The Myth of Hunting Pressure

[Ihuntoldschool]

Okay, it seems that we have a majority as to the first point.

On the 2nd point, saying that there are only a few days each year that gobblers can be killed by conventional methods is absolutely not true. There are some days when a turkey is more hot than other days, no doubt. Different tactics/strategies may be called for depending on the time of season and stage of the breeding cycle and a multitude of other factors to numerous to name them all. To suggest that there are only a few days where conventional methods will work is more absurd than the first point about hunting pressure. Like Gobblenut said, this has to be related to human psychology, how these ideas could be suggested.

[Bowguy]

Reading through what people are writing I see how they believe different things. However it may be someone's interpretation of pressure. Normal seasonal activities that don't directly affect a turkeys safety , such as farming, logging, hiking, etc in my opinion will never tremendously affect them, nor will shots next farm down. It does not affect them. Only pressure exerted first hand on the turks will change them. We're all entitled to dif beliefs but where I live pressure is no myth

[shaman]

Okay, it seems that we have a majority as to the first point.

On the 2nd point, saying that there are only a few days each year that gobblers can be killed by conventional methods is absolutely not true. There are some days when a turkey is more hot than other days, no doubt. Different tactics/strategies may be called for depending on the time of season and stage of the breeding cycle and a multitude of other factors to numerous to name them all. To suggest that there are only a few days where conventional methods will work is more absurd than the first point about hunting pressure. Like Gobblenut said, this has to be related to human psychology, how these ideas could be suggested.

If the 2nd point is absurd, then exactly how many days a season are you actually successful on a given plot?  Could you limit yourself to one 200 acre plot like me and fill the same number of tags, or would you feel like you needed to move around?  If point #2 is incorrect, conceivably a good caller, knowing enough about turkeys should be able to use conventional methods of calling and be successful most days. On the other hand the reality is that most hunters, most days come home with squat. 

What I'm saying is that most days, it is wretchedly hard to get a gobbler to come in, even for a good turkey hunter. That is one reason they call it the hardest game in North America.   What I see, from consulting our telecheck records is  that outside of the Opener my county sees  mostly low single-digit harvests most days of the season. However, there will be bursts of activity on odd days. Now some of this is the preponderance of harvests on weekend days, but some days in mid week will have burst of double-digit harvests. These are the days were I think just about anything seems to work. Other days are dead. In looking over those records I see a fairly consistent  ON or OFF kind of situation for the whole county.  0-4 birds most days and double digits on a very few.  I can't believe those double-digit days are just when the experienced hunters decided to all come out.

As to hunting pressure, let me say again, I realize I'm fighting a basic catechism here.  However, how does a hunter distinguish between birds being silent due to supposed hunting pressure versus them having and OFF-kind of day like I'm suggesting?  If the majority is right, it should be fairly easy to explain without resorting to circular logic.

The conclusion one draws from the "hunting pressure" scenario is the birds are bugged and it is a state they will probably be in for the rest of the season. By asserting the reality of hunting pressure, are you  suggesting that it is reasonable to write off a given plot, because it has been hunted before?  All I'm saying is that the process may be reversible, because  some other causes may be at work.

I also don't want y'all to get the idea that I think turkeys are incapable of learning.  I just think it is sharply attenuated compared to humans when it comes to a thing like this.  Any human would know as soon as he saw a pack of lions sunning themselves under a tree to avoid that tree in the future. It would not take three trips. He would go home and tell his whole family "There's lions under that tree!"  Heck, he'd probably move to the other side of the county for that matter.  From what I've seen of turkeys, they can go to the same patch of ground for a week, encounter humans and still come out on  the next Monday expecting something different.

If there are truly unhuntable gobblers and they learn this from contact with hunters, how does anyone kill a mature gobbler?  If it is only due to the superior skills of the hunter, then how in the heck would any mature gobbler fall for my schlock?  This is still my big aching question.

[chatterbox]

Shaman,

If sex doesn't work, sometimes a fistfight is in order.
Some days you can promise them things that would make a sailor blush, but all that sailor wants to do is bust a beer bottle over someone's head. Fighting purrs and gobbles can change the game.
Hitting them on those days is the trick.
My son and I had a gobbler we named solo that wouldn't even turn his head to a hen call.
We went up on his mountain, hit him with a gobble followed with a yelp, and it was like a light switch went off! He hit me with a booming gobble that I will never forget.
We tried pulling him back to a killable area, but I was too inexperienced. I made the fatal mistake of sitting down wrong, and was already beat.
It didn't work out, but I learned a ton about turkey behavior that day.   

[GobbleNut]

I have hunted spring gobblers for fifty years, including this one.  Although, compared to some on these forums, I have not hunted as many places as others, I will state that I have hunted all of the five subspecies of wild turkey in North America, and under varying conditions and hunting pressure. 

