Roosting birds

[MCturkey]

How to roost in the evening? How many of you think roosting turkeys in the evening increases your success? I have been going out and listening in the morning the last several weekends and birds have been in a different spot each time. I would like to sneak in the evening before opening morning to try to pin point them. Doesn't seem much afternoon gobbling going on.

[fallhnt]

You rule something in or out.

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[GobbleNut]

You have to know your birds to know if evening roosting,...that is, listening for gobbling,...is effective or not.  There are places/regions/subspecies that are perfectly willing to gobble in the evening when they go to roost,...and there are places where they are not.  You have to take the time to find out if you are hunting birds that will or won't. 

Of course, some of this is predicated on the size of the property or area you are hunting, and whether you are searching for gobblers or just trying to confirm specific locations of birds on properties you are already familiar with.

I generally hunt large, public areas where the birds are often scattered pretty widely.  I also do enough travelling to places I am not familiar with,...and am hunting for a short enough period of time,...that it is imperative to find gobblers quickly. 

One of the very first things I will do is try to determine if the birds in the area I am hunting are prone to gobbling in the evening.  I have some very specific methods of doing that. 

Now, generally speaking, Merriams, Rios, and Goulds are all evening gobblers,...that is, you can get them to gobble on the roost pretty regularly.  Easterns, on the other hand, are "hit or miss" depending on where you are hunting them.  Same for Osceolas, I believe (just have not hunted them enough to make a definitive statement about them).

Again, we are talking in "generalities" here.  There are exceptions.  You can find out if your birds are evening gobblers or not,....you just have to take the time to do it.  If it turns out they are, you have just significantly increased your odds of success,...all other things being equal.

[Bowguy]

If you can roost one your odds go way up if you set up correctly

[silvestris]

You owl OR cackle one time at the right time and that time comes only with experience.  If he answers, you have gained some information.  If he doesn't gobble, you are merely back to square one for the morning.

[tlh2865]

Where I hunt it is very useful for determining my morning set, since morning gobbling does not start usually until it is very light and does not last long. I don't see my turkeys gobble on the roost in the evening very much either. I am either looking for birds in individual trees on or near field edges or to catch a glimpse of one on the ground in late afternoon and determine his likely roost from there.

[LaLongbeard]

Well if you know were one is it gives you a definite starting point and you can also look at a topo map and have some idea we're he may be headed after fly down. I learned to hunt Turkeys on public land in La/Mississippi and Gobbling on the roost is rare, so rare as to not be worth the trouble imo.
    Some Eastern in some states  do gobble at roost time and even before good light, it definitely helps. Roost Gobbling and just more frequent Gobbling in general is what makes the Merriams and Rios so much easier to kill imo.

[Tomfoolery]

Where I hunt in LA I've only heard turkeys gobble in the evening on 3 or 4 occasions. And I've gone to places that I didnt hear anything, show up the next morning and hear 4 or 5 different birds gobbling. It's so rare that I don't really make it a point to go listen. If I know theres a gobbler around I'll hunt his roost area until dark, but I don't just go out to listen in the blind.

[Mossberg90MN]

I'm more of a, get there a little early, hit an owl call and then get set up based off of that.

I have roosted birds before to have them simply veer off with hens, or in another direction. Or stay and gobble in the tree until a real hen actually shows up.

A lot of guy like roosting them, if I didn't have such a long drive to my spots I would most definitely try to roost a bird. But I got 2 hours one way.

How I roost.

Sounds like you have an idea of an area the birds are in.

Get there about 1 hour before sunset and just sit and listen. Sometimes they gobble on there way back to the roost. At about sunset you can try and blow an owl call or coyote call. If nothing wait about 5-10 min and then try again. I would continue until you've got a response and a pretty darn good idea of where he's at. Then, make a game plan for the AM.

Also true that some birds don't really have an evening gobble. 1 area I hunt it's hard to get an evening response. Even if they hammer on the roost in the AM.

Then I've hunted  other areas where I darn near got an evening gobble like clock work.


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[Marc]

Get there about 1 hour before sunset and just sit and listen. Sometimes they gobble on there way back to the roost. At about sunset you can try and blow an owl call or coyote call. If nothing wait about 5-10 min and then try again. I would continue until you've got a response and a pretty darn good idea of where he's at. Then, make a game plan for the AM.

Honest question here...  If they are not answering a coyote, crow, owl, etc...  Why not hen call at a bird on the roost?  They are not likely to fly off the roost and come in...

I have had very poor luck shock gobbling birds...  Probably due to too much extraneous noise...  Coyotes and peacocks seem to produce some shock gobbles.  If I could purchase a good shock-gobble call in my area, it would be a peacock call.

But, if I do not hear birds sounding of, and shock-calls do not work, why not sound off a hen call?  What is the down-side of a hen call to roost birds?

If I am trying to find birds with sparse turkey populations in large sections of land, I want to find birds...  Pulling out a box call is the most efficient means of doing this (in my opinion).

I do not doubt there is a down-side (cause it seems so heavily frowned upon), but I do not see or understand that down-side???

