Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 892: Tough Turkey Tactics with Sam Soholt

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Ep. 892: Tough Turkey Tactics with Sam Soholt · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Sam Soholt to talk turkey
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: hunting tactics, strategies and ideas or wherever you might be
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: this coming season. All right, welcome back to the Wired
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: their Camel for Conservation Initiative. And we are taking a
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: quick break today from our Conservation Month series to talk
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: turkeys because it is Turkey Week here at Meat Eater.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We've got all sorts of great new turkey hunting content
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: all across our platform. There are new turkey hunting films
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: on YouTube. They are a new turkey hunting podcast across
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: almost all of our shows. There is a whole pile
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: of new turkey hunting articles and recipes, and a turkey
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: calling contests going on, and all sorts of stuff like
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: that right now. If you are listening in late March
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, so head on over to themeateater dot
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: com or wherever you get your meta content to connect
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: with all of that great turkey hunting know how and
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: in education and entertainment and everything in between. So that said,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: our contribution to that here today on Wired to Hunt
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: is one hell of a good turkey hunting conversation with
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: a good friend, the one and only Sam Soholt. He
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: is a incredible photographer and content creator. He is one
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: of the co owners of public Land Tees who create
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: all sorts of really great apparel and do things for
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: many great causes. Sam you know as well in the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: for the public Land van and all sorts of public
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: land causes that he's worked towards the numerous projects in
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: that vein, but relevant to today's conversation, he is a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: great turkey hunter. He has been all over the place
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and he's the co host of the Roost podcast, which
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: is a project that him and my pal Bent O'Brien
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: have have been doing for a number of years now.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Roost is a one turkey hunting focused podcast. They do
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: a great job with it and there's a whole lot
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: of information whether it is about turkey conservation, turkey cooking, hunting,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: everything in between, biology of the turkey. You're gonna get
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: it all. And so today what my hope is just
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: kind of tease a little bit of that. We're going
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: to do a very fast, kind of quick and dirty
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: run through of Sam's turkey hunting tactics, his approach, his techniques,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: how he does things differently based on the different places
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: he goes. One thing, you're in a hear bump? Is it?
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Sam travel a lot turkey hunt Him and Ben and
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: some buddies do a number of you know, every year.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Now it seems like for quite a while he's been
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: going on these turkey tours hunting, you know, from the
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: South to the North, to the Midwest to the far west,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: kind of all over the place. So he has a
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: diverse set of turkey hunting experiences and a whole lot
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: of success doing it in many different spots. So that's
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: why I thought he'd be the perfect guy to talk
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: to here today as we try to give you the
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Wired Hunt audience a little bit of a turkey hunting
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: primer to get you ready for this wonderful time of year.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: It's it's not the rut, it's not deer hunting season,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: but it's a close second. So, without any further ado,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: let's chat turkeys with mister sam so Hold. All right,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: joining me now is the one and only Sam so Hold.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show Man.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Fired Up I got. I gotta tell you what I'm disappointed.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: You started out our conversation on video wearing your full
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: face mask and everything, and then you bailed on that.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Wow, you was hoping that you were going to be
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: recording immediately, and so that's what I was really counting on.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I should have in retrospect, I shouldn't.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: If you want full commitment for the rest of the podcast,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I'll throw the face mask on. You know, I also
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: have my chest drig my f HF Chess drig and
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: the new tree line Turkey.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Vest On Man. Your set, you you should throw your
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: face mask on for the sake of really good Instagram
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: reels coming out of this one.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let me let me put it on. I'll do
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: it for like the first ten minutes while we go
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: through everything. Perfect, We're we're.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: In your set. You are well concealed. If a turkey
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: happens to sneak up on you in the room, that
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: some bitch is gonna have no idea you're coming, no idea? Yeah?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Uh so, with with you being obviously very much geared up,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the Turkey Tour must be on its way already. Where
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: have you been so far? And what's on the roadmap
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: for the upcoming weeks and months?
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is officially kicked off. This last weekend, we
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: were down in Texas for the youth season. Ben couldn't
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: join us on the podcast today, but Ben O'Brien took
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: his son for his first ever hunt where he actually
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: he got to be on the trigger and we went
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: down and chased Rio's in Texas for the two day
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: season down there.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: So it was awesome.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Man, we had an amazing trip. It could not have
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: gone back. It's like, you know, you always put a
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: lot of pressure on you know yourself, Ben especially you
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: know it's his son's first hunt. You wanted all to
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: go right. And most of the time when I am
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: part of things, think like that, where like you have
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: this expectation or this hope that like all of it's
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: going to go the right way. It never does he
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: did this time. We got there Friday night, roosted birds,
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: woke up the next morning, killed the turkey, spent the
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: rest today celebrate and doing other stuff. Went out and
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: roosted birds, got to film a to like, you know,
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: a giant flock. It was like seventy or eight birds,
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: strutters everywhere. It was wild. Woke up the next morning,
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: went out, set up. Uh. He ended up killing a
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: jake the next morning. So it was like, you know,
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: two birds two days. Got to learn how to cut
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: up turkeys all that stuff. So it was like as
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: good as it gets for your first time experience in
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: the turkey woods.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: That's so great. My uh, my son is gonna be
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: doing the same thing this year. So we have to
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to pick Ben's brain a little bit
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: about anything that worked particularly well for them. Did you
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: did you notice anything that you saw during that experience
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: that you thought, oh man, that's that's a good way
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: to go about that with a kid.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Anything stand So we we did. We were we were
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: going back and forth whether to use a blind or not.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: You know, in a blind, especially for kids is a
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: really great way because then they can move a little bit.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And we ended up having like a tripod shooting stick
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: for James and a little four to ten little Stevens
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: three oh one single shot four ten, you know, red dot.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: But and then we had picked up it's a three
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: foot by twelve foot kind of like leafy blanket suit
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: and I always use a gilly suit top like over
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: my tripod, but like the leafy blanket thing is like
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: twelve bucks or whatever from Cabello's or Academy or whatever.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: And it's just nice to have that because it breaks
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: up you know, let's say it'd be you and your son,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: you know, trying to sit there behind the tripod if
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: you're not using a blind, just to give yourself a
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: little bit of an advantage when it comes to that
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: movement when the turkeys are trying to spot you. So
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: that and then a you know, good set up of
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: decoys keep the focus off of us and the calling
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: and right on that decoy setup was definitely a game changer.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, there's so many things about turkey hunting that
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: make it I think like maybe the best introduction for
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: a young hunters. So it's so engaging even if you
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: can't see the animal. You know, in many cases hopefully
