Catching a wild turkey can be an exciting and rewarding experience for any hunter. With their keen eyesight, hearing and elusive nature, hunting wild turkeys presents a worthy challenge. Whether you are new to turkey hunting or a seasoned veteran, having the right skills, tools and understanding of turkey behavior is key to your success. In this comprehensive guide, we will cover everything you need to know to catch a wild turkey from start to finish.
Scouting – Locating Turkeys and Understanding Their Patterns
The first critical step is locating where the turkeys are and observing their patterns. This means spending time scouting your hunting areas about 1-2 weeks before season. The best times to scout are early morning and evening when turkeys are most active. Search for signs of turkeys like tracks, scratchings, droppings and feathers to identify their locations. Listen for gobbles, clucks, yelps and other vocalizations. Make note of where you find them – their roosting trees, feeding areas, and travel routes. Understanding their daily patterns will allow you to set up an ambush at the right place and time.
Proper Setup and Concealment
With knowledge of turkey locations from scouting, pick areas to intercept them that provide good concealment. Arrive before daylight and set up within 100 yards of a known roost site. Make sure you have a clear line of sight through the trees while remaining hidden. Ground blinds, camo tents,natural vegetation like brush or trees all work to stay concealed. Wear full camo clothing and avoid making excess noise. Stay quiet and still once in position.
Turkey Calls – The Right Sounds to Lure in Wary Birds
Mastering turkey calling is perhaps the most important skill for consistent success. Spend time before season listening to actual hen, jake and gobbler calls and practicing replicating those vocalizations accurately. Important calls to learn include the yelp, cluck, purr, cutt and gobble. Use locator calls like owl hoots first. When you hear a gobble, get their attention with loud excited yelps. Softer gradual calling draws in a curious tom. It takes patience and persistence to perfect turkey calling, but it’s a deadly technique.
Decoys – Added Realism to Increase Your Odds
Another tactic to up your odds is adding decoys to your setup. One or two hen or jake decoys placed where a turkey can spot them adds realism. The tom sees what looks like live birds, focuses on the decoys and may hang up just long enough for you to take the shot. There are many turkey decoy styles, from simple to highly detailed and lifelike with movable parts. Place them 20-30 yards from your position within shooting range.
Safety and Regulations – Hunt Legally and Ethically
Every responsible hunter must know the regulations and hunt legally and ethically Safety is also paramount when hunting with others Be absolutely certain of your target and what’s downrange before even considering taking a shot. Only shoot during legal hours, usually 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset. Tag your harvested bird if required. Follow all other relevant state laws and regulations to the letter.
Shot Placement – Connecting at Close Range for a Clean Harvest
As a turkey finally walks into range, you need to be ready to take the shot. Have your shotgun or bow at the ready pointed along the path the turkey is approaching from Be patient and wait for the turkey to get well within your effective range, typically 30 yards or less Aim for the head and neck area to kill the bird as quickly and humanely as possible. After connecting on your shot, immediately tag the turkey if required before retrieving your harvest.
Field Dressing and Processing
Field dress wild turkeys as soon as possible after harvesting them Start by plucking out the breast feathers, then carefully cut around the vent taking care not to cut intestines. Make an incision just below the breast bone being careful not to cut internal organs Remove all entrails and separate the crop and windpipe from the neck. Rinse out any blood from the chest cavity. The turkey is now ready for transport from the field and can be fully processed later.
Set a Trap, Save a Turkey
Interest in trapping fell along with the fur market. Though there are some people still buying furs, pelt prices aren’t near what they once were because wearing fur has become taboo in many places. There’s a pretty compelling case to be made that the decline in fur buying has caused predator numbers to skyrocket. In Missouri, for example, one of the few states that tracks both furbearer harvest and population trends, the raccoon take in 2018 was the lowest it’s been in 76 years, while the raccoon population has been rising steadily for more than 20 years. That’s eye-opening when you compare it with the turkey decline of the past decade.
The author and his son bait a Duke Dog Proof raccoon trap. Will Brantley
But there seems to be a minor resurgence in trapping interest, with much of it driven by conservation-minded hunters. The topic of predation and its effect on game populations—and the effectiveness of trapping as a way to minimize predation—has always been a contentious issue between hunters, wildlife biologists, and conservation groups. To put it mildly, more than a few hunters of today feel that trapping’s potential as a management tool has been purposely downplayed because the practice isn’t always socially acceptable.
