By my count, Toby Bridges and I sat within earshot of an even dozen gobblers at the edge of a burned field in northeast Missouri one clear, still morning last April. All around us, turkeys gobbled and clucked back and forth to one another, busily arranging rendezvous in the timber.
When Bridges chipped in with some eager yelps of his own, two toms, invisible no more than 50 yards away in the brush behind us, gobbled back excitedly in unison. They answered every one of his calls eagerly, but in between gobbles we could hear the scolding yelps of the old hen who wouldn't let either bird leave her side. Toby switched tactics and began trading insults with the hen, providing a whispered simultaneous translation from Turkey to English for my benefit. After an hour of heated bickering, the hen tired of the argument, turned snootily on her heel, and lead both toms away, their gobbles eventually fading out in the distance. Not long after, the woods grew quiet.
Left to my own devices, I would have done what so many frustrated hunters do: declared the morning an exciting failure and gone home to bed. To quit early, I was about to learn in the most dramatic fashion, is to miss some of the best hunting of the day.
Bridges, director of public relations for Modern Muzzleloading just across the state line in Centerville, Iowa, was far from discouraged. A genial man in his forties, with a close-trimmed, graying beard and a relaxed southern Illinois twang to his voice, Toby approaches turkey hunting with a casual self-assurance born of countless hours in the woods. "In 30 years of hunting, I've probably called in more birds after 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning than I have at dawn," he told me as we left the burned field. "If we can find the right bird, he'll come running. What we do now is shop around 'til we find a hot turkey."
The hills of Putnam County aren't particularly steep, but there certainly are a lot of them. By lunch time, Bridges had led me up one side and down the other of most of them twice, stopping every 150 yards or so to call.
"Don't worry," said Toby confidently over his shoulder as he strode up yet another hill "We'll pry a gobble out of a bird here yet."
Toiling up the slope behind him, I sneaked a look at my watch: 12:30, just half an hour before Missouri's 1:00 closing. I doubted we'd have time to set up on a bird and call it in even if Toby could make a bird gobble. Since my job on this hunt was to carry the gun and do what I was told, I kept my mouth shut and followed dutifully.
Bridges paused at the top of hill to yelp loudly on his box call and listen for an answer. "Lights are on, but nobody's home," he remarked, not for the first time on that long day. One hundred yards down the logging road, he purred and clucked softly on a mouth call. Immediately a loud gobble rattled back at us through the empty timber, its source no more than 70 yards away.
Three soft yelps and five minutes later (including time spent shaking hands and slapping backs) I was, to my complete astonishment, fixing an out-of-state tag to the leg of a 24-1/2 pound gobbler.
Welcome to midday turkey hunting.
Why Midday?
Gobbling, it's true, peaks during the first few hours of daylight. Early morning may be the easiest time to locate a bird and set up, but it may also prove the hardest time of day to call a turkey into range. Most gobblers meet hens first thing in the morning at a predetermined spot. After flying down from the roost toms may answer your calls excitedly while heading off in the opposite direction, urging you to follow along where their hens are waiting. Once a tom is actually with his harem, he sees no reason to go look for another hen at all. In the natural scheme of turkey behavior hens go to the toms, not vice versa. There is, too, the presence of other hunters in the woods early in the morning to complicate our plans.
Later in the morning, however, hens wander off to sit on the nest, and the gobblers find themselves at loose ends. Then, from about 10:00 in the morning on, if you can locate these lonely toms you stand a very good chance of calling them in. Moreover, you'll have very little competition from real hens or other hunters.
Don't give up at noon if your state allows afternoon hunting. Turkeys will gobble and come to a call all day long; shortly after our hunt, Bridges shot an Iowa gobbler at 4:00 p.m. using the same tactics he'd shown me.
Midday Tactics
Eager to learn more about midday methods, I consulted another Missouri hunter, Mark Drury of Columbia, founder of M.A.D. Calls. Like Bridges, Drury swears by "running and gunning" for turkeys. "I think it's just a case of covering the ground and trying to up the odds," he says, "You're trying to find the right tom in the right place. I think running and gunning works best later in the spring, when the leaves are coming out and some of the hens are done breeding, but I'd always rather keep moving and make something happen than sit and call blind."
