Pennsylvania Game News - March 2012 - 28

proximately where they roosted the previous night, you can position yourself before daylight about 80 yards from them, provided you can approach that close quietly and not be detected. Keep in mind that turkeys roost over a fairly large area and one may be closer than you think. You don’t want to spook it by setting up too close. One spooked bird might ruin your hunt by alerting the others. In a small woods, turkeys that are spooked by a hunter are likely to run or fly out of the woods to a mountain or a different small woods. (That’s why intentionally busting a flock in the fall and trying to call them back may not payoff. Scattering a flock works better in a mountain situation, because some of the scattered birds often land within a few hundred yards. But birds in a small woods that fly that distance might be out of that woods by the time they land.) The way to hunt a long, narrow strip of woods in farmland or a steep woods above a creek or road is begin to call softly at one end. If no birds answer or appear, you advance about 150 yards and set up and call again. You keep advancing, stopping to call at different locations, until you have hunted the entire strip. If you know where turkeys roost or feed in a narrow woods, or any small woods, you can immediately call near enough to that place to be heard and not seen by the turkeys. Hunt that best place first, and hunt it cautiously. After calling, stay there and keep still for at least 20 minutes. Remember that gobbler that evaded me in the woodlot last spring? He gobbled a week later as I stood listening at daybreak. It took a while to determine that the bird wasn’t in the woodlot, but rather, in a separate strip of woods. I knew from experience that there wasn’t a decent spot to set up to
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call on that brushy, steep strip, but I didn’t have a choice. The only calling location I could find was near the top edge of the steep strip, with an open field on my left. I could see into the brushy woods for just 20 yards or so. I set up and yelped with a diaphragm mouth call, and he answered right away. He was hot. Every time he gobbled, he sounded closer and I strained to glimpse him behind the brush. I wanted to know exactly where he would appear to be ready to shoot. The next time I heard a gobble it sounded not ahead of me but in the field to my left. The tom in front of me had shut up. Possibly I had misjudged his location. I turned my head toward the field and yelped and got an answer. Because I was set up on a slope slightly below the field, I couldn’t see the gobbler and wouldn’t see him unless he walked over to me, and I doubted that he would. He could hear me call but not see a hen. Finally he stopped gobbling. Where was he? Against my better judgment, I slowly raised to one knee and, keeping my head low, peered in the turkey’s direction. He stood fanning about 40 yards away. Ahead of him were two turkeys that I figured were hens. I didn’t take time to look at them closely. I eased to a prone shooting position at the top of the slope and waited for the gobbler to stop fanning and stand tall with his head up. Holding the front bead on my 12-gauge at the base of his neck, I fired and immediately jumped up and hurried toward him. He never moved from that spot. I never knew what happened to the first gobbler. Maybe he was a young tom that had shut up when the longbeard that I killed showed up. The latter bird had been in a field adjacent to the woodlot when I spotted him fanning, and the turkeys ahead of him were about to enter the same small woods. My biggest turkey ever I called a “small woodlot gobbler.” This spring, I’ll try the woodlot again for the one that disappeared. 
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Pennsylvania Game News - March 2012

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