Frustrating turkeys

[GrandFir]

You asked for it:

17 Sneaky Late-Season Turkey Hunting Tips for Targeting Pressured Toms

Turkey behavior is changing now, so your hunting tactics should change too. Here are our best late-season turkey hunting tips.

www.outdoorlife.com

This is my tactic (4th one listed in the article):

Be More Passive and Sit Heavy Transition Routes:

Sometimes, you just have to deer hunt them. At this point, you’ve seen where birds like to go and the routes they like to use. Consider no calling or decoying and just set up along these known paths of travel. It’s boring … but can be an effective turkey hunting methodology that few have the patience and dedication to implement.

I got much better at killing turkeys after I started focusing more of the day sitting patiently at spots where turkeys move through, but every season I have to relearn it!

 

[Amos Keeto]

Turkey hunting can be easy and be almost impossible. That’s what keeps me so into it…

That said pressure really really really screws up turkeys. They need like one interaction with a hunter to screw then up until next spring. I get pretty anxious if I get 3 days into my season here on public and don’t have one killed because it seems to take about that long for them to get real damn screwy then I spend the rest of the season trying to find one to act right.

Several years back, the wife and me had to go to town.
"On the way, let's stop at the creek and see if we can call up a turkey!"
She agreed.
We set up in a "hide" I had built out of limbs, sticks and weeds and whatever else was laying around.
It was about 11AM, warm and sunny! I began tossing the occasional "blind call" out.
Right after noon I told the wife, "One more call and we'll leave."
Just as I put the slate down, she punches me on the shoulder and points west. About 100 yards away, a lone gobbler is headed south.
I threw a few more calls out. He totally ignored it.
He stopped and plopped down in a sanding bowl and dusted, stopping to preen occasionally. He moved over to another dusting spot and repeated the process.
He moved three more times and began to wander off.
I called.
He returned to thr dusting spot and did it all over!
He finally spotted the deke and began slowly walking and stopping to feed.
After watching this one bird jank around for like an hour and a half, he finally stepped out from behind a big pecan tree about 15 yards away to check out the deke!

That pile of "crap" is the "hide"!

 

[Amos Keeto]

Okee dokee Okie!
I got up to go hunting Monday. HUGE puddle of water in the kitchen floor!
Off we go to town to purchase a new freezer!

Murphy's law has gone into full effect!
Tuesday, 5/12/26
I get to the blind a few minutes after 8am. Just as I get my gear unloaded, a distant gobble breaks the silence. I race off to park and hobble back to the blind.
By the time I get set up, it's right at 8:30am.
A few blind calls, unanswered, and I relax.
It's a little after 9am when a dark spot pops up in the middle of the wheat pasture. Probably just another crow. Binoculars show it's a turkey! Probably 300 yards away. I begin to make a few, spread out calls.
Two more spots appear. It's three toms!
Maybe! Just maybe!
They angle slightly towards me and continue across the pasture.
The fence corners about 200 yards away. They stop in the shade of the elm trees to establish "pecking order"!
From the "upper" (west) wheat pasture, another tom joins the gang!
They drift back out into the pasture, again, angling slightly towards me. They end up across the pasture at the WMA fence.
Finally get one of them to look my direction.
What a bird! Gotta weigh 22, maybe 23 pounds and looks like he's dragging a paint brush! He's the "Boss" bird of the little group. About 1030am, they wander back across the fence and disappear onto WMA land.
Well, rats!
Nearly 11am, a turkey appears from the WMA. I was as thr bird slowly feeds back and forth, disappearing in the tall grass from time to time. I make soft, feeding purr sounds and wait!
The bird feeds up under a elm tree. That's when I finally see at least 3 poults! They are "tiny"! Can't be more than 2 or 3 days old!
When I finally got up to go home at 2pm, she was still feeding back towards WMA property!
No gobbler, but another kinda show!
Great to see a good hatch this year!
You can't see the poults, but they're there!