If you're properly connected, turkey scouting requires very little effort. Consider, for instance, the case of yours truly last spring.

One April morning the telephone rang around 9:00 a.m. It was my mother, saying "Philip, there's a huge turkey in my front yard, standing by my yucca plant. I can see his beard dragging on the ground."

"Oh?," I said, wondering what good deed I'd done in a past life to deserve this call, "Did you see where he came out of the woods?"

"Over by the barn, across the road. I've seen him there before, in the mornings."

I called her tenant, an early riser who lived in another house on the home place. He said, yes, he'd seen the turkey by the barn too, and had been hearing him gobble every morning from the oaks on the bluff overlooking the creek.

Coffee cup in hand, I sat at the kitchen table and sketched a quick map of the creek bottom, the bluff, and the barnyard from memory. Having bowhunted the creek bottom for several years, I had more than a passing acquaintance with the topography. In fact I was fairly certain, sight unseen, which tree the bird roosted in, what path he took down the creek after fly down, and where he emerged into the fallow field next to the old pole barn around 9:00 a.m.

One late afternoon scouting trip, really just a 15-minute stroll in the woods, confirmed my suspicions. There were droppings piled under the roost tree, as well as feathers and tracks along the tom's route. I glanced around quickly and made a mental note of a couple nice trees to set up against. Mission accomplished, I withdrew from the woods and waited for the trees to leaf out a little more to conceal my predawn approach.

I could tell you how, on the chosen morning, the tom gobbled back stridently to my owl hoots, and how I slipped quietly along the bottom and set up unnoticed against the wide trunk of a soft maple 100 yards from his roost. I could relate, too, how the tom came in eagerly to my calls, strutting and gobbling, dropping with barely a flinch when I hit him with an ounce and a half of 5s at 30 yards.

An embellished, blow-by-blow retelling, however, might give you the false impression that I think I'm an expert turkey hunter, which I most assuredly am not. In fact, I'm just barely good enough not to blow a sure thing, and a bird as well scouted as that 23-pound Iowa gobbler is as close to a sure thing as you'll ever see in turkey hunting.

Thorough turkey scouting is the great equalizer among callers--just about anyone can call in a turkey provided he's sitting where the turkey wants to go. Learning where the turkey roosts and where he goes and planning a course to intercept him requires, for most of us (and for me, now, too, since the family farm recently changed hands) more effort than just sitting around the kitchen, staring at the wall phone.

Early Scouting

Proper scouting takes time; your efforts should begin several months before opening day and can continue right through until the end of hunting season.

First, a cautionary tale: one fall a friend whiled away the hours while deer hunting by counting the flocks of turkeys that streamed past his treestand on a regular basis and plotting the demise via broadhead of one of them in the spring. In April he set up a blind at the foot of that same tree, hunted every weekend of the season, and saw exactly one hen.

Moral: you won't always find turkeys in the same place in the spring that you saw them in the fall. Eastern turkeys may move up to a mile from fall to spring ranges, while western birds may change elevation by several thousand feet and up to 25 miles. To some extent, your initial selection of a hunting area depends on word of mouth, talking to biologists, farmers, rural postal carriers, game wardens and your own experience rather than the sight of a mob turkeys milling around under your ladder stand. That said, fall deer and small-game seasons are excellent time to begin scouting. During those early trips to your hunting area you should focus on learning the lay of the land rather than locating turkeys.

Here a topographic map is your biggest aid. Choose a United States Geologic Service quadrant map of your hunting area (to order write to USGS Map Sales, Denver Federal Center, Denver CO 80225) Carry a notebook into the woods with you, and sketch anything worth sketching--sloughs, fences, clearcuts, brush piles, any features that might attract a turkey or prevent one from coming to your call. When you get home, transfer your sketches to the map.

Between trips, study the map and get a feeling for how the features you've been noting connect to one another. Time spent now, learning where the obstacles lie will save you frustration during the season. The better you know your hunting area, the less likely you are to set up in a place where a turkey won't come. To pick just one example at random, better knowledge of my hunting area while guiding a friend on one recent occasion would have saved me the embarrassment of setting up and trying to call in a bird who was, unbeknownst to me, on the far side of a busy golf course.

Keep adding to your map, and slowly you'll build up a picture of the area both on paper and in your mind. Learn the area well enough so you can find your way around it in the dark, as well. Make a note of the sagging old barbwire fence that can rip your hunting pants open in the dark, the deep spots in the creek you'll have to wade before dawn, and whatever else you might trip over or fall into. When a distant bird gobbles on the roost during the season and you want to double-time into position, you'll be glad you took the time to learn where everything is.

Scouting for Sign

In February or March turkeys undergo a social reorganization; the big flocks begin breaking up and toms will start to stake out their territories and gobble to let others know about it. Now is the time to start listening and looking for sign. Turkeys are too big not to leave a good deal of sign in their wakes. When scratching through the leaves for food, turkeys leave a V shape of exposed dirt, with the top of the V pointing in the direction of travel. Anywhere you see bare ground, look for disturbances in the dust and feathers shed by dusting birds.