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: you're hearing them coming from afar and you right hear
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: them getting closer and closer, and there's it's just very Yeah,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it just hits a lot of buttons.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: It's yeah, you get to do everything right. You get
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: to teach woodsmanship, so you can look for tracks and
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: sign and you can show all that stuff. You get
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: to interact with the animal. Actually, So like you said,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: like they gobble on the roost and so even if
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: they pitch down and go a different direction, you can
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: be explaining like, okay, that's where they're roosted. You know,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: they fly up at night and sleep in the trees,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: and then they pitch down and kind of work around
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: and you know, go out and eat and go to water, like,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: you know, work around, and Tom's will be following the
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: hens around for a while. And then if the you know,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: hens go to you know, you can go go through
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: all of those different things about turkey hunting. So it's
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: about hunting and you learn, like if you've become a
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: good turkey hunter like you are, you can quick more
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: quickly pick up everything else.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I feel, yeah, yeah, so true. So so speaking of
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: becoming a good turkey hunter, I feel like of all
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: the people that I keep tabs on and watch from
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Afar or here from you, you and Ben are two
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: of the most turkey hunting fools out there. As far
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: as traveling from state to state every spring, it seems
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: like you are on the road, traveling somewhere, camping somewhere,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: going to this state in that state. You're all over
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: the place.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fairly obsessed.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So, given that, what I want to do is
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: like a quick and dirty run through of the Sam
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Soholt approach, because you've gotten to test a lot of
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: different ideas in many different places. You're not like a
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: single spot turkey hunter. You've done it out West, you've
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: done it down South, You've done it in the Midwest,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: You've done it kind of across the board. Have been
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: able to kind of trial and error your way through
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of different approaches. So yep, if someone were
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: to corner you, let's say, in an elevator and you've
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: got thirty seconds or a minute, or maybe the elevator
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: stalls and you're stuck there for five minutes or ten minutes,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: and they said, hey, what's the Sam so Halt approach
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: to killing turkeys? If you had to distill it down,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: how would you describe it?
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: So my whole the way I do it is I'd
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: like to find the right bird so I cover lots
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: and lots of ground, whether that be in the truck
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: or on foot, but I am just looking for the
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: bird that is actually engage the right way. And what
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: that means is like whether that's right away in the
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: morning or mid morning or midday or whatever. If you
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: can get a bird to start gobbling back, you know, two, three,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: four times, you know they're fired up enough, and you
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: can kind of say, once you've listened to enough turkeys,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: you can kind of sense like the more desperate like gobble,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: like they really are like into it. They're not just
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: reacting to the sound. And so I'm constantly looking for
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the bird that's like, Okay, that one's fired up, I'm
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: gonna go hunt that one. Otherwise I've spent you know,
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: you end up wasting a lot of time on birds
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: that like they might answer you, but then they'll just
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: like slowly drift away or they're following hens or whatever,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: and like you spend you could, you know, spend the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: better part of a day chasing one bird that all
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: they do is they're always one hundred and fifty yards
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: ahead of you.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So will you actually walk away from a gobbling bird
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: like a talkative bird that's given it back to you
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: but doesn't quite have the right sound. Will you just
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: will you leave fish to find fish?
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: As they say yes and it, I will, like if
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: he's talking back, like if he's given me lots of noise,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: I'll do a couple of attempts where okay, I'll maybe
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: set up and try to call him in. But if
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: he sounds like he's drifting away, I'll make a big
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: loop or try to get to where he was gobbling from,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: whether that was like a little bench or something that
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: he was kind of in his little strut zone. I'll
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: go there first, try to call, you know, like give
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: him ten fifteen minutes to walk away from that spot.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Get there.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Call If he's still talking to me but he's still
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: doing that like move away thing, I might try to
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: do like one big loop around on him and try
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: to make it happen. Then, But if I strike out
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: three times and he's just doing the hang up situation
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: and doing all that, like, I'm typically like, alight, let's go,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: let's get out of here, let's go find let's go
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: find a fun one.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Uh, can you give me some more kind of color
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: around how you determine if it's the right bird. Like
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: you mentioned the sound a certain desperation to the sound,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: but can you kind of elaborate that on that a
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: little bit for me.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So a lot of times when you're calling, like
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: you'll call and you'll get a bird to gobble, right,
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: like if you're within bubble, and if they gobble once, okay, great.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: You know, like a lot of times they'll just react
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: to that first call and they'll gobble back to you.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: And then if you hit him again and either if
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: they shut up and or don't you know, don't gobble
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: at all, it's like, okay, well that one's you know,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: either with hens or just clearly you know, he reacted
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: to me but wasn't really interested. But the desperate gobbl
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: it's like the it's like almost a change in tone.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: It's like you call, they answer, you call again, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: you can tell that they have like turned their body
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: to face the sound, and so it's like, okay, it's
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: a little bit louder, even though they didn't move. And
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: then if you call again and they answer and it's
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: it's like they cut you off. They're like I'm coming.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I like that one.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: The cutoff, like that is a definite answer last spring,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: we implemented a three gobbl rule. It was like, if
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: we're driving around or hiking around trying to strike up
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: a bird in the middle of the day, if the
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: bird didn't gobble back three times, it wasn't worth going
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: after because in previous years we had just you know,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: like I said, you just chase him around, chase him
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: aun chase hi around. You spend half three quarters of
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: a day chasing one bird that doesn't want to do
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: it when you could have you know, gone one mile
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: over or half mile over and struck up a bird
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: that was like, oh yeah, I'm into this.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Now, what about this scenario. I've seen a situation play
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: out a lot where you'll have a gobbler that's hot,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: like he's going he's getting after it, he sounds desperate,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: he sounds like he's coming in, and then he goes
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: silent yep. And oftentimes that when that happens, it's actually
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: because they're on a tear right to you, yeah and
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: not maybe not, I don't want to say often, but
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: it seems like this happens quite a lot. Either one
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: or two things happens. Either they shut up and they're gone,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: or they're like coming in hot and you better be
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: ready because any second now they're all of a sudden
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: going to show up running right into view. Right, How
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: do you kind of determine when to say, Okay, this
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: is a turkey that's probably coming in and I need
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: to be ready and feeling good about that, versus oh no,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard from him in five minutes. You know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: this is a bird that we're going to bail on
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: or do something different with you have you Have you
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: seen that too?
