Mr. Burton proves there is more than one way to skin a...turkey.

Enjoy a recent story from friend Mr. Burton, showing location and patience can be just as successful as running and gunning:

 

"I am not a good turkey hunter to say the least.  I don't listen for gobbles and chase turkeys through the woods but generally set up and wait.  I have hunted and killed several turkeys but sometimes it seems more like luck than skill.  This season might be case in point.  I was able to hunt the first day of my permit but due to family commitment I was unable to hunt the next two days.  I had third season south zone - Friday April 20 thru Wednesday April 25.

 

The first day hunt was filled with high expectation.  I had seen turkeys in this field during the youth turkey season.  Plenty of hens and toms around then.  I put out my lone hen decoy and waited patiently for the turkeys to come.  I heard gobbles in the woods behind me and beside me like I expected but as the sun came up they didn't come into my field like I expected.  In fact there was only one lone hen to cross the field all morning.  I was persistent and stayed where I set up early expecting the tom to come out any second.  No such luck.  Long morning waiting and watching. 

 

A quick note here - I am traveling about 62 miles from where I am staying to where I am hunting.  The route goes through eight little towns so is somewhat slow going.  I was getting up at 3:00am to get to the hunting site and in position by 5:30am.  Now that may seem like a boring run but my only thoughts were on the hunt and the turkeys.  Always second guessing the plan made yesterday.  Trying to think of a new technique or strategy to get a nice turkey in range.  Always wondering if I am calling too much or not enough. 

 

The second day I was able to hunt I set up along the edge of a woods looking over a planted corn field.  The corn is up a couple of inches.  About 60 yards into the field from where I am situated is a grass waterway which is about 20 to 30 yards wide.  In the early light I heard gobbles from six or seven different toms.  They were located all around me and now I am really excited.  I had put out two hen decoys and one jake decoy.  Again it seemed like forever before I saw the first turkey.  And of course it was a hen.  It was about 125 yards across the field from me.  Looked at the decoys but other than look there was no action.  At approximately 7:00 I saw the first tom of the day.  It was across the field and simply walked out into and across the corn field without so much as a serious look at my decoys.  Then at 7:30 another tom came out of the woods this time much closer to me.  He saw my decoys and looked but no other action.  He simply walked along the other side of the grass waterway without paying any attention to lonely ole me.  But when he was about even with me in the field there were two toms and a hen coming across the corn field toward the grass waterway.  The one tom coming saw the one walking along the waterway and immediately charged toward that tom.  Of course the one walking the waterway took off running.  The other tom didn't chase too far and rejoined his buddy and the hen.  They walked to the woods but didn't enter then walked back pretty much from the direction they came.  This was the beginning of a slow parade of 8 toms and 7 hens to walk along the other side of the waterway from me and all the time paying absolutely no attention to my decoys.  The wind was making the decoys turn a little bit once in a while which I thought was good but apparently not good to the turkeys.  There was one very exciting part to the morning when I happened to notice movement immediately to my right.  It was a hen of course but she was only about 4 or 5 yards from my position.  She walked out to the closest hen decoy and pecked it then walked around it and fluffed up like she was going to flog it.  There were actually two hens but I didn't see the other one until they were walking away.  At 12:30pm I had had enough!  I picked up the decoys and gave up the day.  But I did retrieve my ground blind from the truck and put it up in the grass waterway!

 

The very next morning I got in the blind with full expectation.  This time I thought I would try for that aggressive tom so put up my strutting tom and hen decoy pair.  Again there were gobbles all around.  In the ground blind and wearing Walker hearing protection I am unsure of the exact direction they come from but judge from the volume how close they are.  There were two that were close for sure.  And of course the gobbles off in the distance that make me always second guess where I have set up my decoys for the morning.

