Turkey Hunting Tips | Wild Turkey Hunting Strategies, Techniques & Guides

Turkey Hunting Tips - Are you a novice turkey hunter who would like to improve your shotgun skills? When it comes to successful turkey hunting skills, there are many small considerations that you can take that can help you take successful aim at your prey. Here are some tips for improving your turkey hunting skills.

Prepare for Optimal Turkey Hunting Circumstances

Before you prepare to take aim, take the time to set up the right kinds of circumstances for success. Spend the day before you go hunting scouting out the location. Late afternoon is a good time to go turkey scouting. What exactly are you looking for? Look for signs of turkey activity, including, most importantly, turkey sounds. You will want to scout at least until nightfall. When it is dark, turkeys will fly up into the trees to roost for the night. They do this in the evening, close to dark. If you think you may have missed seeing the turkeys going to roost, but you suspect that they are up there in those darkened boughs, you can elicit a response by hooting like an owl or crowing like a bird. This is a good way to get a response from nearby turkeys. However, if you do not hear anything, do not despair. This does not mean that there are no turkeys up in the trees—they may be simply fast asleep or not in your immediate area of the woods. However, if you do hear a response, this means that you have successfully set up your hunting area for the next day. If you are able to make it a practice to note where the turkeys are roosting, you are much more likely to experience a fruitful hunting season the next day.

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Turkey Hunting Tips - Hunting for turkey is not so much different than hunting other game in the woods, but one difference might be the size. To be able to hit such a small target, it is of utmost importance to pattern the shotgun. Not balancing and zeroing the shotgun might keep a hunter from being able to hit that turkey.

There are a few materials available that might help a hunter pattern his gun. For example, many of the better hunting and sports stores offer turkey targets. If a commercially produced target is not preferred, a hunter may draw roughly the size of a turkey’s head on a paper and pin this paper to the usual target used to train.

To properly pattern a gun, targets need to be set up about every ten yards starting at twenty. This means 20 yards from the shooter, 30, 40 and then five yards distance for any targets after the 40 yards one. When shooting at the targets, try out different types and even different brands of ammunition, since most shotguns and rifles have different accuracy levels with different loads. If the hunter is lucky he has one of the few shotguns that is very accurate and there will not be much pattern work necessary. After setting up the targets, the hunter needs to aim at the turkey head. By shooting the head, he will learn several things about the gun (given of course that the shooter is a good shooter). First of all the hunter will learn from his shot pattern, where he has to aim at with the bead of the shotgun to be able to center his shooting pattern on the turkeys head. It will show if the gun is dead on, or maybe a tad bid high or low. As mentioned before, the hunter should try out different loads, so that he can learn which load gives him the best, most accurate pattern.

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Turkey Hunting - Are you interested in becoming experienced in turkey hunting, but you are not sure what the hunting license requirements are? There are many things to check off before you can engage in turkey hunting. Here are some guidelines for how you can fulfill the hunting license requirements that are needed for legal turkey hunting. The requirements for a turkey-hunting license will vary according to your specific state. In general, however, you can expect to fulfill a set of requirements before you are given a turkey-hunting license.

Different Kinds of Hunting Licenses – Which One Do You Need?

There are many different kinds of hunting licenses. Which kind will you need for turkey hunting? It depends on what kind of turkey hunting you would like to do. If you are planning on only doing a little springtime turkey hunting in order to take advantage of the gobbler activity that is common during the spring season, you will usually only need to get a temporary permit from your local game, fish and wildlife department. However, if you are serious about doing some long-term, year-round wild turkey hunting or other kinds of wild game hunting, you will often have to pay more for a full license. Here are some guidelines for getting a long-term hunting license. The ins and outs of getting a license will always depend on your local and state laws, so these are merely guidelines for what you can expect from your local game, fish and wildlife department.

Getting a Recreational License and Permit

In some areas, you can get a so-called recreational license that entitles you to do all kinds of hunting in a specified area. In some cases, you can procure these recreational licenses and permits from the local county tax collector office, or subagents, including local sporting goods stores and other retailers that are known to sell fishing or hunting equipment and which are licensed to sell these recreational licenses and permits. The price of procuring a permit, license or issuance fees will be subject to change depending on the local legislative session, which maintains the fee schedule. Some areas allow the convenience of online recreational license sales, and you can buy directly from the regional department over the Internet.