[GobbleNut]

Honest question here...  If they are not answering a coyote, crow, owl, etc...  Why not hen call at a bird on the roost?
But, if I do not hear birds sounding of, and shock-calls do not work, why not sound off a hen call?  What is the down-side of a hen call to roost birds?

For me, there are (at least) two different "forms" of roosting gobblers in the evening.  The first is simply to locate gobbler(s) to hunt the next morning.  In that instance, I am using what I consider to be the most effective tool I have to get them to "reflex" (shock) gobble and that most often does not involve sounding like a hen turkey.

In those instances, there is no intent to do anything but determine how many gobblers there are and where they are located.  My decision on which gobbler to hunt in those cases is strictly based on my intuition as to which one is most likely in a spot that appears to have potential for a good set-up,...and more importantly, which one is the least likely to have been pressured by other hunters.

The other "form" of evening roosting (for me) is that of having a specific gobbler (roost site) located that I have already made the decision to hunt the next morning.  In that instance, I will indeed use turkey calling to "prep" a gobbler for the morning hunt, the intent is to create the "illusion" that a hen has roosted nearby.  I want him to go to bed thinking that hen will be there in the morning waiting for him.  He may or may not gobble at that hen calling, but I have set the stage for the next morning's hunt,...at which time the rest of the illusion will be presented to him. 

In addition, if he gobbles at turkey calls (unless it is another gobble), it will be a "response" (voluntary) gobble, not a "reflex" (involuntary/shock) gobble. Those are not the same thing,...and are caused by entirely different stimuli within a gobbler's brain. 

[Mossberg90MN]

Honest question here...  If they are not answering a coyote, crow, owl, etc...  Why not hen call at a bird on the roost?
But, if I do not hear birds sounding of, and shock-calls do not work, why not sound off a hen call?  What is the down-side of a hen call to roost birds?

For me, there are (at least) two different "forms" of roosting gobblers in the evening.  The first is simply to locate gobbler(s) to hunt the next morning.  In that instance, I am using what I consider to be the most effective tool I have to get them to "reflex" (shock) gobble and that most often does not involve sounding like a hen turkey.

In those instances, there is no intent to do anything but determine how many gobblers there are and where they are located.  My decision on which gobbler to hunt in those cases is strictly based on my intuition as to which one is most likely in a spot that appears to have potential for a good set-up,...and more importantly, which one is the least likely to have been pressured by other hunters.

The other "form" of evening roosting (for me) is that of having a specific gobbler (roost site) located that I have already made the decision to hunt the next morning.  In that instance, I will indeed use turkey calling to "prep" a gobbler for the morning hunt, the intent is to create the "illusion" that a hen has roosted nearby.  I want him to go to bed thinking that hen will be there in the morning waiting for him.  He may or may not gobble at that hen calling, but I have set the stage for the next morning's hunt,...at which time the rest of the illusion will be presented to him. 

In addition, if he gobbles at turkey calls (unless it is another gobble), it will be a "response" (voluntary) gobble, not a "reflex" (involuntary/shock) gobble. Those are not the same thing,...and are caused by entirely different stimuli within a gobbler's brain.

That's a good point about prepping. Gonna give that a try.


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[Mossberg90MN]

Get there about 1 hour before sunset and just sit and listen. Sometimes they gobble on there way back to the roost. At about sunset you can try and blow an owl call or coyote call. If nothing wait about 5-10 min and then try again. I would continue until you've got a response and a pretty darn good idea of where he's at. Then, make a game plan for the AM.

Honest question here...  If they are not answering a coyote, crow, owl, etc...  Why not hen call at a bird on the roost?  They are not likely to fly off the roost and come in...

I have had very poor luck shock gobbling birds...  Probably due to too much extraneous noise...  Coyotes and peacocks seem to produce some shock gobbles.  If I could purchase a good shock-gobble call in my area, it would be a peacock call.

But, if I do not hear birds sounding of, and shock-calls do not work, why not sound off a hen call?  What is the down-side of a hen call to roost birds?

If I am trying to find birds with sparse turkey populations in large sections of land, I want to find birds...  Pulling out a box call is the most efficient means of doing this (in my opinion).

I do not doubt there is a down-side (cause it seems so heavily frowned upon), but I do not see or understand that down-side???

I've heard some people use a fly up cackle, but that would be a last ditch effort for me. Most of the time if they don't gobble to my owl call, and don't hit the coyote call, then they're not gonna gobble that night.

Like gobblenut said, I think they may sometimes just take a mental note of calling location.

I roosted a bird last year and I was trying to really pin point his location. He shock gobbled for me a couple times and then he wouldn't respond to my locators. I tried a fly up cackle as a last ditch effort but he didn't make a sound.


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[Marc]

Great replies, and food for thought....

But, is there a down side to simply hen calling (as opposed to shock calling) toms on the roost?

[bonasa]

I have a 92% chance of success when I roost the bird the day before. My go-to shock gobbler is a cackle or an abruptly stopped cutting sequence.