The Keys to Successful Spring Turkey Hunting by Joseph Yensen Wherever you plan to hunt this spring, you have to get serious before the season starts if you're going to tag a bird. Opening Day is fast upon us in many southern states, while hunters in the far north may have to wait as late as mid-May to get started. With turkeys, there's plenty to be done in the preseason, and no matter whether your season opens tomorrow or a month from now, there's still time to better your odds for bagging a gobbler on Opening Day. Finding Turkeys If the season begins in a month: The best time to scout turkeys is almost immediately prior to the season. The birds you saw from your deer stand last fall may be miles away come spring. That's especially true of western turkeys that migrate many miles between low winter range and higher spring ranges, but eastern wild turkeys also move as fall flocks break up. Gobbling usually begins well before Opening Day, and that's when you should be out listening at dawn and dusk, especially on bluebird days. While turkeys don't always use the same tree every night, they'll often roost more or less in the same spot (Merriam's turkeys are an exception--they'll sometimes move to a new roost three or four miles away). As you learn the bird's movements, also pay special attention to the topography. Buy a topo map of your hunting area and mark the roosts and strutting areas. Look for obstacles that turkeys might not cross to come to a call--sloughs, fences, steep ravines--and make note of them on the map. If your season starts tomorrow: try to roost a tom tonight. Listen from a hilltop vantage point where sound will carry. Hoot, gobble, or howl like a coyote and listen for an answer after the birds fly up. If you're close, you might even hear the wing beats on a still evening; the flapping of turkey wings carries a surprising distance. Plan to come back in the morning and set up as close as possible to the roost--say, 150 or 200 yards if it's early in the season and the leaves aren't out yet. Try to guess which way he'll fly down at dawn. Most experts agree that you'll have better success calling to birds if you set up on or above the contour of the roost; turkeys are easier to call uphill than down. Calling If the season starts in a month: make it a goal to learn to use another type of caller this spring. For some reason, turkeys will answer one call on a given day and turn a deaf ear to another. While the mouth call is used almost universally in contests, you'll be surprised just how often the very best hunters use a friction call. Brad Harris of Lohman Manufacturing estimates he uses a box call 85 percent of the time. Nothing matches the box call for sounding like a turkey, or for reaching out a long way. "If you put 10 hunters in the woods with mouth calls and one real turkey, I can pick out the turkey every time," says Eddie Salter of Eddie Salter Game Calls, "but I can't tell the difference between a box call and a real turkey in the woods." The slate call is easy to use, and it makes terrific soft purrs and clucks. Newer glass and aluminum models, combined with carbon or composite strikers, are louder, higher-pitched, and more weatherproof than the traditional slate and wood-peg models; if you've never used a slate before, now's the time to start. Spend some time, too, learning your locator calls. Consider adding a new locator call to your collection and learn how to use it. Says Salter: "The main ingredient to turkey hunting success is turkeys. If you can't find a turkey, you can't be successful." If the season starts tomorrow: get your calls out and practice anyway; it's not too late to put yourself in a turkey frame of mind. Run through your repertoire. Listen to your tapes; watch your videos; pay special attention to how real turkeys sound, concentrating especially on the rhythm of their calls. Record your own calls on a tape recorder and play them back. Focus your last-ditch practice on the simple cluck and yelp; those two calls alone will handle nearly all spring hunting situations. Check over your calls now; better at home tonight than tomorrow morning in the woods before sunrise. Look at your mouth calls (which you should have been keeping in the freezer). Have the reeds stretched out? Do they still sound good? If not, throw them away and buy new ones. Rough up your slate call, and chalk your box call. If your old box call seems to have lost its sharp, ringing tone over the winter, it may need a tune-up. "Hunters return calls complaining they don't sound good, but they've almost always been over-chalked," says Quaker Boy's Chris Kirby. A plastic scouring pad (don't use sandpaper) can clean chalk off the rails and lid without changing their shape. Re-chalk the call with blue carpenter's chalk or box call chalk. Avoid blackboard chalk, which is sometimes mixed with wax that can silence the best box call. You can change the tone of a box by loosening or tightening the screw that holds the lid. Make sure you have a fresh rubber band to hold the lid on tight. Patterning Your Gun If the season starts in a month: spend some time testing your gun with some of the new chokes, loads, and sights on the market. Tubes like Briley's new straight-rifled turkey chokes, matched with premium ammo, shoot tremendously center-dense patterns out to 40 yards and beyond--exactly what you need to hit a turkey's head and neck. The vital area of a gobbler is, in the words of Briley's Chuck Webb "the size of a walnut balanced on a pencil." If you shoot at turkey head targets, determine your maximum range by shooting several patterns of your preferred load at increasing distances. When evaluating different loads, shoot several patterns with each shell, not just one; there can be a surprising degree of variation from shot to shot even from shells from the same box. During extensive tests of their new straight-rifled turkey choke, Webb reports that Briley Manufacturing determined you need a minimum of 16 hits above the feather line of the neck to reliably kill a gobbler. Besides testing your maximum range, try a few shots at 10, 15, and 20 yards to see just how tight a modern choke with premium loads patterns at short range. Turkey chokes and buffered turkey loads will put nearly 100 percent of the pellets into an eight-inch circle at 20 yards, leaving very little margin for shooter error. Make sure your gun shoots to point of aim. Not all turkey guns shoot where they're pointed. I used to turkey hunt with a gun that shot a full pattern high. If I remembered to aim at the toes of a gobbler I could hit it in the neck. If your gun has sights or a scope, check your zero. Sight in at short range--20 yards or less--it's easier to determine the exact center of the pattern at that range. To save money and your shoulder, try a few shots with light loads for your preliminary sight-in. Then, do your final sighting in with the loads you plan to hunt with. At the range, try to fix in your mind what 20, 30, and 40 yards looks like. Remind yourself to pick out landmarks--rocks, trees, stumps--as range markers at various distances around your tree. As you practice estimating range, you'll find that objects look farther away to you when you're sitting down (as you will be in the woods) than when you're standing up. Copyright (c) 1997 Philip Bourjaily. All rights reserved.