 

Seemed like forever before I even saw a turkey.  The sun had come up and my decoys were making shadows.  I still hadn't seen a turkey.  Then I happened to notice two hens in the weeds across the corn field.  The weeds are tall enough only the heads were visible.  They disappeared quickly into the weeds.  Then at 7:15am  finally a tom stepped out of the woods at the end of the cornfield.  He was about 125 yards away.  But he noticed the decoys right away.  He strutted and gobbled several times moving very very slowly in my direction.  I don't believe he was the tom that challenged the bird from yesterday.  Could have been the bird that was challenged for all I know.  But he did keep strutting and gobbling and slowly ever so slowly moving my direction.  He had come probably 20 yards closer when a hen came out of the woods between my position and the tom.  Of course I was concerned now.  The hen slowly worked her way away from my position  and the tom was showing interest moving away also.  But it seemed he couldn't keep his eye off the strutting tom decoy.  As it happened the wind had come up in slight gusts.  This of course caused the strutting tom decoy to turn slightly once in a while.  This must have been what kept his interest.  He would strut for the hen then strut and gobble for the decoy.  Quite a show to say the least.  Then the hen walked quickly away from us.  I knew for sure I had lost the tom.  But the tom wouldn't follow and came a few more yards toward us strutting and gobbling.  That caused the hen to turn and come our direction causing my heart to pound a bit harder.  They seemed to move a little quicker once the hen started toward us.  She was kind of feeding or at least pecking at the ground as she came our way.

 

I had used the range finder earlier to determine distance from my shooting position and had decided any tom within a certain area was going to be shot.  This tom was working his way into my shooting area.  Of course the ground blind has small windows to view and shoot from.  He was coming from my right so I shouldered the shotgun left handed thinking he would come only so close and stop.  But as luck would have it he kept moving toward the decoys.  Now the decision..........   I pulled the shotgun barrel back into the blind and changed to right shoulder pushed the barrel back out the window and the tom turkey was out there in my shooting area.  I didn't wait to see if he would come to the decoys or suddenly change his mind and take off after the hen so I shot him.  He was 32 yards away from the blind.  Of course the analysis after the shot - I should have waited to see what he was going to do and I would have seen more strutting and maybe a gobble closer.  He must have gobbled 25 times in his travel from the woods to the shooting area.  I saw him first at 7:15 and shot him at 7:40.  It was quite a show to say the least with many changes in anticipation.  The hen sure changed the equation for a while but I think eventually she worked to my advantage when she came back to the tom and kept moving my direction.  

 

See what I mean by more luck than skill?"

 

Mr. Burton with his turkey 11 1/4" beard, 1 1/8" spurs, 21 lbs 3 oz!

 

Ending on a high note with bird number 3 in 2012!

After striking out repeatedly on a bird I nicknamed Hakuna, I spent a couple days chasing birds on public land with my buddy Carl, where we came five yards short of a shot at a massive super wary public bird.  Day 2 met with horrible weather and we were cut short on our hunting with nothing to show but a few hours of story telling.  The day ended with me calling a bird into a field on the neighbors ground, giving me hope for the final hunt of the year.

Earlier this year I had asked a duck hunting buddy, Jeff if he would be interested in hunting the final weekend of 4th season in Illinois with me, given we had not had the pleasure of a hunt together in almost two years and we had only been on one previous turkey hunt.

Jeff could only hunt one morning, so the pressure was on and though I wanted to go after Hakuna again, I decided to overlook my obsession and head for some newer ground that was untested.  After gaining recent permission, plans were set and we met on Sunday morning for 20 minute drive to our destination.  The morning was calm, muggy and 78 degrees before dawn.  We eased across the first field to the pasture and I whispered to Jeff that this entire farm screamed turkeys but for some reason I only heard them in one general area, and never on the side we were on, despite how great the habitat looked.  We eased into my planned set up where I had recently heard birds and as we were setting up, the first bird opened up with a loud gobble...directly behind us, right where we had just came from.  I began internally kicking myself for not waiting for the birds to gobble, but I still felt good about our set up.  I decided to stay put.  The bird was in a pasture directly behind us with a strip of thick trees between us and a deep creek/ravine in the bottom of the strip of timber.  As the bird repeatedly gobbled, a few more birds joined in.  To my surprise there were several to the South, and a few up the hill behind us to the West...also near where we had walked on the way in.

