which is more important ? calling ability or turkey knowledge

[Aurora Wild]

Which is more important,  calling or knowledge?  The answer is yes.

[yelpaholic]

knowledge, wisdom,

[eddie234]

Woodmanship


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[randy6471]

  Even on unfamiliar ground, I'll take knowledge/experience along with average calling over competition calling skills and little experience.

  There are many little things that an experienced turkey hunters does that will improve their odds, without ever running a call. Without that experience you just don't know.

  Like the saying goes....you don't know, what you don't know. Lol.

[MK M GOBL]

They are somewhat hand in hand... I say Woodsmanship, but to me that includes calling skills.

Put time in learning/studying turkey behavior, habitat use, dominance and more. Then hone your calling skills, put the time into learning the language and sound good.

Put these skills together and you are going to be deadly!!


MK M GOBL

[BTH]

Woodsmanship (knowledge). Subtle clucks, purrs and soft yelps have helped me kill more turkeys than I care to imagine. That and being hidden in thick cover on the edge of open woods as well as  having a good set of eyes and paying attention to horizontal movement in the woods.
I do love to cut Yelp and get loud......there is a time and place for that though.
Imo there is no substitute to knowing your land and habitat where you are hunting.  As well as the terrain between him and you and know how to maneuver on him jic. Knowledge is confidence in the turkey woods for me.

[Harty]

Both are important ,but I lean towards woodsmanship/ knowledge. I ve walked into woodlots with friends early in the season with them taking the lead and by the time they sit down I'm pretty sure there aren't any birds around to be called in. Bottom line is be humble and work towards getting better in all phases. I love the spring season because of the ability to strike up a conversation with a longbeard,but when that happens I like to think I've done a few things that have allowed that to happen

[Divenut2]

Knowledge and experience are key in my opinion. Knowing where to call and set-up has to happen first.

[Spitten and drummen]

Knowledge for me but great calling , knowing when to and when not to is important also. However , i think having a good population of birds is the key to gaining the knowledge and learning the talk.

[fallhnt]

I'd say calling but I like Fall hunting over Spring. I took my best Fall longbeard with a bow this year and my first with a gun. These hunts took place in two area's I never scouted before the season on public ground. The gun hunt was a morning  hunt,with plenty of gobbling, fighting, calling. I called in a longbeard off a fight,looking for his own fight,no decoys involved. The bow hunt was a early afternoon hunt. I don't believe the longbeard and the "super jake" would have just wandered by without calling during the afternoon bow hunt. Decoys,blind and calling all involved.Fall calling also sets the tone for my Spring hunting. I like to call and I believe it is the biggest factor in my success.

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[beakbuster10]

You can't have calling ability if you don't already have a strong knowledge of the habits of wild turkeys. Someone can make turkey noises, but that certainly doesn't mean you have calling ability. Knowing what to say and how to say it is calling ability.


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[appalachianstruttstopper]

Both. They go hand in hand. Knowledge comes with experience and experience comes from leg work and learning from the amount of time you're in the woods with birds. There is 11 months a year that most turkey hunters have that are not in the woods. In 11 months of practice of cadence, tone, volume, and various types of turkey language a person can really improve their calling abilities between one season and the next. Then comes the knowing when and where and how much to apply through experience. IMO a person who don't have good calling ability shouldn't call much. And those ppl usually don't have much confidence in their calling. What I'm saying is you give an excellent caller that knows how to talk turkey and put him in the woods where he has never been with birds and if he has enough woodsmanship knowledge to not bump birds, he'll probably have a tom in shotgun range within 2 days. Give that same scenario to some that doesn't call well and has no confidence in their calling ability, and it might be a few weeks if not the next year before one comes in shotgun range. Or they might kill one the first day after setting for 5 minutes with one bad yelp from "luck". But it won't happen every day lol.

[trkehunr93]

I think they go hand in hand.  Practice calling as much as possible and do it outside, a yelp in your living room sounds alot different than in the woods IMO.  Even if you don't fall hunt for turkeys pay attention to them in the treestand and ground blind and listen to their calling and cadence, you realize that the turkeys in the woods sound alot different than the folks in the calling competition or the TV show.  Scout, scout, scout.  Thats the only way your going to learn about where you hunt and you'll pick up bits of knowledge about the turkeys in your area along the way.

[Takeaim1st]

      Drawing from my experience , of which spans a few seasons. Knowledge is key to all of the positives connected to hunting or just observing the Wild Turkey. There are volumes of ( How to ) information and such a variety of tools, many of which are ( user friendly ) to aid an individual in pursuit of a close encounter with such a grand creature of nature, anyone that makes an earnest , serious and resolute effort can be successful. Understanding the reasons of why a wild turkey does or reacts to things it needs or encounters  in its daily life and ongoing survival is the key.

[g8rvet]

There are two extremes in the calling ability vs turkey knowledge debate.

The first is "If I can call flawlessly, I will call-in and kill more gobblers".  The other is "If I just get in the right spot in the woods at the right time, I will kill more turkeys".  If you had to choose one or the other extremes, then the second is the one to go with.  From my perspective, that extreme also takes away the real charm and attraction of turkey hunting

Neither extreme is correct.  Having the right combination of calling ability and "turkey knowledge" not only will get you the most gobblers, but it is a much more enjoyable way to hunt them in my personal opinion.  If you know how and what to say to a gobbler,...and do that in some semblance of the right place,....he will usually strike up a conversation with you and want to meet you face to face to chat.  That is the essence of turkey hunting.

Being able to go to the right spot in the turkey woods and kill a gobbler without having the ability to get him to let you know he is there and talk about "turkey bizness" just doesn't hold any appeal to me at all.  As a bunch of us have stated before, that element of inspiring a conversation with a gobbler is quite often the result of "experience" more-so than calling ability.

I like the way you think brother.   A guy I know considers himself a turkey killer.  And he gets his two every year, usually in the first two weekends and then he is done.  He hunts family land that is loaded with turkeys and he sits and waits for them to walk by.  He probably calls a bit and they probably sometimes answer.  Nothing wrong with that if that is what floats your boat, but he is missing a lot on what is fun with turkey hunting to me. My own brother wants to call them off the limb at flydown and if he can't do that he is pretty much done.  I have talked him into sticking it out and finding another bird or circling back to that bird later in the morning - and one of us has killed more than a few by doing this. But if I am not with him, he is done by 9:00am.  That is the way he likes to play the game.  If we are hunting together and he leaves early and I kill one, I always send him a pic with my foot on the neck of the bird and a single word - QUITTER.