Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1022: Foundations - Dispelling the Gobbler Beliefs That Hold Turkey Hunters Back

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Ep. 1022: Foundations - Dispelling the Gobbler Beliefs That Hold Turkey Hunters Back · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Foundation's podcast, which has brought
0:23
Speaker 2: to you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson,
0:25
Speaker 2: and today's episode is all about turkeys and what we
0:27
Speaker 2: believe about them that will keep us from killing a
0:30
Speaker 2: limb hager this spring. We're still in Turkey Week here
0:36
Speaker 2: at Meat Eater, and we're celebrating America's favorite game bird
0:40
Speaker 2: and I'd even consider it America's favorite bird. So take that,
0:43
Speaker 2: you stupid ass balld eagles with your scavenging and fish eating.
0:47
Speaker 2: You may have heard already, but if not, First Light
0:50
Speaker 2: has a new turkey kit out in a pattern called
0:52
Speaker 2: Darkwater that is ideal for a whole lot of different
0:55
Speaker 2: turkey hunting scenarios, and i'd guess might look awful appealing
0:59
Speaker 2: to someone my Southern turkey hunting brothers and sisters. You'll
1:03
Speaker 2: also probably hear that we are running a Turkey Week
1:05
Speaker 2: sweepstakes where you can win a Texas turkey hunt in
1:08
Speaker 2: the spring of twenty seven for three people. Now, if
1:11
Speaker 2: you've never hunted rios, trust me, this one's gonna be
1:14
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. They're beautiful, they gobble their heads
1:17
Speaker 2: off all day, and they can be a hell of
1:19
Speaker 2: a lot more fun than easterns now. If you win,
1:23
Speaker 2: you'll also get a prize pack worth over thirteen grand,
1:26
Speaker 2: which has a ton of killer hunting gear in Well,
1:29
Speaker 2: how do you win? You go to the mediater dot
1:31
Speaker 2: com and you buy some stuff and the more you spend,
1:34
Speaker 2: the more entries get dumped into the bucket, and someone
1:36
Speaker 2: is gonna win, So why not you? All Right, enough
1:42
Speaker 2: of that, As I said, I'm talking turkeys again today,
1:46
Speaker 2: and I'm going to address some of the myths and
1:48
Speaker 2: beliefs that we just need to forget about because all
1:50
Speaker 2: they do is hold us back. These exist in all
1:53
Speaker 2: types of outdoor pursuits and are prevalent in the turkey
1:57
Speaker 2: hunting space because a lot of our turkey hunting advice
2:00
Speaker 2: as well kind of old and outdated. If you struggle
2:03
Speaker 2: filling your spring tags or just want to reframe how
2:06
Speaker 2: you view your turkey hunts, listen up right now, because
2:09
Speaker 2: I'm going to drop some good old fashioned, realistic advice
2:11
Speaker 2: into the conversation about how to hunt turkeys today. When
2:16
Speaker 2: I drew my first turkey tag thirty two years ago,
2:19
Speaker 2: we didn't have pop up blinds yet. We didn't have
2:22
Speaker 2: ultra realistic decoys. We didn't have trail cameras or you know,
2:26
Speaker 2: super turkey loads that come in a box of five
2:28
Speaker 2: for about the price you pay for a kidney on
2:30
Speaker 2: the black market. It was a truly different world then,
2:33
Speaker 2: and in pretty much the same way that turkey hunting
2:35
Speaker 2: gear has evolved, so have our turkey hunting tactics and strategies. Now.
2:40
Speaker 2: Before I actually hunted turkeys, I read a lot of
2:42
Speaker 2: field and stream articles about hunting turkeys. I read a
2:45
Speaker 2: lot of turkey hunting advice, and I heard that advice
2:48
Speaker 2: slip from the ether into my father's brain, where it
2:51
Speaker 2: eventually became spoken words that all kind of said the
2:54
Speaker 2: same thing. And that thing was more than anything, that
2:58
Speaker 2: the old wild turkey was no louch. Now, some of
3:01
Speaker 2: those old writers really had a flare for the extravagant.
