Animals that we, as hunters, choose to chase are remarkably well suited for avoiding becoming prey. One game animal is well loved and resented above all others for its challenge. That animal is the wild turkey.

What makes turkey hunting hard to hunt is their keen vision above all the other senses they have. Even though they are in their mating season during the spring, they are wary of their surroundings and will bolt at any sign of trouble.

Hunting wild turkeys is an endeavor that pushes hunters to be the best woodsmen they can be. From the turkey’s sharp senses to their habitats and even how we hunt them, numerous factors make turkeys the ultimate challenge. We will explore all these facets and more so that you can see why hunting turkeys is far from a turkey shoot.

Turkey Senses

It’s thought to be a turkey. While we may not have first-hand experience with what life as a turkey is like, we have comprehensive studies highlighting turkeys’ incredibly high mortality rate from nest predation to interactions with predators as adults.

Even when roosting, turkeys are vulnerable to owls and fisher cats. The eons of predation have made turkeys naturally jumpy. While new hunters can only envision puffed-up toms whose focus is combat or breeding, the average bird is wary of any shadow, sound, or shape that seems out of place.

Outside of the genetic caginess of a wild turkey, these birds rely on two more understood senses to stay alive. Two senses that hunters must overcome to bag a bird.

Sight

Wild turkeys see color. This ability to see a spectrum similar to ours makes it a challenge to hunt when attempting to blend in.

Pattern alone won’t keep a hunter hidden like when hunting deer. The more natural the coloration and pattern of your clothing, the better. By that same token breaking up your outline is also critical. Many hunters opt for a blind to keep concealed.

For those that chose to stay more mobile, leaf suits and camouflaged shotguns are favored. Their incredible eyesight is made more potent by the fact that they can rotate their heads to scan 360 degrees. There’s no blind spot on a wild turkey.

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Hearing

Wild turkeys are social birds. Calling to locate food, warn of danger, or attract a mate all give hunters an “in” on how to bring birds to them. The flip side of this coin is that these birds are hyper-attuned to sounds. Calls that sound unnatural can cause birds to become silent and leave the area.

Turkeys also instinctively look in the direction of the sounds, meaning that a turkey can spot a hunter changing from calling to shooting. Studies have also shown that they are better at hearing low-frequency sounds than humans. These lower-frequency sounds include the lowered whispers we often use when hunting.

Turkey Locations

Where turkeys live can also make hunting them a challenge. Since wild turkeys exist in nearly every corner of the North American continent, it’s disingenuous to list just one type of terrain as being a challenge. However, the adaptability of turkeys and the variations where these subspecies live does allow us to provide several examples of challenges hunters can face across the country.

Osceolas: The Swamp

The Osceola turkey residing in southern Florida is designed for wet places. Their legs are longer than other subspecies, and they are more than happy to wade through flooded fields and swamps. Staying quiet and dry in these conditions can be a challenge. Keying in on these elusive birds when palmettos and grasses can obstruct views makes scouting a priority.

Rio Grandes: Arid Country

The dry southwest where the Rio Grande turkey lives can be a challenge for any hunter. The lack of cover makes sneaking up on a Rio difficult. Pair the sparse concealment with the fact that Rios will travel miles to look for mates, and a hunter may end up playing a long-distance game of cat and mouse.

Merriams: Mountains

While the towering mountains and pines of the rocky mountains may seem like a better place to hunt elk, plenty of hunters spend their days chasing Merriams turkeys instead. The steep terrain can bounce calls around valleys, making locating birds difficult. For hunters in the spring season, the mountain’s chilly temperatures can mean hunting turkeys with snow still on the ground.

Easterns: Flatlands and forests

Eastern turkeys are the most populous of all the turkey subspecies. Hunters could find an eastern strutting the edge of a field in Maine or set back next to a river bank in Arkansas. Regardless of where in the country a hunter finds an eastern, it’s likely to be a bird that’s wary enough to use any available cover to inspect the area before it shows itself.

Turkey Tactics

Before getting into the woods in search of turkeys, it’s wise to brush up on the tactics needed to hunt them. While techniques like “fanning,” when a hunter flashes a fanned tail to attract a bird, is often productive, it is not permitted in all areas. Calling, on the other hand, is a technique that is required regardless of the state or season.

Remember that practicing your calls can be the difference between a committed tom and a spooked bird. Practice with diaphragm calls, box calls, and slate calls. While mastering all calling tools is ideal, knowing how to use a slate call is perhaps the best single tool.

Mastery of this call gives a hunter the basic tool to call turkeys in from a distance with plenty of variation for multiple times of the day. Learning your calls takes time. A few minutes a day in the off-season will make you a better caller for very little investment.

Is turkey hunting easy?

No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Rising before dawn, occasionally in the chill of late fall or early spring, to hunt is a gift. Learning the habits and patterns of a wild animal is an endeavor that we, as sportsmen, never tire of.

Pitting our ability to camouflage against a turkey’s 360-degree range of vision is a challenge we accept. Trusting our ability to stay motionless as a flock of warry birds moves across a clearing to inspect our decoys is a struggle many turkey hunters live for.

In conclusion, turkey hunting is not easy. It takes work. From the swamps of the south to the mountain passes of the Rockies, turkey hunting is a challenge well worth the work.

If you enjoyed this article, check out these articles from Pinetreesandsolitude.com: 

• 3 Tips For Hunting Western Turkeys
• Where To Find Turkeys: Tips For This Season
• What’s The Best Turkey Call? Top Picks

(This article was originally published on Pintreesandsolitude.com. If it is now published on any other site, it was done without permission from the copyright owner.)