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, for sure. So typically in that situation, what
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna do is, if they shut up, I'm going
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: to wait ten fifteen twenty minutes. I'm just going to
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: stay because either, like you said, they're on the way,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: like they gobbled it and last time, and then they're like, okay,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: they're coming. And you know, when you hunt, if you've
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: hunted enough, sometimes you can kind of sense that, like
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like they're they gobble, facing directly at you,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, I
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: think they're coming, but yeah, i'll give it ten fifteen
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: twenty minutes. I'll just chill out and they might, you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden they gobble twenty yards from you
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: and rattle your heart, you know, like it's all, you know,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: very exciting. But the other thing that happens in that
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: situation is you're pretending to be a hen, and biology
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: for turkeys is the tom gobbles in order to bring
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: the hen to them. So we're trying to fight biology.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: So a lot of times what happens in the woods
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: as you're calling you get a tom fired up. A
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: different hen will hear that gobbler and then come run
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: to the gobbler to be bred. And so if they
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: shut up and walk away, that, you know, a lot
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: of times that could be the potential of what happened
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: in that situation. So but I always give it that
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: ten fifteen twenty minutes. Just sit down, kind of get
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: tucked in, hang out by a tree, you know, make
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: sure your outline's broken up, relax a little bit, and
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: then hopefully they just you know, shatter your You're a
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: little like zen moment with a gobble that's way too
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: close then cause you to freak out.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: But it's one of the best things in the world. Yeah.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so few animals that can make a sound,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like elk and turkeys are the two
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: that can make a sound where like you can literally
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: feel it like in your heart, like like you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: it's like base when it comes through.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: You can you imagine if white tails bugled or did
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: something like that, because you'll add that to the white
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: tail experience. Man, we would never do anything else. No,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: that was the case. Yeah. So continuing down this kind
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: of line of situational I guess decision making. Another one
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of the things I'm constantly wrestling with and I know
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: everyone's constantly wrestling with, is the call more call less?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Like this this risk of overcalling, which is a real
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: thing sometimes and when you're kind of weighing, Like I
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: love the face mask segment there by the way, Sam,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: it was, it was great, got too hot? Yeah, I
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: get it. So how do you think about overcalling when
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: kind of wrestling with Okay, how long has he been
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: quiet versus me needing to make something happen versus his
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: you know what he's telling me? How do you process
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: all that?
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I'd definitely start conservatively, you know, so I'm kind of
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: just testing the waters. Unless I'm trying to strike birds up,
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: then I'm you know, typically, but even then, like in
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: a calling sequence. You know, you start slow because you might,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: you know, depending on if you're like, Okay, let's say
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: you hiked four hundred yards down a ridge or whatever.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: You've been calling all morning, and I never stop and
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: just hammer. I don't just like cut and you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: yelp and like make it real loud right away. I
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: always start with like a three note yelp and kind
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: of let that sit, because you never know, like, okay,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: you know, if you finally walked into that bird's bubble,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: like starting soft is never going to hurt you. Starting
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: way too strong, you might just you know, scare him
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: right out of there. So I always start conservatively softer calling,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: and then I'll ramp it up. And I'm trying to
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: just like I'm trying to explain how to know whether
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: to call lightly or really get aggressive. And most of
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: the time, my aggressive calling comes when the bird's just
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: like not doing it, like if they you know, if
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: he gets hung up and he you know, he might
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: answer back. Every once in a while, like sometimes I'll
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: just like go into like a really aggressive calling sequence
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and maybe I'll you know, have a mouth call and
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: a slate call, and so it's like I'm I can
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: call back and forth to myself and kind of like
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: you know, turn back, turn my head back and cut
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: my hand and call back like behind the tree, and
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: then I'll run that slate call and make it sound
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: like there's a couple hands talking back and forth and
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: maybe just like amp his level of excitement up a
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: little bit. But I'm definitely always starting starting, so off,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: starting slow, calling kind of intermittently unless the situation, you know,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: deems it necessary to get real aggressive.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: So so you kind of described there like your go
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: to when you've got to hung up gobbler? Right? Do
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: you have any other like kind of go to sequences
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: that fit in different parts of a turkey hunt? So
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: do you have a go to like, Hey, I'm trying
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to strike them up, and then you have a go
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: to like, Okay, I just heard gobble off in the distance,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: and I've closed the distance and now this Like do
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: you have a few kind of routines? What would those
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: be and can you describe like what they would sound
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: like and when you would implement them.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So if I'm trying to strike a bird up,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: I'm typically doing like a three or four note yelp,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: So just yep, yep, yep, yep, and then I'll wait
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: and then I'll do like a nine yoat note yelp
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: and just like a little bit longer and little a
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: little louder, kind of like get into it a little
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: bit more, and then I'll wait and then I'll you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: do like kind of pop pop yep, heelp yep. And
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: it's like, but I'm always And I learned a lot
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: of this from Aaron Warbritt and I spent a whole
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: spring with those guys at the Hunting Public in twenty nineteen,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: and he was explaining, he's like when turk, when a
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: hen is calling, you think about you know, she's letting
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: out a few notes and then she's pausing to listen
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: for that gobble, and so you don't want to just
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: be out there just yep yep, yelp, yelp, yelp, yep,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: yep yep, because you're not giving that bird an opportunity
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: to respond. And so it's always like call, pause, call, longer, pause, cut,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: you know, like give the opportunity not only for the
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: bird to answer, but forar you to hear them answer,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: because a lot of times you might, you know, there
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: might be one that gobbles called, you know, two hundred
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: and fifty three undred yards away, and depending on how
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: much greenery is on greenery is on the you know,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: foliage and stuff, and how thick it is and how
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: dense the forest is, you might just catch like the
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: tail end of that go and yeah, so it's you
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: got to give yourself that opportunity. So that's my strike
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: up kind of sequence. You know, if it's the morning
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: and I've got birds on the roost, I'll do a
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: couple of like soft tree yelps. So it's just you know,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: just like let that sit out there. And that's mostly
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: I don't like to call to him on the roost.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: People go back and forth. Should you call to him
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: on the roofs? Shouldn't you call to him on the roost?
