather than ambush them,...which would be really easy to do.  Those that decide to hunt them can chase these often-gobbling birds around all day long trying to find that "spot" where they will come.  I can tell you this,...those birds will not come to your calls, my calls, or anybody else's calls.  They have learned to stay away from turkey calling, period. 

If you call to them where they can actually hear your calling,....even if they are headed right towards you,...they will alter their course around you, or otherwise turn away.  This is not coincidence or circumstance, it is a fact of life here.  Those birds will eventually die somehow, but they will be replaced by others, just as they replaced the others before them for the last couple of decades that we have owned the property. 

We have had the "superman turkey hunters" come visit us from far and wide to hunt our gobblers.  Some of them have come with the attitude that they could call in any turkey that ever lived.  Over the years, I have gotten a kick out of watching the supermen try to kill these birds.  At the end of it all, the supermen have gone back home with their tails tucked between their legs (and perhaps with a couple of two or three-year old gobblers making the ride with them),...and the "three amigos" or their brethren all show up at the feeder again after it is all over. 

From some of the commentary here, it seems clear to me that Einstein turkeys must not exist everywhere.....