3:04
Speaker 2: I didn't realize how far some outdoor writers would really
3:07
Speaker 2: take that until one time, one of them did a
3:10
Speaker 2: story on me, and to wrap up the article just
3:13
Speaker 2: made up a conversation that tied a nice bow on
3:15
Speaker 2: the piece but never happened. And that was one of
3:18
Speaker 2: those moments that I think about often because it shifted
3:20
Speaker 2: my worldview. Now, if you had read any of the
3:23
Speaker 2: old timers in their turkey wisdom, you would have not
3:27
Speaker 2: only read that your average Tom is basically the mensa
3:29
Speaker 2: member of the Avian world, but also that he doesn't
3:32
Speaker 2: want to hear a lot of turkey calls. The typical
3:35
Speaker 2: advice you'd read, or you would have read or it
3:38
Speaker 2: would have heard, simply like this, yelp three times and
3:42
Speaker 2: then shut up. Then wait without moving for at least
3:45
Speaker 2: forty five minutes before you yelp three times again. Now
3:49
Speaker 2: I'm not saying create three series of yelps, but three
3:52
Speaker 2: actual yelps. They would then say that a Tom could
3:55
Speaker 2: hear a cotton ball dropped on a foam mattress from
3:57
Speaker 2: a half a mile away, and he can pinpoint if
4:00
Speaker 2: the exact location a sound originated from, like he has
4:02
Speaker 2: some supernatural auditory GPS system. So when I first started
4:07
Speaker 2: turkey hunting, I tried to follow that advice, but mostly
4:10
Speaker 2: only did when I was hunting with my dad, who
4:12
Speaker 2: was more of an adherent to those things than I was.
4:15
Speaker 2: I was way too easily bored to suffer through no
4:18
Speaker 2: turkey calling while turkey hunting. So when I got to
4:20
Speaker 2: hunt on my own at fifteen, I was both terrified
4:23
Speaker 2: to call and excited to totally control all the calling.
4:27
Speaker 2: And what I found was that you can call more
4:29
Speaker 2: than three yelps in an hour, and sometimes Tom's and
4:31
Speaker 2: Jakes will come in, hence two. Being a contrarian at heart,
4:36
Speaker 2: I decided it would be a good idea to see
4:37
Speaker 2: how far I could take the whole calling thing. And
4:39
Speaker 2: now I believe something that you don't hear very often.
4:43
Speaker 2: I don't think you can overcall. Now there's a caveat here.
4:47
Speaker 2: It's that you absolutely can overcall. If you are not
4:50
Speaker 2: very good at turkey calling, if you don't understand what
4:52
Speaker 2: you are saying and don't understand how to add emotion
4:55
Speaker 2: to your calling sequences, you're much better off, following the
4:58
Speaker 2: advice from the nineteen fifth fifties, if you know how
5:01
Speaker 2: to call and are confident in your calling, all you're
5:04
Speaker 2: doing is making the sounds that turkeys make in a
5:07
Speaker 2: way in which they might make them. And you know
5:09
Speaker 2: what else I believe about that sometimes they need a
5:12
Speaker 2: lot of calling to commit. I believe this about deer too,
5:16
Speaker 2: although not very many people believe me when I say that.
5:19
Speaker 2: I truly think the snort wheeze is the best call
5:21
Speaker 2: out there, but only if you understand that it might
5:24
Speaker 2: take a whole lot of them to get a positive
5:25
Speaker 2: reaction out of a deer, and most people seem too
5:28
Speaker 2: scared to try that. The same thing happens with turkeys.
5:31
Speaker 2: But I can tell you one thing. This fella calls
5:34
Speaker 2: a lot. If I have a bird coming in on
5:36
Speaker 2: a string, I just work him with maybe an average
5:39
Speaker 2: amount of turkey talk, but not so much that it's
5:42
Speaker 2: just stupid. But if I have a bird that is
5:44
Speaker 2: hung up, he's going to get a lot of chatter
5:46
Speaker 2: from me. And if I don't have any birds calling
5:49
Speaker 2: and I'm sitting at the bottom of the dead sea,
5:51
Speaker 2: I call a lot because I want to make something happen.