I have been fortunate enough to hunt turkeys in places where they had never been hunted before,...at least by "modern" spring gobbler hunters using todays tactics.  I have also hunted many public, wide-open grounds where the turkey hunting pressure was "maxed out", so to speak, on the birds there.  And I have hunted many places that were somewhere between the two extremes.

I can state, without hesitation, that there is a direct correlation between how much hunting pressure is put on an area by hunters using conventionally-accepted spring tactics,...calling in particular,...and how difficult they can become to kill.  I have seen it occur time after time after time.  I have discussed this phenomenon with many others,...and almost without exception, they will agree.  Those exceptions also seem to still think the earth is flat.

Sure, any turkey can be killed,...under the right circumstances and conditions,...by anybody at any time.  I could write a book full of accounts of hunters of all skill levels finding themselves in those circumstances and killing gobblers that everybody had decided were unkillable.  With very few exceptions, those success stories were the result of the hunter being in the right place at the right time.  I have stumbled into those myself over the years.

I can also tell you many, many more stories of some pretty darn good turkey hunters,...some of them champion-level callers and hunters,... that have been humiliated by gobblers they were convinced they could kill. 

So what is my point here?  The point is that there are lots of new turkey hunters that frequent this forum and others that do not understand that they can spend an entire season hunting a gobbler and calling to it, thinking it will somehow decide, out of the blue, to come pay them a visit just because it is a new day.  There are plenty of gobblers out in them thar woods that are never going to come to see you when you call to them.  ...And there are almost always more of those kinds of gobblers in places that get hunted hardest than there are in the ones that don't.

[zelmo1]

  I believe that turkeys have a short memory as well. But they do change their habits if their routine gets spooked. Biggest bird I have ever seen vanished the day after opening day after one of his offspring got to close to the hedgerow where a young hunter was hiding. I had dozens of hours scouting on him and hundreds of trail cam pics. I could tell you within 100 yards where he was from fly down to noon on any given day and he was never seen again in that piece of woods. The farmer never heard another shot that day, maybe he moved on, maybe he met his end prematurely. Who knows. Only my 2 cents. Good luck everyone.

[guesswho]

I can,...however, give a pretty accurate explanation as to why some here choose to do that.  Like I said, if I do so, it will ruffle some feathers,...and likely start another war here that is not needed,...and is hopeless.

Go ahead, ruffle some feathers and start a war

[redleg06]

Good topic. 

I think turkey can learn BUT I'm not sure it's to the extent that most believe.  For example,  say you go out and call to a turkey one day before the season, he comes in and doesn't find a hen so he eventually leaves because he doesn't find a hen. Not spooked, just leaves.  Some guys would tell you that you just "educated him".  I don't buy that this will make him any less killable because I don't think turkey have the ability to reason and logic.  I think turkey are turkey and are naturally wary....some more so than others. Which brings me to my thought on "pressure" being real vs. perceived. 

I think toward the end of the season, guys go out to a particular farm and they hear fewer turkey than they did at the beginning of the season.  If the place has been hunted fairly hard then it stands to reason that there are probably quite a few less turkey in the woods and the more aggressive birds (the ones that readily come in to calling) end up getting themselves culled out.  Just like people, or dogs, or even domestic chickens,  turkey all have different personality characteristics.... some are more vocal. Some are more aggressive/less wary, some are more quiet and less likely to socialize, etc. etc.    In the turkey woods,  a guy sees a gobbler who wont come in to his calls, and that turkey gets labeled as "educated", "call shy", "an old bird", when in reality it could just be that the turkey isn't interested in mating that particular day but maybe something else would have worked to get him in. 

Early season can be easier on hard hunted places because, in a lot of cases, there are still more eager toms in the woods. Later in the season, a lot of the dumb/aggressive ones are in someone's freezer and what your left with are the ones that are naturally more wary.  Basically I don't think wary turkey are wary as much because of "education" from hunters, as much as I think that a lot of them are just the ones that were born more submissive/less vocal/less aggressive during breeding season.  There are probably exceptions (like turkey that have been shot at and wounded) but I think they are the exception to the rule. 

I'll give you two examples -  One was last season in Bama on a heavily hunted lease I'm on-
I got a bird in CLOSE (like 3yds close) in a thicket, and couldn't get him out of strut, so I took the shot and absolutely blew it and missed. I knocked the tips off of a pair of his feathers in his fan when I shot right over his head.  2 days later, I called him in again, about 250yds from where I'd missed him the first time but I didn't miss on the second go round.   Now, 2 days before, I'd come within inches of ending his life and he took off flying to what looked like the next county. If that's not an experience you'd think would stick with a turkey, I don't know what is... 