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Turkey Hunting Tips - If “X” marks the perfect hunting spot, then how can “X” be found? This might be one of a hunter’s questions. There are many things that play a role in finding the perfect hunting spot for turkey hunting and some of the tips will be shared right here.

Finding the perfect turkey hunting spot is not easy and even when it is found, things might still not work the perfectly. A hunter might not be able to tag and bag that turkey. First of all, to find the perfect hunting spot, it is necessary to scout the area considered for hunting. Often it is possible to spot turkeys in the area and if there were turkeys at night when area was staked out, it is most likely they will be there the next morning. Many male turkeys sleep in trees and if a hunter can place himself close to one of the trees that a turkey was spotted the night before, it might be a perfect spot. Even if a great spot close to a resting turkey was found, the hunter might still be out of reach or not be able to see the turkey the next day. This could be due to differences in daytime versus nighttime vision. What the hunter thought at night was the perfect spot, might not be the next morning. The perfect spot does not necessarily exist. It is more the existence of a good hunter who knows where to settle down, but who is also prepared to move to a different position in a moments notice. A good turkey hunter can set up his gear and move with as little noise and finds cover quickly.

As just mentioned,

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Turkey Hunting Tips - Turkey habitat management is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of turkey hunting. After all, it is nearly impossible to experience viable turkey hunting if you are not privy to an area that has plenty of turkeys to choose from. There are always things you can do in order to ensure a healthy turkey habitat, but you will have to exercise principles of healthy turkey habitat management. Here are some tips to help you get started in turkey habitat management.

Basics of Wild Turkey Consumption

Getting to know the principles of turkey habitat management involves getting to know what the wild turkey eats. The wild turkey is classified as an omnivore with an annual diet that consists of 90 percent plant food, and 10 percent animal protein. Most wild turkey populations also consume fruit, seeds, mast, greens and other agricultural crops. These are the principal types of plants that wild turkeys consume. Acorns alone are known to make up roughly one third of the wild turkey diet. There are many soft mast producing shrubs that also make up a good percentage of their diet include the dogwood, the wild grape, black gum, hackberry, cherry and other related plant species. During winter and early spring, grasses and seeds are an important source of nutrients for many wild turkey populations. During the summer, insects make up a good deal of the summer diet for young turkey poults.

What Makes Up the Best of Turkey Habitat?

For optimal wild turkey habitat management, the population should have a mixture of open lands and forested lands. These work in combination to provide the best kind of turkey habitat. Roughly 10 to 50 percent of the land should be open land. Why is open land so important for optimal turkey habitat management? The distribution and size of open areas is important because they help to create a diversity of land and sustenance.

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Turkey Hunting - Bow hunting turkeys, or as a matter of fact, any game animal, is far more difficult than with the gun. Besides a good aim, in bow hunting, it is also important to have the right tension in the bow and also pull the bow good enough so that the arrow actually makes the distance intended. Many hunters will be able to tell, that bow hunting a turkey is one of the most challenging ways to hunt for turkeys. But many experienced gun hunters have the desire to bow hunt for their game. To be able to do so, a few tips might help the hunter to get on his way as a bow hunter.

One of the first skills that a bow hunter needs is actually the same as for any other hunter, patience. Patience is necessary in hunting. Hunters need patience to wait for game to come by, and patience after calling the bird. Even if half an hour or more passes from when the hunter first heard the gobblers call, the gobbler might still be on the way towards the calling. Getting up and checking might scare the bird away.

If a hunter is waiting in a spot, there are two major signs for when patience is actually essential. When a gobbler has flown in and answers his calls, coming slowly closer and when there are no barriers between the hunter and the bird. Any movement could scare the bird away.

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Turkey hunting can be fun, but also a challenge. Every spare time a hunter has to plan the trip and to plan what is necessary for the trip is time well spent. Good planning increases the chance to have a good time on a hunting trip, as well as the possibilities to bring home a trophy bird to show.