5:54
Speaker 2: I've watched turkeys cross fields in a matter of a
5:57
Speaker 2: few minutes, where you know the distance might be a
6:00
Speaker 2: quarter of a mile or a half a mile. I
6:02
Speaker 2: think about that a lot when I don't have much
6:04
Speaker 2: going on, because at any moment a gobbler could walk
6:08
Speaker 2: from far away to close enough to get a response
6:11
Speaker 2: out of him. And if that's the case, I want
6:13
Speaker 2: to get a response out of him. I also think
6:16
Speaker 2: you can take some birds, especially when it's just kind
6:19
Speaker 2: of dead due to the weather or seasonal timing, and
6:21
Speaker 2: make them excited. You can activate them through calling, but
6:25
Speaker 2: you won't do that by yelping one soft sequence and
6:29
Speaker 2: then just shutting up. It's not going to cut it.
6:31
Speaker 2: They need to be riled up, and a good caller
6:34
Speaker 2: can do that, and a good caller can try that
6:37
Speaker 2: all day long. Now, this flies in the advice that
6:40
Speaker 2: you're supposed to just kind of match what the turkeys
6:43
Speaker 2: are actually trying to say around you and what they're doing.
6:46
Speaker 2: But what the actual turkeys often do is not call
6:49
Speaker 2: very much anywhere near us. On a typical day, we
6:53
Speaker 2: call like crazy when they are on the roost, and
6:55
Speaker 2: then a little bit afterwards, and then maybe not hardly
6:57
Speaker 2: call throughout the rest of the day. Thanks, and speaking
7:01
Speaker 2: of rus, there is another belief that kind of needs
7:05
Speaker 2: to die or needs to be explained much better. You
7:08
Speaker 2: have probably heard the saying roosted ain't roasted. Well, It's true.
7:13
Speaker 2: It wasn't that long ago though, when there was a
7:15
Speaker 2: high level of importance placed on roosting a tom. After all,
7:20
Speaker 2: if you know where he's going to sleep, you know
7:21
Speaker 2: where he's going to wake up. And if you know
7:23
Speaker 2: where he's going to wake up and you can be
7:25
Speaker 2: fairly close to him, you know, it stands to reason
7:27
Speaker 2: that you have higher odds of calling him in. In
7:30
Speaker 2: my experience, most of the time roosted definitely isn't roasted.
7:35
Speaker 2: It takes the right bird. And I'll tell you who
7:37
Speaker 2: that is. It's the loaner tom. You know, probably the
7:41
Speaker 2: two year old that weighs twenty one pounds and has
7:43
Speaker 2: a nine inch beard. If we want to get real specific,
7:46
Speaker 2: If that bird spends the night all by himself, he
7:48
Speaker 2: is ripe for the picking in the morning. But a
7:51
Speaker 2: tom roosted with some hens, he's a different story. A
7:54
Speaker 2: tom roosted with three of his buddies, different story. A
7:58
Speaker 2: tom roosted where he can hear other turkeys. Besides, you
8:03
Speaker 2: total toss up, but mostly you'll lose to the real birds.
8:07
Speaker 2: Roosting the right bird is super fun. Roosting most birds
8:11
Speaker 2: and expecting to be tagged out when the sun is
8:13
Speaker 2: just resting on the eastern horizon. It's just not how
8:16
Speaker 2: it's mostly going to shake out. This might sound crazy,
8:20
Speaker 2: but if I had to pick a time frame to
8:22
Speaker 2: kill birds, you know, mostly it would be in the
8:25
Speaker 2: late afternoon for a variety of reasons, and throughout a
8:28
Speaker 2: lot of the season there's just such a nice cruising
8:32
Speaker 2: window late in the day that the birds become super
8:34
Speaker 2: receptive during and it's such a different game to get
8:37
Speaker 2: one to answer then now during the earliest part, you know,
8:41
Speaker 2: to the middle part of the season. I also really
8:43
Speaker 2: liked the lunch hour shift. The problem with that is
8:46
Speaker 2: that a lot of the film turkey content you are
8:48
Speaker 2: likely to see is filmed in places with a lot
8:50
Speaker 2: of unpressured birds, in settings that allow them to film
8:53
Speaker 2: gobblers strutting their way across green fields for a couple
8:56
Speaker 2: one hundred yards in the early morning sunlight. But if
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Speaker 2: you hunt pressure birds or you just have limited time,
9:02
Speaker 2: the most gobbling you'll hear will be off the roost.