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: I like to do just a little bit, but only
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: enough where I think it's loud enough where they're just
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: gonna like hear, okay, there's a hen in this direction.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: I'm not trying to let them like pinpoint me.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: And do you need to have them at least gobble
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: back to you once before to confirm that yeah, they
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: heard me? Or will you honestly just do like a
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: couple of softy alps, and whether you hear anything or not,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: you're done right.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Not necessary, I don't necessarily need to hear them gobble back.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: But most of the time, like if you're within your
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: shot of them, like even if you don't get like
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: the the main tom to gobble back, you'll get a
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: hen that like fire like you know, sends off a
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: couple of notes. Either she's mad at you, you know,
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: for being there, or you'll get one of the you know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: more submissive like Tom's like that's in the background of
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: another tree. To just be like, oh, I'm here. You know,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: they may fire up, but no, I don't necessarily need
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: an answer back. I just like to let them know
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: that I'm there.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so that's three tree talk. We've talked hung up,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: We've talked you know, striking one up when you're searching.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Are there any other go to moves you've got that
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: you feel like you kind of fall back on over
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: and over again throughout a hunt.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the most successful I've been on stuff
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: is if there are hens is mimicking a hen. So
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: if you can get like if it's great if the
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: tom is gobling back at you, but if you get
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: a hen fired up, and you can just you know,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Simon said, just copy her, and so if she's just
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: you just do the exact same thing back. Oh it
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: makes them mad. And most of the time, you know,
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: if you can get a hen fired up, she'll come
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: in and a lot of times if she has a
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: gobbler with her, they'll just like, you know, dumbly strut
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: in behind her, you know, just trying to figure it out,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: just back there spitting and drumming, and then you can
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: get a shot.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: It's amazing how well that works.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Oh so good.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: That's that's the single Like, that is the moment that
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: makes me more confident than almost any other when I
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: sense that, like there's a hen that wants to talk,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Like there's got to be The picture perfect scenario for
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: me would be a situation where I can hear gobblers
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: that have been responding to me and getting excited. It
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: sounds like they're kind of on the way. But then
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: you hear hen start piping in and coming closer and closer.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And then when she starts getting pissed and cutting me off,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: when I'm yelping at her and mimicking her, when that
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: whole thing is like coming together. You just know like,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: oh geez, like this is this.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Is Tom's are gobbling at her and you and yeah,
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: you know, yeah it's awesome.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: So good. Okay, So back to the hung up gobbler
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: thing you mentioned earlier. How you know, in some situations
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: you'll just determine, well, this isn't the bird and you'll
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: bail out completely yeap. Other times you'll you'll do that
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: calling sequence you describe. Do you have any other hung
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: up Tom tricks?
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd mentioned it real briefly earlier, but one of
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: my favorites is, so let's say you're calling and you
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: got you got a tome that comes into eighty ninety
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: one hundred yards, hangs up, I just shut up. And
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of times they will kind of drift off
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: and you got to give him, give him some time.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: But most of the time, like if you pop on
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: your map or whatever, you can figure out like exactly
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: you know where they are, Like you know the I
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: use the compass mode on X a lot, So I'll
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: open that, I'll point it at that bird that's gobbling,
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: and I can look at the map and go, oh,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: he's literally like there's a little ravine between me and him.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: He is standing on a bench on this little finger,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: and he's like, that's strut zone, Like that's where he
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: calls hens in from. And so you give it some time,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: let him drift off, and then you got a sneak
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: you know, to where he has been gobbling from and
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: then call from there, and a lot of times he's like, oh,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: like the hen finally showed up, you know, and then
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: he'll come back in. So that's for hung up birds.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: That's one of my favorite things to do.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I like that. Can you describe or is this something
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: that you can typically do You just describe like looking
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: at a map and then being able to clearly identify like,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, that's the kind of place a turkey is
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: going to be striking, like a striking zone. Can you
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: describe any other spots you've noticed in the past that
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: have stood out to you as like, oh, yeah, this
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: is a turkey feature. This is I mean, like there's
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: the like obviously they like open spots right as places
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: they can go. But have there been any other little
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: things or specific kinds of areas that stand out to
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: you when you look at a map or when you're
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: out there on the landscape. And you're like, okay, yeah,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: this is going to be one of those spots. Yeah.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: So the junction of like drainages, whether it's a creak
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: or just like low, you know, just a drainage. So
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: let's say you have like a you know, a main
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: drainage that runs up and splits up into it, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: so you have these fingers that kind of run up
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: out of where like those drainages all come together. A
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: lot of times on the map, you can see these
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: little benches on those fingers, and turkeys love to hang
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: out on those, so they'll roost in you know, the
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: biggest trees kind of at the top of that, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: two thirds up that drainage. A lot of the time
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: in a big whether it's a cottonwood or a huge
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: oak tree or whatever, a lot of times they're going
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: to roost somewhere where they can pitch off the top
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: of a ridge and not have to aggressively fly up.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: They can kind of fly out to the roost and
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: then they'll pitch down and then they'll work up on
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: top of those little open spots or whatever. But those
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: little benches that are like it might be a little bit,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: it might be a spot where it's like a little
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: bit more open hardwoods. Those spots are just money like
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: little rounded like kind of nobby like little knolls on
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: those benches and stuff. A lot of times if it's
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: let's say it's oak trees or whatever, you can go
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: in there and like the whole thing is scratched up,
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: and it's just places where turkeys like to hang out
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: because they're protected from you know, visibility, and but they
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: still have enough site through that open hardwoods where they
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: just it's a spot where they love to just hang
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: out and pick bugs and scratch leaves and do all
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: the stuff that turkeys do. And the toms will stand
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: there because it gives them a good place to cast
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: gobbles down into those drainages and call hands up to
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: them and then go off and breed. And then he
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: can go back to that strut zone. And yeah, spend
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: time just strutting out there showing off.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Makes a lot of sense. It's so it's funny when
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: if you spend enough time out there in the woods,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: and this is true in the white tail world too, definitely,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: you spend enough time out there, you see these things
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: over and over again. You start making these kind of
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: connections intuitively, Like I'm guessing, when you're walking around the woods,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: you don't have to sit and think hard about what
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: you just described. You just see it and it's like, oh, yeah,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: that's the kind of spot that I've seen this happen
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again, and you're able to
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: interpret both the sign or the topography or bird behavior.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And kind of along those lines, going back to something
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: you talked about earlier about kind of being able to
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: like decipher a bird's mood. That seems like such such
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: an important thing and a lot of decisions we make
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: as turkey hunters. And I heard you and Ben talking
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: on your podcast at one point kind of about you
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: talked about hunting the bird like picking the bird rather
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: than like the spot. And I can't remember if it
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: was you or Ben who said this, but one of
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: you mentioned something that when you're when you're listening to
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: a bird and trying to determine if this is like
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: the bird you're gonna hunt, you're listening for both positioning
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: and intent. Yeah, and and I guess I just would
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: would love to hear a little bit more from your
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: perspective on on what you or him meant by that.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I think I think I get it, but I would
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: love to kind of explore that a little bit more
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: So when you're trying to strike up a bird and
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do with him,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: what does it mean to be thinking about positioning and
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: intent and then how that influences your actions.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you strike up a bird, you know,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: you're trying to figure out, Okay, got it. I finally
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: got a bird to talk like where is he? Like
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: what is he up to right now? And is he
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: above me, below me, you know, on the same level,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: because constantly we're trying to get above the bird or
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: at the very least on the same level. So for positioning,
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: it's like, okay, he just fired up. He was in
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: that bottom. Like we're in a good spot right now.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: We can like maybe shift to the end of this
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: little finger ridge or whatever it might whatever kind of
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: you know, topography we're hunting in, but we can shift
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: to this edge and maybe you know, get him to
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: come in. If we're below the bird, well then it's
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: a way different conversation because you got to it's like, okay,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: that bird. It's really hard to call turkeys downhill because
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: their eyesight is so good, and so it's like, okay,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: how do we get how do we get on his level?
