"Turkey Reaping" Video

[drenalinld]

I don't believe turkeys get "decoy shy". I believe they get "turkey shy" because they have had their butt whipped and they think decoy is a turkey and another possible butt-whipping they shy away from.

[sixbird]

This whole thing sends shivers up my spine! Don't really have anything against it except for the fact that you're making yourself a target. Man, I do everything I can to NOT get shot and these guys are doing everything they can to invite getting a load of hevi in 'em!
There is a lot of study and evidence that people see what they want/expect to see. This stuff just begs exercising that flaw in human perception!
Knock yourselves out fellas but you wouldn't catch me dead (literally or figuratively) doing anything that, dare I say, stupid!

[maddog3355]

I've done it but I used what God put between my ears and shot him at 30yds.    But I think of this story every time I see one of these videos. A local guy here that is now deceased and didn't turkey hunt. About the time the New England single shot .223 got popular he decides to get one and the first day of turkey season he pulled into a gate that overlooked a bottom that he deer hunts at and there is a strutting gobbler and a bunch of hens out there. He says it is a long ways out there so he takes a high hold and shoots and he said he knocked some tail feathers out of him. He said as soon as he shot a guy got up and took off running and said he looked like he was within shotgun range of the turkeys!!!  He told that story to everyone that would listen how he could of shot the guy. That was before the tail fan craze but I think of that story every year, that old guy that couldn't see good could of gut shot somebody crawling around with a fan.

[Dtrkyman]

I was in on a fanned bird hunt 3 times in Nebraska this year, you still need to make a stalk, which takes some skill and luck to have a bird where the terrain allows an approach, we just used a fan, now I guess that big  umbrella thing they are selling can make it pretty easy.

Two of the three hunts were a success the 3rd the birds did not come to the fan at all, the first successful hunt was a bail out really, we were walking into a set up and saw some birds a couple hundred yards up, they did not spot us, we crawled up a ditch another 100 yards and came up with the fan behind a dead fall, 2 toms locked on us and my buddy killed one at 20 yards.

The second successful hunt I spotted a Tom way out in a pasture, after sneaking around and fanning him multiple times he finally offered a shot on the third set up, this took place over a couple hundred yards and much stalking/sneaking was involved, it was really a cool hunt and we would have likely killed the bird at that spot by just being in his travel route.

I much prefer to call birds in, however henned up birds in large fields this tactic is deadly and damn fun, I want to kill one with a bow next season using the tactic.

All these hunts were on large private land and I see no way that it was dangerous, if I thought it was I would not have been involved! 

It seems distance is a trigger, now what that distance is I am sure varies from bird to bird, but one of those birds just before being shot turned and walked back to his hens leading to all the sneaking and stalking.

To each his own and be safe however you decide to hunt!

[El Pavo Grande]

I laughed out loud when he called her a "turkey reaper" and not a turkey hunter, in the video.  I guess that's a new cool name to be associated with.   I am hearing the term more and more the last year or so. 

[greencop01]

    This is a train wreck waiting to happen. This is like yelling out shoot me !!!!!!!!!! Besides being being unsporting this is turkey killing not turkey hunting. Killers that use this method need to read "Old Pro Turkey Hunter" by Gene Nunnery or read "America, Wild Turkeys and Mongrel Dogs," you would be considered a mongrel dog by Ken Morgan, again read the book.This culture of ours is here for a reason and these old turkey men loved it and wrote about it. To take on his majesty the Wild Turkey with only a caller and some camo and a shotgun, from a set-up and then sitting there speaking with a Wild tom calling him all the way to the gun over the time span of an hour or hour and a half draining you of emotion and adrenelin, and then taking him at 15 yds well there ain't nothing like it. And like Tom Kelly says at the end of "Tenth Legion", "The last one that ever does come to me will call forth the same that the second one did. I will sit there waiting , gun up and heart thundering and say to myself what I said on every single occasion since the second one, 'I'm glad I lived to see it-one more time'." Forgive me for pontificating but this hunting of Mr. Tom is so much more than killing a turkey, it is part of my life that I hold dear and means so very much to me and I respect these early morning 'Gabriels'. Well sorry for getting carried away but try this ritual we pursue in the way of those before us who played the same ritual try it you'll like it! Norm

[GobbleNut]

Oh, what the heck.  We're in the middle of the summer doldrums right now, so perhaps this is a good time to explore the "turkey reaping" phenomenon in more detail.