When a hunter is able to pack everything necessary for a trip, he might not find himself in a situation that can cause trouble. For many hunters, part of the fun of a turkey hunting trip is the packing and gathering of the gear. Often times, when packing, the hunter also needs to make decisions as to what gear he wants to take. This is especially if the hunter wants to fly to the hunting destination. He really needs to only take what is essential for the hunt.

When planning to hunt turkey, it is best to first choose the subspecies he or she wants to hunt, which automatically means a hunt in a specific region in the United States. This also gives the hunter clues as to what kind of gear he will need. If the hunter is not sure what is necessary for the hunt, he can always ask a local sporting goods store, hunting outfitters or hunting guides to help him with this task.

A good list for hunting gear to take along on the trip can be found in many better hunting guides, online or with experienced hunters. If it is in the hunter’s budget, he might also plan in a guide for his hunting trip, since he is going to be walking and hunting in unfamiliar territory. After deciding on the region, the hunter should pack for weather and terrain. It is very important that he packs efficiently and follows the airport and airline rules. Firearms cannot just be transported, but must be packed and shipped accordingly to all laws and regulations.

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A hunter, or in particular a turkey hunter, will know what a grand slam is, but for those that are merely interested in the topic for those who are just starting out, here some tips on grand slams, what they are and what it means.

A grand slam in turkey hunting means that the hunter has to shoot four different turkeys, each from one of the four major subspecies in the United States. The four major subspecies are Rio Grande, Osceola, Merriam’s and Eastern. For a grand slam, the turkeys need to be hunted in spring and need to be fully grown toms that were called in and shot with either a shotgun or a bow. Even bigger than a grand slam is the scoring of a North American grand slam, where a Gould’s turkey is added to the list mentioned above.

Hunting is a passion, but some of the hunters out there have a lot of spare time and money, some do not. For the ones with enough time and money, a grand slam can be achieved in one spring, but for most hunters, that is not very realistic and the approach to scoring a grand slam is by taking good old time. To be able to make sure that a hunter catches the right subspecies, he first of all needs to know the differences between the subspecies of turkeys. There are subtle differences in coloration as well as a few other marks.

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Turkeys can be hunted with many different arms, including guns and bows. Turkeys are very wary and fast and therefore, hunting with knives or similar is just not possible. Whenever a hunter goes hunting for turkey, he has to make sure that he checks the local hunting laws and regulations in regards to arms. Generally these laws allow a shotgun with a gauge somewhere between gauge 10 to 20 and shot sizes between #4 and #6, as well as bows. Bow pulls must be similar to bows allowed for deer hunting. Some places even allow rifles and handguns as hunting gear during fall.

When turkey hunting with a shotgun, it is always important to aim for the neck or the head. Hitting the body or feathery part of the turkey might not kill to bird, but leave it wounded instead of dead. The turkey’s head and neck are very small targets compared to the deer and a good aim and a good choke are essential. There are many good scopes that might help bag that turkey, but one thing that is important before going on a turkey hunt is to pattern the gun in advance. Pattern means to do some target shooting on targets the size of a turkey head and neck. Using different ranges for the target to shoot at and different ammunition will help the hunter learn which ammunition gives him the best overall aim and accuracy. It will also show him exactly how he has to aim to get his shot into the center of the target when the gun pulls a little low or high instead of dead center. Patterning the gun is like pumping up tires for a long bike ride or making sure everything necessary for a trip is packed.

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With Mardi Gras just around the corner, this is the perfect recipe for all wild turkey lovers. But perhaps you think that Cajun fried wild turkey is too complicated for your limited cooking skills, or that there is nothing much to it. However, you can make this delicious recipe no matter what time of the year it happens to be. Here are some tips on how you can Cajun fry your wild turkey bounty.