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: How do we get above him to call him up
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: to us? And then it's like scramble looking at the map,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out like, okay, I think he gobbled
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: from right here last. Okay, if we take this little
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: like micro drainage like up the back of this thing
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: and basically sprint, we can you know, get up and
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: around him and you know, try to get into a
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: position where we're like, okay, we've got you know, it
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: looks like we can follow these trees here and get
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: up where we'll be eighty ninety yards above him, you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: or away from him, but above him, and then we
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: can try to call from there. And then if that
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: doesn't work, but he's still talking, okay, so it's like,
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: go back to the map, figure out. Okay, it seems
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: like he's drifting kind of down this, you know, like
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: he's working a trail or whatever, like down along the
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: ridge line. It's like, all right, let's bail off and
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: try to get out and cut him off and get out,
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: you know, back up and call again. So for positioning,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: we are just constantly trying to get above the turkeys
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: makes life a lot easier. I can't I can't tell
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: how many times i've you know, you get a bird
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: of fire up and you can't move, and then you
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: sit down and they stand up there out of you
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: and just oh. And then you know, you call oh,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: and then they do that for fifteen minutes and they
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: call back, and then they walk away because they're they
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: you know, they're like, well, I should see you by now.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: And then intent is just that same thing. It's just
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: trying and this takes just lots of gobbles. It's like
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: hearing lots of gobbles. It just sounds different. It's like
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: you can sense, you can sense the excitement like in
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: it somehow.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: So kind of going back to what we were talking
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: about the Yeah, yeah.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: It's just like you can almost tell like they're alone
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: kind of thing, like like if they're with a group
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: of hens or whatever, it's like it's like a half
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: hearted you know, like they'll gobble, but it's not like,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: you know, ah, their toes kind of thing.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You mentioned the topography impact there on whether or
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: not you're gonna, you know, try to set up on
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: a gobbler. What are some other habitat features or terrain
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: features that influence, you know, either where you want to
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: set up or whether or not you want to approach
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: a turkey from this angle or this you know angle,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. What are some of those other habitat
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: features that you're thinking.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: About so constantly thinking about barriers, so whether that's a creek,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: a brush line, a fence, anything that will hinder a
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: like shrutters when they're strutting and they're working their way
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: and they do not like to cross like thick stuff,
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: and they don't like to cross creeks very often. You
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: can every once in a while, you know, have called
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: birds across a creek or whatever. But most of the time,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: when you get a bird to strike up or you're
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: looking at the features, you want to be on the
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: same side of whatever that barrier is with them. You know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago we called in a Nick
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Andrews and Mike come on. They called the bird underneath
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the barbed wire fence, and it was like god, like,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: that just doesn't happen. Most of the time you get
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: a bird start strutting, they're on the other side of
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the fence and they just struck back and forth. On
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: the other side of that fence. It's like they you know,
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: lose their mind. They can't figure out how to cross anything.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: So that's definitely something that we're looking at, is like, Okay,
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: we know they like say, you know there's birds roosted
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: in there, and you're looking at the mat and be like, okay,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: well if I can, I need to get to the
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: other side of that fence in that pasture to try
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: to hunt those birds, because it's going to be really
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: hard when they pitch down or if they're moving across,
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: it's going to be really hard to call them across
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: one of those barriers.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of like rooster and birds, one of the
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: things that I have debated frequently with buddies and something
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about a lot, and I've kind of settled
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: on what I prefer is, you know, the decision of
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: how to start your morning. Some people really love to
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: like roost a bird or I guess let's say, let's
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: take a step back, and some people will make assumptions
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: about where birds are roosted and say, all right, we're
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: going to go into that spot and set up close
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: to this place and hope that they're roosted there. The
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: way we think that they should be and kind of
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: go on all in on a spot or a scroup
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: of birds and other folks or myself. In many cases,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: if I can't like guaranteed rooster bird the night before,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I prefer oftentimes to just go to like a good
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: listening spot and wait until I can really confirm Okay,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: now I know where some are. And then you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have a great first thing off the roost
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: set up, because by the time I hear them and
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: them able to move over there, you know, it's it's
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: getting light enough that I can't safely get close close,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: but I know, like, okay, there's birds here. I can
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: get in the right place, general direction of where I
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: think they're going to go, and then play them off
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: that that tends to be the way I go more
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: often than not. But you what are your thoughts on
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: that and in the pros and cons of either approach.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: When I first started turkey hunting, I was all about like, okay,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: got birds roosted or I think I know what tree
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: they're in. I was trying to get as tight into
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: the roost as possible. But as time has gone on,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: like I mean, it's more than fifty percent of the time,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: where even if you get in tight on a tree,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: they'll pitch down and walk the other way. And some
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: of the time it's just because that's the direction they
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: picked that day, and some of the time it's because,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: you know, you call that them in the tree, or
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: call that them when they first hit the ground, and
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: the hens didn't like another hen being in there, and
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: they just drug drug those toms away. So I'm definitely
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: way more into like, get in there to a good
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: listening spot, you know, somewhere I can you know, be
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: up and above like, you know, we hunt a lot
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: out west, so I'm always thinking about like stuff that
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: we hunt out there. But it's like getting the spots
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: where like, Okay, I can listen to three drainages here
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: and be like, okay, there's a tom gobbling you know,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: down drainage one and three, and we'll you know, make
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: a move on one of them and then be like,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: well that didn't work. Then we look background, try to
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: make a you know, move on bird number three. So
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: I'm definitely way more in that camp most of the time.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Most of the birds that I've killed in the last
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: call it five years have been between nine and noon,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: and so like you know, right off the roost birds
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: it's maybe two three of them that where that's worked.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: And so I'm definitely definitely way more in favor of
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: like not sleeping in I don't do that typically, but
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: getting up, like not feeling like I have to be
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: there at you know, three thirty in the morning to
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: be sitting under that roost tree.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you have a different set of I don't know,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: like like places you would go check or things that
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: you do based on the time of day. So you
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: mentioned like in the morning you like go to a
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: listening spot and do what you've described, and you talked
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: earlier about how you know, you like to move around
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: a lot more of a running gun approach find the
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: right bird. But does that look different at six am
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: versus ten am, versus two in the afternoon versus seven Definitely?
