![]() ![]() Rather than go home, I jumped across the border to some huge state forest land in Massachusetts. One spring, while hunting in northwestern Connecticut, I tagged out in two days. The farther away you can get, the less competition you’ll have. Nothing draws a crowd like a visible bird, and most hunters scout from the road. The principal advantage is that the birds can’t be seen from the road. If I do this for several consecutive days with the same results, that bird moves to the top of my list of prospects. The intersection of these lines is a reasonably god estimate of where the bird actually is. Then I try to drive around the block of woods he’s in, stopping at several more locations and drawing at least two more lines. When I hear one, I draw a pencil line on a topo map from my location to where I think the bird is. I hit the road before dawn, stopping at frequent intervals and listening for unseen birds gobbling from the roost. Second, I do far more listening than I do looking, employing a technique know as triangulation. First, instead late afternoon and dusk, I scout at dawn. ![]() I still do a lot of pre-season (and in-season) scouting from the truck, but I take a slightly different tack than most of the competition. Come opening day I’d quickly learn he belonged to a half dozen other hunters as well. Scouting from the front seat of my truck I’d find a bird, study his habits, stake my claim and assume because I’d been watching him every day that he was mine. It took me a while to learn this, partly because of naivete, but mostly due to my own stubbornness. One of the most obvious ways to avoid hunting pressure is to avoid the most obvious birds. They’re eager to mate, and they’re on unfamiliar ground, which makes them doubly vulnerable. Seemingly overnight, longbeards begin showing up in areas they haven’t been all spring - sometimes leaving un-huntable private land for huntable public land. Once all the hens in a particular area have been bred, a dominant tom will sometimes leave his home turf and strike out in search of more. I’ve observed a phenomenon at this time of the season I call the shuffle. Meanwhile, with a good many early-season hunters having tagged out or given up, you may also find yourself alone. Those older, dominant birds that were henned up all spring had what they wanted (hens) and no reason to leave them. The same is true, to a large extent, of hunting late in the season. Most of the hunters are gone too so you’ve got a much better chance at calling a bird without interference. By mid to late morning the hens are gone and the toms redouble their efforts at looking for love. They may still be flocked up at dawn, but will peel off and leave the flock to lay and incubate eggs as the morning wears on. Most spring turkey seasons are timed to begin after the majority of hens have bred. The birds are still there, and can actually be more vulnerable. Whether they score or not, a good many of those early-bird hunters will leave the woods after the first hour or two. Before long the sun comes up, the woods get quiet and folks have to go to work. However, it doesn’t take much pressure to shut things down. Given the choice, I too will take first water any day. That’s when the birds are most vocal, and seemingly most vulnerable. Everybody wants to be in the woods at dawn, especially on opening day. One tactic that has served me well, as illustrated in the opening passage, is to hunt late. I’ve also learned over the last two and a half decades that being successful means beating the competition, which includes both pressured turkeys and other hunters. That means with little exception I’m hunting pressured birds. I learned to hunt turkeys, and still do most of my hunting on land that is open to the public. It was even harder for my client to believe me when I told him there was a strutter in the field. But now the place was empty - hard to believe it was still opening day of turkey season. Fresh tire tracks and boot prints covered the ground, revealing the flurry of activity just a few hours before. The road dead-ended, in a spot as deserted as a football stadium on Monday morning. The look on his face said it all: “If that’s the case, what the heck are we doing here, and at 10 a.m.?” At dawn it looks like a parking lot.” No response was necessary. The road ends up ahead and there’s a field off to the left. Increase your turkey hunting success with these tips for pressured birds.Īs my truck rolled down the gravel road I turned to the fellow I was guiding and revealed, “this is one of the heaviest hunted spots in the area. ![]()
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