Tracks, droppings, feathers all point toward the presence of turkeys. Gobblers leave J-shaped droppings; hens more neatly piled scat. Drag marks, made by long primary feathers while the bird is puffed and strutting, often look like three or four parallel lines in the dirt, just as you might make by running your fingers across the ground. If you find signs a bird has been displaying, you may have found a strut zone where the bird comes regularly to advertise for hens. Mark it on your map and plan to hunt it when the season opens.

If you find droppings piled beneath branches, and perhaps the odd feather shed during fly down, you have a roost tree. Turkeys do not always roost in exactly the same tree every night, (although some will) but they usually do bed in the same vicinity. Turkeys are said to prefer large, mature roost trees with spreading limbs, and sometimes they do, but gobblers will roost in all kinds of trees.

Once I came upon a two-year-old gobbler sound asleep half an hour after sunrise in the top of a 10-foot tree you could almost have called a sapling. For his own good I gave the trunk a shake and shouted, "Hey, wake up! It's turkey season!" He was too startled even to thank me for saving his life, but turkeys, generally, are ingrates anyway. Is there a point to this story? Yes: don't focus your search for roosting sign only beneath trees that look like classic turkey roosts.

Again, keep your pencil and map handy and keep marking points of interest. Eventually, you'll have marked areas where birds roost, strut, feed, dust, and go for water. Early in the morning, especially, listen for birds and try to get a feel for where the toms go when they fly off the roost. If the bird gobbles, you can trail along behind him and get an idea of where he goes. Even if he doesn't, you'll have a good picture of where he goes first thing in the morning, which will set you up for the classic dawn turkey hunt. Obviously, the more birds you can pattern this way, the better.

Roosting a Tom

While guiding the same friend who accompanied me on the turkey/golf course fiasco, I led him into the darkened timber on a stormy, pitch black morning, uncannily ordering him to set up at the base of a tree containing (unbeknownst to us) four roosted toms, who took one look at us and flew away as soon as visibility permitted. Knowing precisely where a bird is roosted lets you set up on him early in the morning without busting him off the roost.

For the uninitiated, roosting means going out at dark and listening for a bird to fly up into the branches of a tree for the night. You'll either hear gobbling just before roosting or on the roost, hens cackling as they fly up, or merely the woofing of extra-large wings carrying the birds up to roost. A gobble, a hoot, a caw, or a coyote howl will help provoke a gobble from a tom on the roost.

Merely roosting a bird, however, is not a guarantee that you'll kill it. Not long ago, I was camping out with my cousin in northeast Iowa, turkey hunting. We'd just finished cleaning the dinner dishes when a farm family in a Buick pulled up and the driver stuck his head out the window and asked, "You fellas turkey hunters?"

Yes, we allowed, we were. "Well follow us, we'll show you some turkeys. We've been watching 'em for half an hour." We followed the car to a creek bottom where a tom strutted for a harem of seven or eight hens a 150 yards away. We watched for a while, commenting on the size and beauty of the tom and of turkeys in general and the comeback of wild turkeys in Iowa. Then the man decided rather abruptly (I thought) that nature appreciation time was over. "Well, get your gun," he said expectantly.

"Oh no," I said, "I'll come back and get him in the morning."

"But he won't be there!" the man said, growing impatient. He really wanted to see this turkey killed.

"Just watch," I said in a condescending tone, "It's almost dark. He'll fly up to the roost soon. I'll see where he goes, then come back in the morning and be waiting for him to fly down and call him in. It'll be easy."

Next morning I snuck into the woods, set up quietly 75 yards from the roost, and waited for daylight. I clucked softly, then waited for the turkey to fly down into my lap. He did no such thing, heading off instead in the opposite direction toward his regular rendezvous with his hens, which just goes to show.

Roosting a turkey is not a substitute for scouting, but it fills in the last piece of the puzzle. If you know your territory well, and know the habits of a certain tom, then seeing exactly where he roosts in the evening will help you get in undetected in the morning and tip the odds steeply in favor of you bringing home the bird. Granted, it's always good to know where there's a turkey, but given my choice I'd rather know where a bird was headed in the morning than know exactly which branch of which tree he was sleeping in.

Ideally, you should know both, and waiting by the phone just doesn't work that often. Get out and put some miles on your boots looking for turkeys. But leave the answering machine on, just in case.

Sidebar: Locator Calls

Making a turkey gobble is one of the spring's biggest thrills and also an excellent way, obviously, to learn where he is. Locator calls will not only help you pinpoint a bird on the roost but can help you find one during the day as you're trying to pattern his movements.

Turkeys will gobble to all sorts of sudden noises, including shotgun blasts and car horns, but hooting like a barred owl remains the best-known, most popular way to make a bird sound off at dawn and dusk. There are a number of good owl hooters on the market, but every hunter owes it to himself to at least try to learn to "owl" without a call. Even since a family of barred owls moved into an evergreen across the street, my own hooting has improved a great deal. I still can't fool the real owls but I have made turkeys gobble.

Pileated woodpecker calls and coyote hoots are also good dawn and dusk calls. Crow and hawk calls work well during daylight hours. Turkeys, of course, gobble back to other turkeys, but using cuts or yelps before the season is a controversial practice; some hunters do it, while many believe it merely educates the birds before the season.

Gobbling, too, will make birds answer, but for safety's sake that is a call best reserved for persuasion or after shooting hours have ended for the day.