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean obviously, right away in the morning, you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: you're hoping they're gobbling on the roost and you can
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: kind of like move in that general direction and kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: of and then figure out, you know, if they're still
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: talking when they hit the ground, you can make a
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: play on that later in the morning. Typically, you know
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: it's walking ridge lines, you know, and just working through country,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: or it might be you know, if there's a big
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: road system on a national forest or whatever. You know,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: it's driving covering ground. You know, get to spots where
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: when you cast your call it's going to be heard
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: by lots of different you know, possible birds, and then
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: see if you can get one fired up that way.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: You know, in the afternoon, a lot of time they're
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: just kind of especially if it's hot, you know, a
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: lot of times they're just in the shade, kind of
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: loafing around. They're gonna be a little bit more lethargic.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: It's gonna be hard to get them to talk back.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: So that afternoon I find is a great time for
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: a nap, and then going into the evening. Going into
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: the evening, I don't do a ton of evening hunts,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Like if the opportunity presents itself, like I'm definitely going
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: to go after bird if it's fired up, But most
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: of the time in the evenings I'm just thinking about
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: trying to find birds for the next morning. So it's
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: just trying to put eyes on stuff going to bed
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: or at least listen to.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Them going to bed.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Later in the evening.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: So here's a risk reward scenario that I've felt myself
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: or encounter myself. You're doing just what you just describe.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: You go out there in the evening, you want to
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: figure out where some birds are, and you get one
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: that's fired up. But you're down to the last I
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: don't know, you know, maybe half hour, and you're thinking
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: anytime now they're going to be you know, heading up,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: flying up into a tree. And then you're stuck with
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: this decision of Man, they're fired up. Do I try
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: to make a move on them, or do I risk
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: blowing them up and out of here and then it
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: ruins my morning where I might have a better chance.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: How do you think through that one?
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: That depends on how far we are in the trip.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: You know, for down to the last day or two,
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: I'm probably gonna try to put a conservative play on
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: that bird that's fired up. But most of the time
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: I'm not willing to risk like blowing up a roost
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: and you know, bumping a bunch of birds that are
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: just about to go up, because like you said, man
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: it a lot of times it can just blow it
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: for the next morning and they're all you know, they
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it can work to your advantage if you've got
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: a bunch of birds that are scattered and they're trying
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: to like, you know, group back up the next day.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: But more often than not, when I have you know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: done it the wrong way and blown a whole bunch
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: of birds out of the roofs and they fly every
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: which way the next day does not go great.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Have you ever tried to do an ambush on
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: a roost location in the evening where like, man, you're
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: just like they're always roosting up in this corner. I'm
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: going to set up right beneath it and try to
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: catch them on the way back.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Yep, And that will work. But it's also the way
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: that I have ruined or blown up roosts more more
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: often than not, because like there's birds working back in
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: and you start hearing stuff whatever. Well then they all
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: start flying up too, like out of range. It's like,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: oh boy, no, I gotta I gotta try to sneak
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: out of here. And that's hard sometimes if you don't
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: sit until like it's dark dark.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a doozy. Yeah. What about what's your
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: how often you using decoys? How do you like to
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: use them. What's that? What's that look like?
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: I I don't mind using decoys at all. What I
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: don't like about decoys is carrying them around. So if
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: if we're hunting stuff where we're covering lots of ground,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: almost never carry them. You know, if I'm hunting like
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: we you know, we use decoys in Texas. It was James,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: you know, youth hunt. That was awesome, no problem carrying
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: decoys in We weren't walking all that far. You know,
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna take my wife out and try to get
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: her bird. We'll definitely use decoys, you know, if I
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: once in a blue moon, I'll archery hunt absolutely using decoys.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: But a lot of the time I'm not carrying them anymore.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: It's not that I don't think it's sporting, and it's
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: not that I don't think it's you know, like it's
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: very effective. It has it's has nothing to do with
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: me being a purist turkey hunter and everything to do
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: with me like I'm already carrying camera gear and calls
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: and a shotgun and you know, all that stuff, and
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: I just it's like one more thing to jam into
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: the pack that's always awkward to carry, and half the
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: time that I've used decoys in the past, Like you know,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: you get them set up and the bird fires up
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: behind you and then you're making a move and you're
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: calling the bird into something you know, not by your
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: decoys and killing, you know, killing a bird. I had
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: one morning, I think it was probably four or five
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: years ago. I went hiked in about a mile carried
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: decoys in because the birds were roosted on private outside
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: of the public and I was like, okay, if I
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: can get them get a visual, you know, get them
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: to see these decoys, maybe I can draw one across
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: and uh and get it killed. And they all gobbled
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: up on this roost. They pitched down, started working down
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: a field kind of down hill away from me, and
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: I made a big move, grabbed the decoys, ran down,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: kind of got out in front of them, set the
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: decoys up, got set back down, and they were just
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: on the other side of burn so they never saw me,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: and they're moving away. Well then I looked back to
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: where I had been sitting earlier in the morning and
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: there's just a giant tom right on top of the ridge, strutting.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: So I sprinted back and I was able to get
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: like use the topography to stay out of you. And
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: I sprinted back and I got set up no decoys,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: you know, had the tripod with the little gilly suitover
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: or whatever, and got my gun up, and that a
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: couple hens crossed under the fence onto that little chunk,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: and that Tom came following in, and I ended up
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: shooting him just in that way with no decoys, And
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: so I was like after that, I was like, I
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: just I don't know, unless I'm hunting like incredibly open