How Cajun Fried Wild Turkey is Fast Becoming a Mardi Gras Staple

Although you can certainly make this delicious meal any time of the year, Cajun-fried wild turkey is fast becoming one of the most popular meals at the Mardi Gras table. The traditional carnival season begins in late January with major celebrations culminating in March. Mardi Gras, which translate as Fat Tuesday, is a rough Latin translation that means “removal of the flesh.” One of the major themes and symbols of the carnival season is Boeuf Gras, which means ‘fatted bull.’ This is symbol for the last big meal of meat that is consumed before the Lenten season of fasting commences. Cajun-fried wild turkey is fast becoming a favored Mardi Gras meal—the perfect goodbye to meat, at least for a few weeks as the Lenten season slowly creeps by. There is perhaps no better way to saying goodbye to meat than by consuming a delicious meal of it in the form of a Cajun-fried wild turkey bounty.

Ingredients You Will Need for Your Cajun-Fried Wild Turkey Dish

This Cajun-fried wild turkey dish is relatively easy to prepare. You can serve it over rice, or complement it with a Caesar salad, some yeast rolls and some moon pies for dessert. Here is what you will need to make this delicious Cajun-fried wild turkey recipe. You will need: one pound of bacon, diced into pieces approximately ¼-inch in width. You will need four tablespoons of margarine or butter of your choice. You will need some Cajun poultry seasoning. You will need 1-½ cups of chopped onion, 1 boneless wild turkey breast, divided into one-inch chunks, four tablespoons of divided vegetable oil and one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce.

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Field dressing your kills is one of those special skills that can only really be learned with ample practice and experience. However, there are many tips that you can review in order to get a better understanding of field dressing, even if you already have some experience with the practice. Field dressing is one of the most important parts of hunting, and it can make all the difference between edible meat that can be cooked and enjoyed, and meat that must be thrown out soon after the initial kill. Here are some tips for doing your best job at field dressing your turkey immediately after the kill.

Field dressing is essentially gutting the bird in the field while leaving the feathers on. Removing the guts or entrails is important to help allow the bird to cool faster and to keep the “juices” inside the bird from spoiling any meat. If it is a cool day and you aren’t far from home, you can skip the field dressing step and wait until you are home before cleaning the bird.

Step 1 – Positioning the Turkey into the Proper Position

After a successful shot, make certain that the turkey is dead. Many turkeys will thrash around for several moments after being shot. Make sure that your turkey is done thrashing, and that it has been killed rather than injured or wounded. After you have made certain that the turkey is dead, lay the bird on its back. Locate the part of the body that you will be working with. In this case, you will want to follow the breast of the turkey down to the rear of the animal. Follow this area to the point where it narrows between the legs. This is the area you will be working on.

Step 2 – Making the First Cut

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Turkey hunting can be very exciting and fruitful almost the whole year round, but there is something special about spring hunting. Why is turkey hunting more popular during the spring? There are many reasons why you want to prepare for turkey hunting during the spring season. Here is a brief overview of why spring is the best time of the year to plan your turkey hunting.

Spring – The Time of Wild Turkey Courtships

The primary reason why spring is prime season for turkey hunting is that this is the time of year when wild turkey courtship activities take place. During the majority of the winter season, most of the mature male turkeys, known as gobblers or toms, spend there time in a common flock. Flocks of gobblers begin to disperse as the cold recedes and the snow melts. During this period, the flocks of gobblers also begin to fight for dominance. It is during this period in which they begin to gobble and make displays in an effort to attract mature female turkeys, or hens. In general, a male turkey will try to mate with as many hens as possible. The juvenile male turkeys will also make an effort to mate with hens, but they may be much less successful. In general, juvenile male turkeys, known as jakes, will strut and gobble in an effort to attract hens. But they will not be as successful as older male turkeys, unless there happens to be a much lower ratio of toms to hens. Yearling hens will typically mate and nest during their first season. This is especially true of the Rio Grande subspecies. Many hens will mate with a gobbler more than once. However, all a hen’s eggs may become fertilized in just a single copulation. This may last through a re-nesting attempt. In general, a yearling hen can retain viable sperm for as long as 56 days after the initial breeding.

The Post-Mating Period

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Turkeys are notoriously hard animals to hunt. They scatter at the slightest noise, and they can move surprisingly fast. If you want to take down a turkey, you need a shot that is doesn’t spray outwards and that instead delivers a tight concentration of buckshot to the turkey’s head. To make sure your shotgun is delivering the right goods for the kill during a turkey hunt, you will need the right choke tube for the job. Without a decent choke tube on your gun, your turkey hunting is destined to end in disappointment and frustration.