9:04
Speaker 2: But the best gobbling you'll hear in regards to callable
9:08
Speaker 2: birds will either be in the middle of the day
9:10
Speaker 2: or when they start to stage up to go to
9:12
Speaker 2: the roost. This is something bow hunting turkeys taught me
9:16
Speaker 2: because I did so many all day sits when I
9:18
Speaker 2: first started out. The truth about turkeys is they often
9:22
Speaker 2: have a pretty strict schedule in the morning for several hours,
9:26
Speaker 2: and if you can get where they want to be,
9:28
Speaker 2: you're gonna win. But if not, your chances to work
9:31
Speaker 2: birds often really improves later in the day when that
9:35
Speaker 2: schedule opens up. This is often tied to the hens nesting,
9:39
Speaker 2: but also I think to gobblers who know they can
9:42
Speaker 2: do better than strut behind four other strutters who are
9:44
Speaker 2: all obsessed with a handful of hens, and who are
9:46
Speaker 2: going to stick it out all day. Now there is
9:59
Speaker 2: the question of when you get a gobbler with an eyesight,
10:02
Speaker 2: which brings up another belief that I have to address,
10:05
Speaker 2: and it involves decoys. A hell of a lot of
10:07
Speaker 2: people will tell you straight to your face that you
10:10
Speaker 2: don't need expensive ultra realistic decoys, and you know what,
10:15
Speaker 2: they're probably wrong. Now, look, we own Dave Smith decoys
10:19
Speaker 2: and all that, so take that how you want to.
10:21
Speaker 2: But nothing changed my turkey game quite like running their decoys,
10:25
Speaker 2: which I bought long before I had any association with them.
10:29
Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of reasons for this.
10:31
Speaker 2: The first is that while yes, you could run a
10:34
Speaker 2: cheap foam decoy and get a bird into shotgun range
10:37
Speaker 2: and maybe even bow range, your odds are significantly lower
10:41
Speaker 2: than they would be with ultra realistic decoys that convey
10:44
Speaker 2: some sort of turkey body language. I believe that with
10:48
Speaker 2: all of my turkey hunting heart, and while it stings
10:51
Speaker 2: to spend like one hundred and seventy five bucks on
10:53
Speaker 2: a single decoy, it doesn't sting that much to have
10:56
Speaker 2: birds really commit to your spread and put on a show.
11:00
Speaker 2: And I'm convinced that a lot of the people who
11:02
Speaker 2: say that they don't need high end decoys say this
11:05
Speaker 2: for a couple reasons. Either they're hunting where the birds
11:08
Speaker 2: are just unpressured and kind of dumb, which you can
11:11
Speaker 2: still find in some places for sure, but more likely
11:14
Speaker 2: it stems from a somewhat frugal mindset that isn't restricted
11:17
Speaker 2: to decoys. I've run into this my whole life in
11:20
Speaker 2: the outdoor industry, and it's weird how often someone will
11:23
Speaker 2: say something like this two hundred dollars product is no
11:26
Speaker 2: different from a twenty dollars product in the same category,
11:29
Speaker 2: yet they are almost always dead wrong. That's not to
11:32
Speaker 2: say that you can't get by with the cheaper stuff,
11:35
Speaker 2: but it generally doesn't work as well and often doesn't
11:38
Speaker 2: last as long. The thing about this is that if
11:41
Speaker 2: you only shotgun hunt, and you do as much sneaking
11:44
Speaker 2: around trying to bushwhack a bird as anything, decoy choice
11:47
Speaker 2: is probably secondary. Now, if you need them in your
11:50
Speaker 2: spread because you're bow hunting, or you're not comfortable running
11:53
Speaker 2: and gunning, or you have somebody else along, or you
11:56
Speaker 2: hunt a small property and can't really go anywhere, or
11:59
Speaker 2: you're just really dealing with pressured birds, there's no debate
12:02
Speaker 2: in my mind that quality decoys are worth the cost.