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: country or I'm definitely gonna be in a blind, I'm
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: probably not carrying around that much.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is true or not, but
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's maybe a growing number of people
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: who are doing that and realizing that you don't have
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: have to have decoys yep to pull off a successful hunt.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Obviously they can be very very useful. But if you're
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: in a scenario like what you're describing, running a gun
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: in a bunch, not using decoys, does that change your
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: strategy with setups when you're choosing where to set up
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: and how you're setting up on a bird, Does the
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: fact that you're not bringing decoys change where you're actually
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: gonna plunk your butt down and try to get a
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: bird to come into and how.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, because you're just trying to figure out
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of times when you're calling a
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: bird in and they're coming in, a lot of times
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: they're going to try to get the site advantage on you.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: And so when you're setting up, you're like, we're trying
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: to get to places where we think like the bird
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: is gonna get to like or you know, be within
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: shooting range of like where that bird's going to try
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: to come find you and see you. And that's really
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: what we're looking for. Whereas you know, with decoys, you
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: can you can be a little bit more kind of
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: relaxed about it and you kind of set up and
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: as long as the decoys are very visible, you know,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: let's say the bird pops up on the ridge one
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty yards down, well, then if they have
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: something to focus on, you can kind of call them
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: down that ridgeline to the decoys. But if you don't
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: have decoys, you definitely got to try to figure out
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: like I think he's gonna you know, Okay, I looked
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: at the map, this ridge connects with this ridge, and
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: he's kind of on that bench over there, like we
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: need to move seventy five yards, you know, down the
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: ridge to this tree, and so we think, you know,
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: he's gonna work up that to this kind of juncture point,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: you know, crossroads and look at all that kind of
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: stuff and figure that out.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: And would you say that in doing that, you're typically
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: avoiding open areas more often because of the risk of
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: being on the edge of an open place and they
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: pop up on the other edge of it and they
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: look around and they can't see the sound that they thought.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: They can't see the maker of the sound, right, I mean,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: that seems to be one of the major risks of
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: putting yourself in a position like that without a decoy.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, especially if it's a big open area. I mean,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: if you're trying to call him to a field edge
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: or whatever, it's really hard if you don't have that visual.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: A lot of times though, what we'll do is, you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: if we have to kind of set up, like at
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: the edge of an opening, we'll have one person do
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: the elk hunting play and just keep dropping back and
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: calling and like like the hen is moving away and
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: kind of pull that bird past the shooter. Then we've
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: had good luck with that too.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, does any of that look different or I guess
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: maybe even zooming out even further, what is different from
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: region to region, whether it's how you're setting up, or
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: how you're calling, or anything else you've you know, you
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: were just in Texas the other day. I'm sure you're
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: gonna be all over the West and maybe some of
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: the Midwest states again this year too. Is there any
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: major standouts to you that like, oh, yes, when I'm
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: in this region, X is different when I'm in that region?
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Why is different? Yeah?
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: I think the biggest difference between hunting the West and
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: everything else is the size of the parcel you're hunting.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: You know, just because there's so many acres that you
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: can cover most of time, where you know, you don't
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: have to be all that careful. You can kind of
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: just cover lots of ground, whereas if you're hunting you know,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: the South and the East. A lot of times you're hunting,
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: you know, you might have a forty acre parcel hunt
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: or less, and and so you're going to be hunting
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: birds a lot different than I'm explaining, because if you're
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: trying to you know, if you've got call it two
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: tags for the season and you've only got access to
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: hunt that little chunk, but it has birds on it.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: You're not just going to go all gung ho and
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: walk all through and try to strike up a bird.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe push him off, because if you pressure
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: him so much right away, you know that bird's not
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: coming back. Yeah, And so I think you gotta It's
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: a little bit more of a delicate situation when you
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: look at different regions, especially like the East, Southeast, the
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: South where you're hunting smaller parcels. It's just you gotta
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: kind of you start on the edges and slowly move
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: in kind of do that.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Is there anything from the turkey behavior standpoint that's been
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: really different?
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: You know, Western birds travel a lot more, you know
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Miriam's birds, like we'll cover tons of ground most time.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: They're not roosting in the same tree every night. You know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: I've watched birds, you know, like there was one morning
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: two years ago we watched a bird pitch down and
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: cover a mile like it was like a little over
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: a mile, and we blew it. We should have killed
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: that bird all day long, but we like we watched
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: him cover three quarters a mile towards our direction. We
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: thought he was gonna shift like through this little drainage,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: and so we moved and then he gobbled from the
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: tree we were sitting at the start of the day.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: But then he just kept going like he covered another
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: you know, half three quarters of a mile going away.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: And so those those move lots of ground. You know,
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: A hunted Tennessee a few years back, and it seemed
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: like birds would pitch down and they kind of had
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: like their zones. You know, they might move around sprawl
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: or go to a field edge or whatever and you know,
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: eat and pick and whatever. But a lot of times
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: they weren't covering like vast distances. And I think most
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: of that has to do with they have everything they need,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: you know, in one little location, so they don't have
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: to go. But it's also just the difference in subspecies.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So speaking of differences, you hunted with our mutual
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: buddy Tony Peterson. Oh, yeahs back, and it seems like
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: he has like a very different approach than you do
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: to turkey hunting, right, he's very much Yeah, he sits
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: there and sits there all day. Yeah, twiddles his thumbs
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: and does whatever else Tony does when he's in a
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: room By himself. What what was that like being forced?