How Drury hunts depends on the land available to him." If I've got a big national forest to hunt," he says, "I like to cover as much ground as possible. If I'm confined to a smaller area, I'll be more patient. There's a 200-acre farm I hunt near Warsaw, Missouri, where the fences have been bulldozed all along the perimeter. I'll walk the boundaries and stop and call for an hour in each of the four corners. That way, I'm not just hunting that farm but calling to birds on adjacent properties. That 200 acres can make a good morning's hunt."
When he's moving at his preferred pace in the big woods, Drury stops to call for five minutes every 200-300 yards. On windy days, or any other time there's a lot of background noise (say, while hunting near a busy highway), Drury stops even more often, moving only 50-100 yards between calling sites. "When there's lots of background noise, a turkey might hear you that couldn't hear you when you called 50 yards back up the trail," he notes.
I described my own hunt to Drury, telling him how Bridges's series of loud yelps 100 yards down the trail went unanswered, but a quiet cluck and purr brought an immediate response. "I've seen that happen many times," he said. "You know the turkey must hear you coming, but he doesn't answer until you're right on top of him. I think he hears the hen coming closer and closer and finally gobbles to say "Here I am. Don't pass me by."
Some hunters work a variation on running and gunning by hunting their back trails. By retracing their steps they hope to draw gobbles from birds that may have heard them calling as they walked through the woods earlier and don't want to let the "hen" get by them again.
Calling
Each time he stops to call, Drury begins with a crow call, then switches to soft yelps, increasing the volume if he gets no response. "I like to start with a crow call because I'd much rather strike a bird without sounding like another turkey. That way, I can take a little more time to set up without bumping a bird that's come looking for me."
While some hunters prefer to start out with a loud, aggressive call, hoping to shock a bird into gobbling, Drury likens calling to climbing a ladder. "Start at the bottom and go up [in volume] rung by rung. It's hard to go back down if you start out too loud, but you can always make the next call a little louder."
Cutting is a popular call for many hunters trying to provoke a gobble, but both Drury and Toby Bridges stick primarily with yelps. Says Drury, "I'd say 90 percent of the turkeys I call in come to a series of yelps. That's the backbone of turkey calling. If my yelping hasn't brought a response I'll sometimes mix in some cutting at the end."
Bridges agrees with Drury: "A lot of hunters want to master all the sounds of the wild turkey and wind up not making any of them really well," he says, "Me, I'd rather be the best yelper in the woods. I do like to mix in some purrs and clucks because I think that's more natural; hens don't just yelp all the time and I think a tom knows there's something wrong if he doesn't hear some clucking and purring in between the loud yelps."
When to Leave Them
When they're using run and gun tactics, both Bridges and Drury will give up quickly on birds they deem unenthusiastic. "I call that first gobble from a bird a "courtesy gobble," says Drury, "If he answers just once and doesn't make any sign of coming closer in 10 or 15 minutes, that's a sure indication to me that he's with hens and won't be coming at all. Then I'll leave him and look for another bird. Of course, if I'm hunting a small area and I can't pick and choose my turkeys, I'll be more patient with any bird I get to gobble, even if he doesn't come in right away."
Bridges, who hunts large tracts of private ground with some of the highest turkey densities in the nation, will sometimes give up on birds that gobble more than once if they're not coming quickly enough. "I might get a little antsy sometimes and leave a bird too soon," he admits, "but this is a system that works for me."
"If I leave a bird," adds Bridges, "I'll remember where he is and come back to him an hour or so later. Sometimes, the commotion of calling to a bird with hens sets the stage for later on in the day. He'll remember the "hen" he heard earlier and come looking for her once his own hens have left him."
Ponder that for a moment. How many times have you unknowingly made a date with a tom for later in the morning, then stood him up by going home to bed? Imagine him out there, mooning around the woods, gobbling his head off forlornly, looking for you. That's a thought to keep you out in the timber long after dawn, isn't it?
Sidebar: Orange in the Spring Woods
Any time you're moving around making sounds like a turkey, you run the risk of being mistaken for the real thing by other hunters. Mark Drury, who often hunts crowded public lands in Missouri, wears a turkey vest made by Mossy Oak that features orange flags that pull out of the front and rear pockets. The flags allow Drury to remain visible while walking, yet he can quickly conceal himself by tucking the flags back into the pockets when it's time to sit and call.
An orange ball cap works well, too, and you can switch it quickly for a camo hat when a bird answers your calls.
Copyright (c) 1996 Philip Bourjaily. All rights reserved.
Home | Library | Hunting | Wingshooting