Dr. Grant Woods, one of the country’s best-known and respected wildlife biologists, has been hearing it for years. “I think a lot of biologists were indoctrinated in the university that predators were a non-issue, and for a long time, the message has been to tell people that trapping will do no good (for increasing turkey numbers),†he says. “I think that’s the wrong message. (In Missouri), if we look at the turkey harvest versus the fur harvest over the past 20 years, the rates of decline are almost an exact match. You’d have to be pretty hard-headed to not pay attention to that. The data shows a significant upward trend of coons, opossums, and skunks. Unequivocally, everyone is seeing more of those animals. And these are known nest predators. Not maybe. Not casually. They’re known.â€
Despite abundant habitat that was being ever improved, Woods noted what had been a sharp decline in the turkey numbers on the Proving Grounds, his own 1,576-acre farm near Branson, Missouri. “We had good nesting cover,†he says. “We do prescribed burns. We cut hundreds of acres of cedars. But our turkey population was getting really low. So, we started conducting more concentrated trapping efforts.â€
Over the past decade, Woods and his crew have worked to trap and remove predators every winter. This year was their most productive yet, with 115 critters taken out. “You know what?†Woods says. “Our turkeys started coming back.â€
Statewide, Missouri reported another poor hatch last year of .9 poults per hen, but Woods reported one of the best hatches he’s ever seen on the Proving Grounds. “I know of other hunters who are tired of hearing that we don’t have turkeys because of the rain,†he says, “and they’re seeing the same thing.â€
My buddy Kerry Wix has been trapping heavily on the farms he hunts in middle Tennessee for the past five years. While turkey numbers have been hurting elsewhere in the Volunteer State, and middle Tennessee in particular, Wix says that on his favorite places, the numbers are booming. “We started trapping raccoons four years ago, and now we hit them seriously this time of year, every year,†he says. “And, by gosh, we’ve seen more poults since we started trapping than when we didn’t, and I have farmers telling me they’re seeing more turkeys on the places we trap than they ever had.â€
Call me a convert, too. Last February I tried my hand at trapping for the first time, almost always with my 5-year-old son, Anse, by my side. We caught some 25 raccoons, skunks, and opossums from the two farms I usually hunt in Kentucky, which totals a little less than 250 acres. And on those two places in particular, there were more poults, in bigger broods, running around this past summer than I’d seen in years. To be fair, we had a better hatch statewide this year than we’ve had in a while too, but coincidence or not, I’ll take it.
Why Learning How to Trap Can Improve Your Turkey Hunting
I started trapping to save the turkeys. Like a lot of hunters in the southeast and midwest, I’d noticed fewer birds and less gobbling
during the past several springs, and I wondered why. If you ask a biologist, the most common response is: “There’s a lot we don’t know, but we’ve had a long trend of late, rainy springs and those lead to poor hatches.â€
That wet, cold spring weather is bad for turkey hatches has been management gospel my entire life, and I do believe it. But in the past few years, I’ve also come to believe that we have a bigger predator problem than we once did, and that the impacts of predation on the hatch are more significant than we’ve given credit. That’s important because while we can’t control the weather, we can manage predation—at least on a local level, with targeted trapping.
I look at it like this: If you’re managing for turkeys anyway via food plots, prescribed fire, timber improvement, and so on, then trapping should be the next skill on your “to learn†list. Removing some raccoons, opossums, skunks, and coyotes from the landscape at the right time of year can do more for the localized hatch than you might realize.
How to Pluck and Clean a Turkey with Steven Rinella – MeatEater
FAQ
What is the best way to catch a turkey?
Care should be taken in the initial grip because they struggle most violently at first. If possible, the first contact with the turkey should be to grab both legs at the “knee” (upper end of tarsometatarsus) firmly and lift the bird off its feet while hugging the bird against the hip with the other arm (Figure 3).
What is the best thing to attract wild turkeys?
Soybean and corn are good choices because they provide food for wild turkey in winter.Nov 21, 2023
What time of day do wild turkeys come out?
If turkeys are really fired up, consider a fly down cackle to entice a tom your way. Decoying: Turkeys are generally at their most boisterous and boldest at sunrise. If it’s early in the season, consider a strutter decoy. Other: If you’re in turkeys, stay put for at least a couple hours.
What bait for wild turkey?
Since wild turkeys are a ground-feeding type, sprinkling cracked corn in an open area of dirt is a sufficient way to attract them. Seeds- Another easily attainable food source, seeds provide even more nutrition for wild turkeys. Mixing seeds and cracked corn makes a great spread out meal.
How do you catch a wild turkey?
These birds are easily caught in snares, common dead-falls, traps and pens, like those for the Wild Turkey, but proportionate to the size of the bird. Many are shot, but the principal havoc is effected by means of nets, especially in the Western and Southern States. The method employed is as follows:
How do you hunt a wild turkey?
Scouting is one of the most important steps when hunting for wild turkey. It is recommended to head to the site of your planned spring hunt around mid-April, after the snow has melted, so you can search for signs that there are turkeys around. Look out for tracks in the snow or mud, or for fallen feathers on the ground.
Can you catch a wild turkey with a shotgun?
It’s against the law to trap a wild turkey. Shotgun and bow are the two legal methods of bagging a wild turkey, with shotgun being most common. If this is your first time trying to hunt turkey, consider taking an experienced guide to make your hunt more successful.