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: U may not forced, but what was it like, uh
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: kind of being around that different approach? And did you
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: take anything away from that? Did you learn anything about
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: how he goes about things that maybe you were able
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: to add to your repertoire or was it mostly I
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: never want to do what Tony does well.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: I think I like, I think that I used to
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: turkey hunt that way a lot more and spend a
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: lot of time in one location. I think I would
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: lose my mind now like doing it that way, just
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: because I think, like, I think it's more fun to
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: cover lots of ground, But that's just my personality. And
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: so luckily on that hunt, Tony was hunting with a
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: camera guy and I was hunting with a camera guy.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: I'd like to say that we were more successful, but
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: there was just very low population of birds in there,
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: so neither of us killed anything.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: We were equally unsuccessful, probably the most.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Boring turkey hunt for people to watch. So I apologize
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: to people that had to watch that mediater episode on YouTube.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: But now I think, you know, I think there's things
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: to be said about the way he does it because
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: he's very successful. I mean hunting Minnesota, Wisconsin, Midwest states.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: He knows the patterns of the birds in the areas
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: that he hunts, and he's like, Okay, if we set
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: a blind here and have good decoys and you spend
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: the amount of time birds will be by this area
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: like we're gonna kill a turkey, and that's it can
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: be very very successful doing it that way. I mean,
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: especially if you find fresh sign. You know, if you
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: find a little flat that has tons of scratching in
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: it and you know, tracks and lots of poop and
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: all that stuff that's fresh, it's like, okay, let's just
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: post up here for a while, you know. And that's
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: something like regardless of where you're hunting, that's something you
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: could do for an afternoon and just you know, hey,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: if you need a spot to chill and you don't
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: want to go take a nap, just like go out
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: in the wood where you know there's fresh sign and
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: you might have birds kind of work through that area.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: But but yeah, I still like, you know, I like
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: traveling around.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: Well, that's one of the cool things about turkey hunting,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: and in many parts of the country at least, is
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: that there are enough birds and enough places to hunt
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: them that you can kind of pick your own adventure. Oh,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: you can make it the kind of experience you want.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: There's no one set way you have to do it.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: And I guess that's true with most hunting, but maybe
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: for some reason with turkeys, it feels like even more
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: so I think it just a little more forgiving maybe
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: in some ways.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's the accessibility, right, It's like you're, you know,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: most of the time, the tags, even if you're a
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: non residents, around one hundred dollars for a tag, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: so I think there's a it feels like there's like
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: less pressure and the pressure, you know, it's instead of
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: spending seven hundred dollars on a deer tag where you're
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like I'm gonna hunt them this way
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: because I know I can kill them this way. Or
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: it's like turkeys, it's like that's you know, I've got
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: a tag and I'm going to the state. I'm gonna
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: go figure it out.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I also love the social dynamic that
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: turkey hunting allows that just seems so different than a
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: deer hunt. Especially elk Elk has this, I guess in
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: some ways, but I feel like you know, you can
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: go out on a turkey hunt with a group with
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: like three of you or a couple of you and
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: have success and you work together as a team, and
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: and uh, you know you can just again someone that
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: goes back to the pressure too, like you just feel
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: less pressure for some reason. But man, it is maybe
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: some of the very most maybe the most fun I
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: have hunting all year. Yeah, just out there with some friends,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: goofing around trying stuff.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: It would Yeah. And my favorite is, uh, you know,
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: two or three people, because you can do like the
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: compass play where it's like, okay, you have you know, say,
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: let's say it's three people. If one person is trying
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: to film, so like the trigger guy and the camera
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: guy will be in the middle of the compass, the
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: turkey is always going to be north and then whoever's calling,
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: if you can move, you can kind of like spin
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: that compass around, like as that bird is shifting, and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: so if the bird is moving to the right, you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: you move to the left to keep that you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: the the hunter or the guy on the trigger in
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: the middle of that compass and to try to pull
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: that bird pass like that's and like you said, the
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: social aspect of it is a blast, you know, leaving
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: at three in the morning to go, you know, run
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: to the gas station and get bad coffee and oatmeal
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: cream pies and then you know, go to the woods
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: and listen to you know, listen to a twenty five
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: pound dinosaur gobble at. You know, every sound that is
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: being made in best It's amazing, It's the absolute best.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: So so this is this is a quick and fast
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: kind of run through some ideas that is not in
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: any way representative of the million different ways you can
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: go about this and the and the many other tactics
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: and ideas and approaches. The wire Humet podcast isn't the
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: place to get all those things. We're just giving you
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: a little taste of turkey. But there is a place
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: for a lot of turkey, no how, which is your podcast?
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: You and Ben? Can you give folks the rundown of
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: what the roost is all about? So if people are
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: fired up about turkeys right now and really want to
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: go deep and keep this thing going, where can they go?
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: How do they connect with your guys content?
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we start had Roused four years ago now,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: so this is season four that we've got going, and
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: season one was really fun because we did nine episodes,
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: but across like we wanted to do like turkey hunting
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: eight to ze and so that first season we had
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: Will Primos, Dave Owens, Aaron war Britton, Lake Pickle, Jason Hart,
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Jesse Griffiths who talked all about cooking turkeys, Mike Chamberlain.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: Mike Chamberlain, so we got to learn all about the
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: biology of the turkey. And then I'm missing one more
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: I should have I should should be prepared on this.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: It was four years ago. That was pretty anyway. Anyway,
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: we we wanted to go through and have everybody explain
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: different parts of it. So we talked about, you know,
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: the history of the turkey hunter and the wild turkey
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: with Will, and we talked about different strategies, you know,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: calling all the gear, like went through the whole thing.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: So whether you're a novice turkey hunter or like, you know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: have been turkey hunting a long time, I think that
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: it's a cool resource for people to go listen to
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: and learn a lot about it. And then since then
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: we've just been telling turkey stories and kind of all
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: the debauchery that has happened in our travels all over
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: the country and typically Ben tries to plan too many
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: hunts in two short days and so we end up
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: we hunt for like eighteen hours in one location and
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: then we drive seven hours to hunt somewhere else. So
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: it keeps us on our toes. But it's been fun.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's called Roost and this year we kind
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: of got more aggressive with it and we've got all
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: of the social channels going. It's all at Roost Show,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: so that's Instagram, threads and TikTok, and then we'll have
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: a YouTube channel Roost Show, and we'll have the first
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: episode from Texas out here in the next week or so.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: But we're doing semi live content kind of the whole
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: spring and just keep the you know, keep the turkey
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: fire burning.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Awesome, man, I love it. You guys are doing a
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: good job. You're always a good time to either spend
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: time with or listen to from Afar and I appreciate
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: that about you guys. If people want to connect with
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: like your personal stuff too, where can they connect with
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Sam on Instagram? Is there anything new with public Lantes
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: or any other projects yet?
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: And yeah, work, Yeah, if anybody wants to follow me,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: it's just at Sam soul and then public Lantees is
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: a company and my brother and I own shirts and hoodies.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Five bucks from every item we sell goes back to conservation.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: And we're in the middle of a rebrand, so we
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: are just working on new logos and all that brand
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: identity stuff that's been you know, pretty pretty quiet over
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: the last couple of years, just trying to figure out
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: which direction we want to go. So we've got a
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: cool graphic designer working on that right now. We'll have
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: a new website out here the next month or so.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: And then got some big ideas for this year, working
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: with different organizations to help you know, funnel membership to
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: those organizations and raise a bunch of money and you know,
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: keep going with projects like Stamp It Forward and everything else.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: That we do.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: So we're fired up to do things a little bit
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: different this year.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: Awesome man, Well, I will be following from AFAR and
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: as always, very appreciative of the way you've been using
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: your platform over the years, you know, making sure that
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: we are not only enjoying these public lands and wildlife,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: but also giving back and doing what we can to
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: keep it all around for the future. And you certainly
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: you certainly let in that regard. So man, thank you
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: for that, Thanks for chatting about all this.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me on. And anytime anybody wants
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: to talk turkey, just send a message or follow along
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: at roost and everything a word up to it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: It's a blast, absolutely all right, and that's going to
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: do it. Appreciate you joining me, Hope this got you
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: as fired up as I am for turkeys. Now after
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: this conversation, I am raring and ready to go. So
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: until next time, thank you for being here, and stay
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: wired to hunt.