If turkeys didn’t gobble would you hunt them?

[Rzrbac]

Seems like I hear less and less each year but I still chase them. That moment when he's just out of range but rattles the ground with a gobble, that's what I'm actually hunting. Everything after that is anticlimactic.

[bigbird]

As long as they don't stop strutting too!

[Yoder409]

I reckon if they didn't gobble, I'd have never started.   Likewise, if they stopped tomorrow, I can't think of a compelling reason to continue.

[chatterbox]

No.  And I wish they would quit so I could stop
Hunting them

[chatterbox]

Doubtful.......
I live for the gobble!
The biggest bird I ever killed came in double and triple gobbling, and when he hammered down in the hollow before he came in the field, it was the most beautiful music I ever heard!

[Brizendine1234]

Love to here that gobble probably not

[turkaholic]

NOPE

[jryser]

Doubtful.......
I live for the gobble!
The biggest bird I ever killed came in double and triple gobbling, and when he hammered down in the hollow before he came in the field, it was the most beautiful music I ever heard!

Ahhhh you inspired my favorite memory...

I remember last day of season in KY a few moons ago...my buddy Brent had been trying to kill "The Brothers," a pair of birds that had eluded him all season. We heard two strong gobbles that last morning down the holler and the echoes after flydown were deafening as I hit the call. Well they got softer and softer as they drifted away...the only time I DO NOT like the sound of a gobble (just kidding, I just hate the heartbreak...).

It was last day with nothing to lose so I cracked that box call and cut like crazy...no gobbles.  I hit it again, more passionately and pleading...no gobbles.

I hit it one last time like the desperate hen-man I had become - and still no gobble.

Tick tock and after what seemed like hours, a final pleading call. The explosion of double and triple gobbling in the holler about made my heart stop.  In fact it did as my mouth dried and I started shaking. They'd done this before...

To be ready, however, Brent and I got set as the sound of those gobbles continued and suddenly broke into the meadow as the echos diminished to "that sound" when you know they are outta the woods...and still coming.

Two lightbulbs bobbed the last 100 yards as The Brothers ran over each other up the hill to kick decoy's tail, only to hear Brent whisper, "one...two..."

Baboom!!!!

Ten minutes later Brent was on the phone to his bride..."The Brothers are dead!"

To this day every gobble I hear takes me to every moment of that hunt.


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[GobbleNut]

Great story!  I imagine many of us have had that experience at one time or another.  Without those gobbles, I doubt the excitement,...or the outcome,...would be the same for most of us! 

[Bowguy]

For me the answer is absolutely NO. I'm sure I wouldn't. Even when I hear the oscellated do whatever noise they make cause it's not a gobble I seem to fast fwd or turn off whatever is making that horrendous weak sound. Can't even imagine a bird not roaring a gobble every so often. If I lived by the oscellated birds I'd do something else. If they made no noise I'd feel the same. A bird sneaking in silent is even no fun

[Vinci1964]

Wouldn't hunt them. Some thing about that gobbler coming through the Illinois woods.  I keep saying to myself 'where is he, where is he'.  Nothing quite like it.

[Tom Threetoes]

I don't fall hunt because they don't gobble.

[NCL]

I had not thought about it until reading the question. Since I have often referred to turkey hunting as a poor mans substitute for hunting bugling elk I think probably not. As stated so many time previously, the excitement of a gobbling turkey is electric

[Cottonmouth]

I would not. Something about that ground rattling gobble that keeps me coming back for more.

[WV Flopper]

No