12:05
Speaker 2: Take that for however you want to. But I put
12:08
Speaker 2: good money on a bet that says quality decoys will
12:11
Speaker 2: elicit more positive responses out of real birds than cheapis will. Now,
12:15
Speaker 2: before you think I'm some elitist hunting snob, which is
12:19
Speaker 2: what this one guy in Minnesota called me when I
12:21
Speaker 2: wrote an article where I said I didn't think illegal
12:24
Speaker 2: baiting was very cool, I'll say this about turkeys. You
12:28
Speaker 2: can shoot them with about any shotgun and if you
12:31
Speaker 2: have any idea what you're doing, they're going to be
12:33
Speaker 2: super dead. The tricked out turkey guns paired with red
12:37
Speaker 2: dot sites and full of tungsten turkey loads are gobbler
12:40
Speaker 2: whacking machines, But so is the old Remington eight seventy
12:44
Speaker 2: with three inch fives that has been patterned correctly. The
12:47
Speaker 2: deal with turkeys and shooting them with a shotgun is
12:49
Speaker 2: that you have to know what loads your shotgun throws
12:52
Speaker 2: really well and how far they'll throw them accurately. That's
12:56
Speaker 2: kind of it in the old Peterson household, between my
12:59
Speaker 2: daughters and I and the last six years, we've killed
13:01
Speaker 2: a bunch of toms with four tens, a couple twenty gauges,
13:05
Speaker 2: and several different twelve gauges, not to mention all the
13:08
Speaker 2: bobirds other than a few oopsies when my daughters were little,
13:12
Speaker 2: and I'm positive wasn't the gun or the shot shells fault.
13:15
Speaker 2: The birds that have crossed the magical effective range mark
13:18
Speaker 2: have mostly ended up with their beaks in the dirt. Look,
13:21
Speaker 2: it's fun to play with that stuff, and i'd certainly
13:24
Speaker 2: never encourage someone to hunt with a weapon they didn't
13:26
Speaker 2: have confidence in. But you can definitely go overboard with
13:30
Speaker 2: this stuff, and if you have enough patience to let
13:32
Speaker 2: the birds get into really good range, they rarely get away. Now,
13:36
Speaker 2: I will say this about shotgun loads. I'm a really
13:39
Speaker 2: big fan of something that isn't led, but I'm also
13:42
Speaker 2: not opposed to shooting them with lead. Seeing the penetration
13:46
Speaker 2: performance and how they pattern kind of won me over
13:48
Speaker 2: with the tungsten and bismuth loads, and for a while
13:51
Speaker 2: I thought that's what I'd always shoot. It turns out
13:55
Speaker 2: all it took was China to put a stranglehold on
13:57
Speaker 2: tungsten and the price per shell the sky rocket before
14:00
Speaker 2: I realize that I am a pay up to a
14:03
Speaker 2: point kind of fella, and then I'm back to shooting lead.
14:06
Speaker 2: Your mileage may vary, but the truth is just about
14:09
Speaker 2: any scatter gun we'll get the job done just fine.