For the uninitiated, a choke tube is a piece of metal that is attached to the end of a shotgun. It is used to reign in the pellets of a shotgun shot so that they are dispersed in a more concentrated format. Choke tubes are almost always used on shotguns these days, even by law enforcement, but hunters especially make use of choke tube to make killing their prey easier. Choke tubes come in a variety of different lengths and widths, each of which offer a different level of concentration of the pellets upon firing. Choke tubes can be changed on shotguns as needed.

Choke tubes are especially important in turkey hunting for the reasons mentioned above. Not every shotgun is ideal for turkey hunting, and in fact, without a choke tube, most are not up to the task. With the right choke tube in place, however, you can make most guns do the trick.

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Hunting in fall versus hunting in spring is a whole different issue. While in spring, the turkey is preoccupied on his sex drive and the taking of hens. In fall, other things trigger the turkey’s natural behavior. Since the turkey is not busy with the courtship of hens, he is more concentrated on the surroundings and may be harder to hunt. In the fall, in contrast to spring, hunters are allowed in many states to shoot all the turkeys, not only the male ones. In this season, turkeys are preoccupied with safety, food and their social ranking. While in spring hunting, strategies are related to breeding. In fall, other strategies have to be used.

In the fall, turkeys are all about the food. It stands to reason that if the hunter finds the food source, he should be able to bag a turkey and take it home. For birds that do not travel south just like many other animals, which endure the winter, building a fat reserve is what they need to survive. Greens and bugs in meadows, as well as other fields and the harvested grain fields attract turkeys. Turkeys love to eat corn, wheat, sunflower seeds, barley and soybeans. Even after those fields are tilled and turned, there is food for turkeys such as worms and other ground insects. In a remote area where there are no fields nearby, turkeys rely on other food sources such as hard mast. Hard mast can include acorns, hickory, chestnuts and many other available nuts.

Since turkeys will most likely be where the food is, the best way to find the turkey is to know about the birds feeding habits and the places that turkeys feed. In some years, when nuts and acorns are plentiful, hunting is much harder than in years when the harvest is scarcer. With acorns falling from every tree, a hunter cannot predict where the gobbler might be, but in rare years, there area limited places that the gobbler can find food. These are also the places the hunter must find to catch and harvest the bird. Besides the above mentioned, turkeys will also enjoy eating berries, apples, persimmons and other available fruits.

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Common Sense Turkey Hunting Tips for the Autumn Season

For most turkey hunters, springtime hunting is where it is. Autumn is a busy time for hunters – it is deer season, upland hunting season, waterfowl hunting season – the list goes on and on. For that reason, most hunters put off the turkey hunting until the spring, but this fact can make autumn turkey hunting very satisfying. Hunting turkeys during the fall is less crowded, and you’ll have less competition for the birds. Add to that the fact that autumn tends to be turkey eating seasons, and you can see how forgoing the deer hunting for a little turkey hunting in the fall can be a very good thing.

Turkey hunting in the fall is an altogether different beast than spring turkey hunting, and it can be quite a bit more challenging. In the spring, the male turkeys are on the prowl, looking for a hen, so it can be fairly easy to lure one away from the pack by making hen calls. In the fall, the male turkeys aren’t so interested in the hens and instead tend to roam around in packs together (likewise for the hens, of course, but hunting mature male turkeys is preferable). Separating these groups can be a little bit more difficult and requires a different approach than spring turkey hunting.

When you are hunting in the autumn, it is best to stick to a certain progression of activities. The ideal situation is to stumble upon a pack of male turkeys and take position hidden from view. When you are out of eyeshot of the turkeys, preferably at least 100 yards away from them start trying to call them in to you. Now, it is important here to not make hen calls as you would in spring hunting. You instead want to make the kinds of gobbles that male turkeys make – these gobbles are usually slower and lower pitched than the hen gobbles. What you want to do here is lure on turkey away from the pack. Sometimes, however, this plan backfires. You may end up luring the entire pack, which is not ideal for taking a clean shot, and sometimes you may end up luring in a hen. If you bring in a hen, run her away. If you bring in the entire pack, you will need to take a different tact.

