I’m looking to help a friend get his first turkey and learn something myself at the same time. I’ve been hunting turkeys for over 20 years, but consider myself a relative novice, as it’s never been something I’ve really focused on. I’d love to hear some tips and words of wisdom on roosting and locating turkeys in the afternoon and evening from those of you hunting similar areas.
I live in Northern New England. It’s not the southeast, but there’s a decent # of turkeys around me. They are mostly concentrated in the valleys around agriculture and at low elevation. However, those areas are extremely difficult to get permission on and I dont live in an area with much of that terrain, so 99% of what I have access to is big woods at slightly higher elevations. When I say big, I mean 5000+, often 10,000+ contiguous acres, sometimes much more. It’s a lot of northern hardwood forest, beach, red maple, sugar maple, interspersed with hemlock and pines, and often scattered red oak on ridges and south facing slopes at lower elevations. In most places, you cannot really listen from a road, you have to hike in. Theres roosting trees, knobs, ridges, water everywhere, so there isnt much Ive found to help you narrow down where to target, either. Hunting pressure is there, but low compared to other areas.
I’ve killed turkeys there before, but I’ve always had difficulty locating them, and really relied a lot on luck. I have never successfully located a turkey there in the evening, and that’s specifically what I’d like tips on.
I’ve seen turkeys there in the fall deer hunting many times, I hear them gobbling in the spring occasionally, and I’ve killed them there before in the spring. It’s relatively easy to find their scratching and scat in the woods, but they seem to cover a lot of ground and not really hang out in one small area for too long, so reliably finding and patterning them has completely eluded me. I hear stuff like “go out in the late afternoon and listen for them to fly up to roost”, but with such a huge area to cover the odds of you being close enough to a turkey to hear them fly up is approaching zero. It seems like they don’t often gobble on their own in the afternoon much, and I have not had any success using locator calls to get a gobble at any time of day…entirely possible thats me, or I may just be in the wrong place. Our legal shooting hours end at noon if that matters.
So, those of you who have hunted bigger woods areas with sparse turkey populations, what are your tips and tricks for locating birds in the afternoon or evening? Are you walking and calling? If so, what is your technique, are you owl hooting, using a crow call, a coyote howl, or are you doing turkey yelps? Or something else? How much ground are you trying to cover? Thoughts on time of day, etc?
Love to hear what works for you, as detailed as you are willing, Im interested in hearing it. Thanks in advance.
Photo from a couple weeks ago is one example—everything to the sunset/skyline and beyond is one contiguous huntable area with no roads.
I live in Northern New England. It’s not the southeast, but there’s a decent # of turkeys around me. They are mostly concentrated in the valleys around agriculture and at low elevation. However, those areas are extremely difficult to get permission on and I dont live in an area with much of that terrain, so 99% of what I have access to is big woods at slightly higher elevations. When I say big, I mean 5000+, often 10,000+ contiguous acres, sometimes much more. It’s a lot of northern hardwood forest, beach, red maple, sugar maple, interspersed with hemlock and pines, and often scattered red oak on ridges and south facing slopes at lower elevations. In most places, you cannot really listen from a road, you have to hike in. Theres roosting trees, knobs, ridges, water everywhere, so there isnt much Ive found to help you narrow down where to target, either. Hunting pressure is there, but low compared to other areas.
I’ve killed turkeys there before, but I’ve always had difficulty locating them, and really relied a lot on luck. I have never successfully located a turkey there in the evening, and that’s specifically what I’d like tips on.
I’ve seen turkeys there in the fall deer hunting many times, I hear them gobbling in the spring occasionally, and I’ve killed them there before in the spring. It’s relatively easy to find their scratching and scat in the woods, but they seem to cover a lot of ground and not really hang out in one small area for too long, so reliably finding and patterning them has completely eluded me. I hear stuff like “go out in the late afternoon and listen for them to fly up to roost”, but with such a huge area to cover the odds of you being close enough to a turkey to hear them fly up is approaching zero. It seems like they don’t often gobble on their own in the afternoon much, and I have not had any success using locator calls to get a gobble at any time of day…entirely possible thats me, or I may just be in the wrong place. Our legal shooting hours end at noon if that matters.
So, those of you who have hunted bigger woods areas with sparse turkey populations, what are your tips and tricks for locating birds in the afternoon or evening? Are you walking and calling? If so, what is your technique, are you owl hooting, using a crow call, a coyote howl, or are you doing turkey yelps? Or something else? How much ground are you trying to cover? Thoughts on time of day, etc?
Love to hear what works for you, as detailed as you are willing, Im interested in hearing it. Thanks in advance.
Photo from a couple weeks ago is one example—everything to the sunset/skyline and beyond is one contiguous huntable area with no roads.