14:12
Speaker 2: Just make sure you send a few loads down range
14:14
Speaker 2: at paper turkey targets first, so that you not only
14:18
Speaker 2: know that's true, but you know how far away that
14:21
Speaker 2: will stay true. And while a lot of people don't
14:24
Speaker 2: do this, I recommend turkey hunters carry a range finder
14:27
Speaker 2: if they have one, especially newer turkey hunters or anyone
14:30
Speaker 2: traveling to a new environment to turkey hunt. A gobbler
14:34
Speaker 2: strutting in at sixty yards can look awful big, and
14:37
Speaker 2: awful tempting, and might seem a hell of a lot
14:39
Speaker 2: closer to some hunter who is I don't know, used
14:42
Speaker 2: to setting up in the big woods, and then they
14:44
Speaker 2: suddenly get to chase longbeards on the prairie or out
14:46
Speaker 2: in the sand hills. But if that gun is good
14:49
Speaker 2: to forty and not much more, you might find yourself
14:51
Speaker 2: watching a bird fly away or worse kind of limp
14:55
Speaker 2: run off, and then you'll realize that all you needed
14:58
Speaker 2: to do was wait another twenty second until he actually
15:01
Speaker 2: got into range. Now, I guess i'll wrap this one
15:04
Speaker 2: up with this last train of thought here. I don't
15:07
Speaker 2: know how many of you have trailed a wounded turkey,
15:10
Speaker 2: whether it was a shotgun hit or a bow hit,
15:12
Speaker 2: but I can tell you one thing. I've trailed a
15:15
Speaker 2: lot of them, And two things I've noticed that are
15:17
Speaker 2: very consistent are that wild turkeys can bleed a hell
15:20
Speaker 2: of a lot and not be laying stone dead anywhere
15:23
Speaker 2: near you, And that a wounded bird is a bird
15:26
Speaker 2: that can hide in ways we can hardly imagine they
15:29
Speaker 2: understand how to pancake themselves into the grass or in
15:33
Speaker 2: an open alfalfa field in a way that is so
15:36
Speaker 2: easy to overlook. It's almost shocking when you figure out
15:39
Speaker 2: what you've done wrong. If they can get into the timber,
15:43
Speaker 2: they get a lot harder to locate. But if you
15:45
Speaker 2: are on a blood trail, you got to use your binoculars.
15:48
Speaker 2: You got to glass everything, because they are so good
15:51
Speaker 2: at tucking into dead falls and getting under cedar trees
15:54
Speaker 2: and just disappearing into the forest floor. They'll also often
15:58
Speaker 2: crawl off and get sick to the point where you
16:01
Speaker 2: might have thought you saw a lightly wounded bird leaving,
16:05
Speaker 2: but that bird is out there dying and you might
16:07
Speaker 2: not know it. That's the last belief I want to address.
16:11
Speaker 2: If you hit one, play it like a wounded deer
16:15
Speaker 2: for real. They are tough as nails, but they also
16:18
Speaker 2: sometimes just run off for a couple hundred yards and
16:20
Speaker 2: then hole up and either die or get sick enough
16:23
Speaker 2: where you can get up on them again. And whether
16:26
Speaker 2: they fly or run after the shot, don't believe they
16:29
Speaker 2: are fine simply because they can fly or run. They
16:32
Speaker 2: often get through the escape on adrenaline and then they
16:35
Speaker 2: do what they need to in order to hide, and
16:37
Speaker 2: when they do, it's almost always an education on turkey behavior.
16:42
Speaker 2: And on that note, that's it for this week. Next week,
16:46
Speaker 2: I'm going to get back to talking about white tails,
16:48
Speaker 2: so don't forget to tune in. All right, that's it
16:52
Speaker 2: for this episode. Like I said in the beginning, like
16:55
Speaker 2: I said with yesterday's episode, it is Turkey Week here
16:58
Speaker 2: at meat Eater. Head to the meat check it out.
17:01
Speaker 2: We are celebrating turkeys in a whole bunch of different ways.
17:04
Speaker 2: While you're there, you might find some good deals. You
17:06
Speaker 2: might find some other podcasts you want to listen to.
17:09
Speaker 2: You might see a turkey film get dropped. Lots of
17:12
Speaker 2: content shows up on the medeater dot com every single day.
17:15
Speaker 2: Go check it out, Go check out Turkey Week, and
17:18
Speaker 2: as always, thank you so much for all of your support.