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The Florida Osceola Wild Turkey is one of the most popular of the wild turkeys. The Florida Osceola Wild Turkey is also known by its scientific name, which is Meleagris gallopavo osceola. The Florida Osceola Wild Turkey can only be found in the peninsula of Florida. The Florida Osceola Wild Turkey is similar to the eastern wild turkey in some respects, but with many important physical traits that distinguishes this important subspecies

The Namesake of the Florida Osceola Wild Turkey

The Florida Osceola Wild Turkey was named after the famous Seminole Chief, Osceola. W.E.D. Scott first described the Florida Osceola Wild Turkey in the year1890. Chief Osceola is famous for leading his tribe against invading Americans in a twenty-year war that began in 1835.

Physical Characteristics of the Florida Osceola Wild Turkey

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Do you need to get your turkey set up for that perfect shot, but you are not sure how? When it comes to successful turkey hunting skills, finding the perfect turkey set-up is key to being a successful hunter. There are many small considerations when it comes to finding and maintaining the perfect turkey set-up. Here are some important tips for improving your turkey set-up so that you can improve your success in the woods.

Tips on Preparing for the Perfect Turkey Set-Up

Part of establishing the perfect turkey set-up is doing your homework. In fact, if you take the time to research and scout before the big day of the hunt, you will find that this small bit of preparation can make all the difference. The day before the big hunt, take the time to scout out of the location where you will be hunting and shooting. Spend the afternoon before you go hunting to check out the location. Late afternoon is the best time to go scouting.

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Turkey hunting is an old tradition in the United States. Many of the Americans love turkey in their Thanksgiving feast. The Thanksgiving feast is even better if a turkey is dished up that is actually hunted by the head of the household. To make such a wonderful sport safe and fun for everybody, there are many things that have to be considered before going out hunting for turkeys.

One of the decisions that have to be made is whether or not a decoy is used for hunting these wonderful birds. Not every hunter likes to use decoys, but decoys do have their advantages when it comes to turkey hunting. A decoy arouses the suspicion of other turkeys and therefore if set in an open area, such as the edge of a field or beneath a mature oak forest, these decoys essentially are a visual call for other birds. Decoys are especially effective when calling the birds with turkey calls every once in a while.

Even though some of the more experienced hunters prefer not to use decoys, they are great assets when dealing with young inexperienced hunters such as children or a person with a disability. The decoy draws the attention on itself and therefore less attention to the hunter and the set up of the hunting gear.

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As any turkey hunter can tell you, turkeys can move a lot quicker (and a lot smarter) than many people give them credit for. Any a “perfect shot” has been lost when a hunter tries to move in on a turkey at the wrong moment or when the hunter tries to make a fast adjustment to a new move made by the bird. If you want your turkey hunting trip to end in success, then the most important thing you can do is learn the right time to move in on a turkey.

First things first: you have to attract the turkey in to you. Most of the time, at least one turkey will answer your calls, and the first part of moving in on a turkey involves listening to this turkey answering your calls and judging where the bird is by where the calls are coming from. At this point, it is important to know you shooting ability and from what distance you are capable of taking shots. Knowing your shooting habits will help you determine when you are ready to take a shot and when you need to move in a little bit closer. Of course, the distance at which you are capable of taking a shot will also determine the distance you will need to cover when you move in on the turkey you have in your sights.

Knowing how close you need to be to the turkey to take a shot is one part of calculating your perfect approach to the turkey is one part of making the perfect move. The other part is all about learning to judge the behavior of the turkey and being ready to react to it. Every hunter has experienced the scenario in which they have been calling to a turkey, and getting tons of returned calls from the bird, when all of the sudden everything goes quiet, and then the turkey suddenly pops up next to you. To try and avoid letting the turkey sneak up on you, make sure you key in to all of the sounds the bird is making – not just the calls. Calls can give you an idea of the turkey is at, but it is also important to listen for the sound of the turkey’s feet crunching on branches or the shaking of leaves as the turkey moves by. Putting all of these sounds together will help you keep track of the turkey’s location more precisely.

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