Fly-down approached with the close bird doing a lot of gobbling and the birds to the far south, which I estimated to be 400+ yards away.  I hit the close bird with a quiet tree yelp, and he paused, then gobbled.  I repeated and he did the same thing again.  After he gobbled again on his own, I hit him with a slightly louder tree yelp and he cut me off with a loud gobble.  Again I started thinking, if I had been set up where I sat last week, that bird would be right in front of Jeff right now.  My thoughts were cut short as I heard the unmistakeable sound of a gobbler taking flight...followed shortly by the sound of wind cutting over wings when I glanced up I see this gobbler sailing ABOVE the tree line directly over our heads and into the field!  He hits the ground approximately 100 yards out.  I was sure we had this bird, as I had a very realistic hen decoy out (dsd) and have yet to have a bird not commit to it...until now.  I thought the bird looked strange in the early morning fog, that hung heavy over the bottom, but I could tell by his gobble he was definitely a mature bird.  He had a strange beard that stuck straight out and then dropped down, almost like it had been broken...or he had two beards.  Regardless he started making a wide circle around the decoy, going to half strut and looking hard at the decoy.  All the while the birds to the south had shut up with the exception of one bird that was gobbling every 30 seconds to a minute solid.

The bird continued to circle until he was 100 yards directly across from the hen.  I hit the call now that I was in line with the decoy and the bird, and he immediately gobbled, and went into half strut, he continued this process for a few minutes before turning and circling the opposite direction angling back away from us.  As he moved the far bird continued to gobble and seemed to moving slightly closer.  I decided by the demeanor of the first bird, he was a lost cause and I turned my attention to the bird that was somewhere in the fog some 300+ yards down the field.

Before calling I crawled to the field edge and peaked down to our right where I saw the first bird still standing on the field edge being wary.  I eased back in the brush and told Jeff to be prepared for this bird to sneak in right along the timber line.  It was a tough set up with thick underbrush on the field edge so we had trouble seeing in the direction the new bird was now approaching and the original bird had gone.  I hit one series of yelps on the call and the far bird immediately answered.  I waited a few minutes and hit the call again and he answered again, he was definitely closer.  I whispered to Jeff "he's coming." He gobbled again on his own and seemed to have turned the other direction, so I called again and he hammered, this time I estimated him to be 150 yards out.  I hit him one more time and he again hammered, sounding even closer.

I knew based on the terrain he could see the decoy so I decided to shut up.  He never gobbled again, so I had a hunch he was on his way.  About one minute later and I hear the awesome sound of a gobbler drumming.  I whisper to Jeff that is what is going on and he has to be close!!!  A few seconds later and I see a tail fan through the brush to our right and the big ole gobbler appears in full strut, spitting and drumming right to the decoy.  He had us pinned at 15 yards as he headed from right to left to the decoy.  Jeff was frozen with gun down as the bird continued to spit, drum, and strut right in our faces moving slowly to the decoy and putting on a show!  My heart was pounding and I wasn't even hunting, as I whispered to Jeff to let him turn away and pull the gun up, the bird suddenly turned and as Jeff pulled the gun up, he turned back directly at us, still in full strut!!!  Jeff was frozen with gun half up and I could see it shaking slightly as we both hoped the bird would spin with his back to us.  Finally for a split second the bird blocked his own view with his tail fan and as Jeff shouldered the gun, he turned facing directly at us in full strut at 15 yards!!!  I was screened at this point by a bush and watched Jeff as the shot rang out!  I noted he wasn't jacking a second shell in and just like that the celebration began!!!

The author and Jeff with his bird.

Jeff's first longbeard turned out to be a stud bird.  22 lbs 4 oz, 10" beard and 1 7/16", 1 8/16" spurs!!!
NWTF score: 71.625