TURKEY TAILS:  DID YOU EVER

By Ole Sarg

Did you ever wonder about the tactics and scenarios used to call turkeys? Sometimes they work and other times they don’t. This is why we need to take more than one call, because we need to find the right combination that will entice that gobbler to come into our shooting range. This also depends on the amount of gobblers in the area, the number of hens with them, etc. When you have a lot of gobblers in an area, you can call the subordinate ones that are looking for their own hen. When you only have a box call, and can only go “yelp yelp yelp”, the gobblers have heard these, yours and all of the hens. When you don’t have any cooperation you need to try something else like a push button call and go “squawk squawk etc.” The main thing is to try other calls, but don’t overdo your calling. The gobblers a lot of times come in quiet, especially the jakes and gobblers that don’t have hens. Even after 30 some years of turkey hunting, I am learning new ways of calling in gobblers. This year was a new experience with me.

      I started scouting turkeys about the 10th of April where I could find them, as in my area they were kind of scarce. I located some, there were three jakes, 2 toms, and one had a big wide bush beard about 7-8 inches long, the other had a narrower beard 9-10 inches long. They both had good spurs, either tom would be ok. The dominant bird was the long beard. The last couple of turkeys I got were jakes, so I was looking for a bigger bird if I could get one. The 1st day of my hunt I was out early. When daylight was breaking I heard them gobble, 3 hens from the north and 1 from the south. This was the story of my day, all hens and no toms. The next day I went out to the same area, daylight came and the toms gobbled. Then I made some calls and guess what! The hens came in again. The toms were about 500 yard from me across a creek. My dilemma was how to get them over to me. The hens left and went towards the gobblers, so I’m debating what to do, if all is lost I’ll have fun. Taking my calls I started cutting and cutting like a couple hens fighting, then I waited. About 20 minutes later I see some hens coming with some jakes, along with the bush beard. I might have taken the bush beard, but they were too close together. Then I see the long beard coming in but I’m out of position. The birds are too tight so I can’t shoot. Waiting to get a tom in the open, the bush beard is clear, no, I’ll wait, the long beard should get clear. Maybe 5 minutes later, it seems like an hour, he is in the clear. One shot with #5’s and I have my 22 pound, 10 inch beard, 1 1/8 inch spurs gobbler at 18 paces. The fate of this tom was all of the hens came to the hen fight and the gobblers followed. Don’t get in a rut, sometimes be creative.

Different strokes for different toms.