First and foremost, I absolutely despise the term "turkey reaping".  Whoever came up with that term should be taken out and summarily shot.  It is a horrible term to be used to describe anything associated with hunting.  It implies an impersonal, lack-of-connection between hunter and prey that portrays an indifference on the part of the hunter to the fact that he is taking a life.  The term needs to go.

As far as the method is concerned, there are many variables to be considered as to how it is defined, and when and where it might be considered fair and ethical,... or not.  Having started spring gobbler hunting in the mid-1960's, I have seen the full evolution of the sport to a large degree.  We have gone from hunters using equipment and calls that could only be described as "rudimentary" in those early days to a boggling array of devices,...guns, calls, decoys, clothing, and technology,...that have completely changed the face of turkey hunting.

With those changes has also come a new perception of what turkey hunting is all about,...especially from the newer generation. Everything is further complicated by the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of more turkey hunters,...and millions more turkeys,...than we had fifty years ago.  Let's face it, turkeys are getting hammered every year in most places by those armies of turkey hunters.  ...And the turkeys that are out there, regardless of the denials of some folks that should know better, are getting smarter because of their interactions with that army of hunters.  By and large, the average turkey hunter, hunting the average, heavily-hunted land, has a lot harder time just using a turkey call to get a gobbler within range nowadays than we did just a few years ago.

Not everybody can just grab a call and go out and regularly call in a gobbler in the places they have to hunt.  And conversely, I would suspect there are also plenty of folks that believe they are really good turkey hunters that make that claim only because they have access to places that pretty much guarantee their success no matter what their skill level might be.  Because of all of that, I am reluctant to condemn a guy that turns to tactics that rely on visual aids rather than calling to help them succeed.  I don't know their situation, so who am I say whether they are right or wrong in using a certain (legal) tactic? 

Safety concerns are another matter.  Using any tactic, including turkey calling, that puts you in an unsafe position is unwise,....and frankly, idiotic.  However, with the use of a little bit of common sense and discretion, there is no real reason that holding something that looks like a turkey should result in being shot by another hunter.  Of course, it probably isn't much consolation to the guy who gets shot in knowing that the guy that shot him was too friggin' stupid to be able to tell the difference between a real, live turkey and a guy holding a turkey decoy or fan.

The bottom line is that however you want to hunt, do it safely.  If you want to go around waving a fan or carrying a gobbler decoy, just don't be an imbecile about it when you do.  You might eventually run into one those freakin' morons that can't tell a real turkey from a fake one with a hunter behind it.

[guesswho]

And the turkeys that are out there, regardless of the denials of some folks that should know better, are getting smarter because of their interactions with that army of hunters

Care to mention any names?   Name just one.    

[GobbleNut]

And the turkeys that are out there, regardless of the denials of some folks that should know better, are getting smarter because of their interactions with that army of hunters

Care to mention any names?   Name just one.

  I certainly wasn't thinking about YOU, Ronnie!  I am a bit surprised, however, to see that you made it that far into my rant.  ...Just goes to show that there are a few,...very few, I suspect,...that actually read my ramblings.  Thanks for having the patience!   

[guesswho]

I had to pace myself.  Read a paragraph, mow the yard, read a paragraph wash my truck etc. etc.    Took most of the day but I'm proud to say I read every bit of it.  Don't know what you said but I read it.

[silvestris]

I think the term is an apt description.

[THattaway]

Same guys should try this in another month or so.

[guesswho]

 

It's coming.   Just a matter of time   

[owlhoot]

Same guys should try this in another month or so.

Now that is decoying     Works well as cover scent too.  Hey where is the food plot and where did the wheels go on his bow

[greencop01]

   Just to clarify I hunt in Mass. on heavily hunted public land and the tom I got this year my friend and I were after for two years. It can be done but you got to be consistent and patient. Some of the birds I've taken over the years came in silent and from every direction except the direction I was watching! So I don't hunt private land as much as I would like but pay attention and do my homework. If I had to use a fan I think I would stop turkey hunting. But I know calling works,  that and good woodsmanship. I don't look down my nose at the hunters who use these tactics, I feel sorry for them at what they're missing from using their wits against the bird's. A bird whose brain is smaller than the meat in a walnut. It says in the Good Book that humbleness brings one closer to God and is a prerequisite to walk with God, I believe the book and Tom turkeys definitely makes me humble so they help me get closer to my Maker, 'nough said.