With turkey seasons in southern states already in full swing, it is time to start preparing for what could be your most successful turkey season yet. How will you make it your most successful, you ask? Well we caught up with Ray Eye, considered by many to be the foremost turkey hunting authority in the business, to tell us his tips to bagging that award winning gobbler.
Preparation
1. Practice calling religiously months before the season and right up to the season. Realism and confidence kills turkeys. Practice outside as well. Record your calling then set the recorder in the woods and walk away about 50 yards and listen to hear how you sound. Listen to as many recordings of live wild turkeys as possible. Watch a wide variety of every DVD of turkey hunting you can get your hands on, not to watch the people, but to watch and listen to turkeys.
2. Turkey guns are seldom handled. In fact, for many, turkey guns are only shot once a year, maybe on just one weekend. To maximize success, it is vital to familiarize yourself with your turkey gun. Shoot light loads at a couple rounds of clay birds and also from a sitting position at a target. Pattern your turkey gun from the base of a tree just like your hunting set up, using the loads you plan to hunt with for patterning. Wear everything you wear when hunting, including vest, face mask and gloves.
3. Scout, scout, scout! Just prior to the season spend as much time as possible listening and watching turkeys in your hunting area. Low impact scouting from a distance will tell you turkey locations, feeding areas, and direction of travel from their roosts. Keep human activity to a minimum prior to season.
Hunting
4. How you hunt and how you call depends on knowing your turkeys in your hunting area.
There is more to spring hunting than the mating season. Turkey seasonality and pecking order are major factors in killing spring gobblers. Again, watch and listen to turkeys as much as possible. They will tell you how to hunt them.
5. Slow down. All of us live in such a fast paced world these days where we have to have it now, in a drive-thru world. You’re on turkey time when hunting so slow the pace way down, move to set up slowly, sit longer, sit still, have more patience and you’ll kill more turkeys.
6. Roost turkeys (going out to the woods before dark and listening where turkeys are roosting in trees). Roosting will increase your odds the next morning
7. Set up tight (or close) on gobblers, getting as tight as the terrain will allow. There are more turkeys today than ever and thus more hen competition. Get tight, call hard, and try to kill him early before the hens get to him. Roosting and finding the right set up the night before will make this possible.
8. Calling is everything so do not be afraid to call. Calling has absolutely no effect on shutting turkeys down – people do. Turkeys are not call shy but turkeys can become people shy. Human movement, hunter activity and excessive hunting pressure shuts down turkeys. Calling does not shut down turkeys.
9. Learn and practice several types of turkey calls and let them hear it – you have to challenge turkey’s pecking order to kill more turkeys. Your season does not always fall when it is a perfect world when most hens are on the nest and woods are full of gobbling two year olds. That is a very small window of opportunity. Listen and watch turkeys carefully when hunting. They will tell you how to call and hunt them.
10. Turkey hunting is not a competition and never should be seen as such. Who shoots the biggest turkey, the number of kills, and who is thought better (most of the time by themselves) really does not matter. Don’t allow peer pressure in your turkey hunting. Do not get caught up in “You have to kill a turkey”. That is not what makes turkey hunting a great sport. It’s the experience. It’s about having fun. Enjoy being in the outdoors and share turkey hunting with family and friends. Share with others what you have learned and always invite new hunters and the kids to hunt with you. That’s what makes me and most other turkey hunters keep coming back for more year after year.
Ray Eye, 2009 Outdoor conservation communicator of the year, has more than forty five years of turkey hunting experience. He is regarded in most circles as the foremost turkey hunting authority in the country. For more than thirty years Ray Eyes hunting adventures have appeared in countless newspapers, national magazines, videos and television shows, making Ray one of the most published, photographed, and quoted outdoor celebrities today. For more information or to see where and when you can meet, hear or see Ray, visit www.rayeye.com/.