I'll give you another example of what most would consider an "educated" turkey -  a few seasons ago, I was hunting a bird that most would assume was "an old bird" who knew the game and wasn't going to come in. He was always wary, never responded to calling and rarely gobbled. I'd tried calling to him multiple times with hen calls and no luck. Couldnt really even get him to check up and give me a look. Anyway, one morning I had him roosted on the edge of a big field and went to set up on him. No decoys and I wasnt all that well hidden, relative to what I'd normally like to be, due to lack of good places to set up. Anyway I decided to see if some gobbler talk would work because nothing else had.  Waited till he flew down, gave him a few gobbler yelps and he headed my way and I ended up killing him.  He was a 2 year old...   Moral to the story is that he wasn't some wise old bird with years of experience skirting hunters. He was just a turkey doing what some turkey do and, on that particular day, he wanted to hang out with the guys instead of being with hens.  This is just one example but I think this kind of thing happens all the time and since we don't always understand it, some guys just assume the turkey is "educated". 

[WildTigerTrout]

Hunt Pennsylvania public land and you will discover that hunting pressure is NO myth!

[GobbleNut]

 

I can,...however, give a pretty accurate explanation as to why some here choose to do that.  Like I said, if I do so, it will ruffle some feathers,...and likely start another war here that is not needed,...and is hopeless.

Go ahead, ruffle some feathers and start a war

  I had a feeling that a certain someone would be chiming in on this eventually....

[guesswho]

Surely you weren't thinking of me!

[shaman]

Gobblenut, I would be the first to admit:

1) For the past 13 seasons, I have been a complete shut-in on my own property
2) My turkeys now go largely unhunted except for the paltry efforts of myself, my one buddy and my two sons.

. . . so I am by no means an expert on the subject of supposedly pressured gobblers on public land.  However, I often times see exactly the same recalcitrance as what other say they see on public land.  I was certain for years it was a sign they were being hunted by others, and I redoubled my efforts to sweep my plot clean of the certain poachers.  In the end, I realized I was chasing phantoms.  I did have a few incursions over the years, but my turkeys are largely mine to hunt. 

I would agree that calling to the same gobbler, day in and day out is folly.  I also stopped devoting my attention to just one gob. That's the surest way to not fill a tag.   I learned that long ago.   On the other hand, there are ways beyond just calling that can change the outcome.  As I said, I don't ambush, but I often leave recalcitrant gobblers to their hens at flydown and try to go to the places they'll be later in the morning.  I see my turkeys as acting a lot like bass.  You hunt one structure at sunrise and then try another as the sun gets higher.  Eventually I connect.  If I see a gobbler strutting in a pasture two days running, you can bet I'll be there on the third and well ahead of him too.

So no, I would not conclude from what I've said that you should bang away at a gobbler hoping he'll change his mind one day.  However,  I would not rule out any place with turkeys gobbling on the roost, simply because it has been hunted. Nor would I automatically assume that silence in a place known to be a regular turkey haunt is a sure sign of over hunting.

[mudhen]

Sounds like an isolated property, with a very small sampling....

Can't say I agree with any of the premises, but certainly don't hunt any properties like the one mentioned....

Lots of data proving pressure....


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[nativeks]

I've hunted the same public since 1995. The pressure was almost non existent on Kansas turkeys back in those days. I could drive a 6 mile loop and see 200ish birds. Fast forward to today. Last year was by all accounts the worst year for pressure on turkeys I have ever seen here. The folks employed at this particular spot will attest to that. What is missing? The turkeys. Sure we have had some pretty crappy hatches for many years now. However you just don't see birds on the public like you used too. You see them on private surrounding it, but after a couple weeks they all get run off of the public.

Turkeys follow a pattern. I haven't set foot on the public for turkey hunting since before may of last year. I can walk you in there right now and tell you exactly which trees they will roost in. I saw a bird strutting in a field last year 3 days straight. Day 4 I got off work early and I was waiting for them. They started gobbling 30 minutes before I saw them, but I ultimately ended up missing. Same bird got into a pattern again and I got him 3 days later. Watch them, figure out what they do, and the rest is usually pretty easy.

[Marc]

I hunt a few species of birds, and the one single thing that I have found they all have in common, is that they react negatively to hunting pressure...

Ducks, quail, turkey, pheasant...  All of them become more difficult to kill after having been exposed to hunting pressure.

There are certainly days, or periods when turkeys are more vulnerable to hunting...  I also know there are guys that can consistently get birds into shooting range better than most.

I believe that throughout the season, that there are times of the day that can be more productive, and that these time can vary greatly.

I also believe that in my area, if there is a receptive hen, that toms will breed...  Which to me means, that somewhere, someone can probably trick that bird...  Probably not me though.