In this edition, we conclude the three-part series on silent gobblers. When dominant gobblers rule the roost it can silence every other subordinate gobbler in the woods. Recognizing this situation and employing some of these tips may help you score next spring. This was originally published in the July/August issue of Turkey Call Magazine.

Silence of the lambs

In this edition, we conclude the three-part series on silent gobblers. When dominant gobblers rule the roost it can silence every other subordinate gobbler in the woods. Recognizing this situation and employing some of these tips may help you score next spring.

I’d keep my mouth shut, too, if every time I opened it I got my tail feathers kicked. When a dominant gobbler is set on whipping every other tom that tries to call up a hen, it can make for a quiet morning. Many times, the woods will ring with gobbling turkeys while they’re on the roost, but once they fly down, seemingly every gobbler shuts up. I’ve also heard several gobblers sound off from the roost, then, the boss tom takes over and he’s the only bird you’ll hear until hours later.

Whether it’s African elephants, Rocky Mountain elk or wild turkey gobblers, males of these and other species often travel in bachelor groups. These herds or flocks are comprised of a dominant male and his subordinate followers. Subordinate male elephants have been referred to as “askari” bulls, and likewise, sub-dominant elk bulls are referred to as “satellites.” Over the past few years, writers have dubbed subordinate tom turkeys as satellite toms, as well.

A classic example of a “satellite” gobbler I encountered in Texas in 1993. It was the final day of a hunt where I was guiding for the top bidder of a hunt sold at the NWTF’s Grand National Hunt Auction. Tom Hodnett, a former Indiana State Chapter President, put his tag on a tom late in the afternoon, and I soon struck out on my own to find a bird for myself.

After a mile hike, I eased into the edge of a wide pasture valley surrounded by brush-choked hills. In the farthest corner, I spotted three fans in the shade of a tank dam.

I backed off and climbed a ridge to get around the birds to come up on them from the cover of the pond dam. I shed my camo vest and popped a call in my mouth. I pulled up my face mask and slithered like a rattler up the bank to get a fix on the birds. My face pressed to the dirt, the first close-range view I got was of the flock of gobblers and hens trotting out of the valley to my right. Something had spooked the birds. Either a coyote, bobcat or one of the oil well crew driving by had pushed the birds out of the valley. As I watched them retreat, I yelped a couple of notes as the birds moved away.

I slid back down, retrieved my vest and walked to the end of the dam. Peering through the branches of a mesquite with my binoculars I found the valley empty. As I lowered the binoculars I caught sight of a gobbler’s red head as it walked along the hillside to my right. In one fluid motion I raised the Remington 11/87 and shot the bird at 23 yards as he was steadily walking toward me. One of the satellite gobblers had stolen a chance to meet up with a lone hen (me) while the boss tom’s attention was diverted. The calls I had made moments before had made the difference. That silent tom paid the ultimate price for his curiosity.

One of the more recent encounters I’ve had with subordinate toms came during an Alabama writer’s hunt at White Oak Plantation last year. The second afternoon I teamed up with guide with James Gilbert and Woodswise cameraman Ron Jolly. After a short walk from the clubhouse, James yelped on a mouth call and Jolly cutt on a box call and a gobbler answered. We set up, but the bird wouldn’t budge. I later learned that this bird was a hook-spurred old-timer that Dr. James Earl Kennamer yelped up for a hunter for which he was guiding. Judging from Dr. Kennamer’s and other’s descriptions, this bird was the patriarch of that corner of White Oak Plantation.

After we quit the stubborn bird, we moved and hunted the woods surrounding a 30-acre green field, but didn’t hear anything. After moving all the way around the field, we were standing in an adjacent field and I heard a hen yelp. I mentioned it to Jolly as the hen yelped again. James and I sat up in the fence row beside a deer stand, and Jolly dropped back to call.

About 30 minutes later James looked up and saw a gobbler coming across the field in front of us. He was coming on a straight line to Jolly’s calls. My gun was pointed to the left and the bird was closing to the right. I was pinned down. I waited until the bird went behind a tree in the fence line and moved the gun and shifted my body around to the right. I didn’t know of the bird was going to come through the fence or through the gap in front of us, so I didn’t know which way to aim. Jolly later said the tom got stuck a couple of times trying to get through the tangled briars, but couldn’t.

The bird swung around to the left and I had the crosshairs waiting on him. He stopped at 15 yards and I shot under a branch and put him in a pile. The bird never strutted or gobbled. This bird weighed 19 pounds, had a 9 3/4-inch beard and 7/8-inch spurs, but his wing feathers showed no sign of any strutting wear, which is somewhat unusual for a mature gobbler. After we pieced the situation together, it was a good guess that the other dominant gobbler had probably whipped this tom into submission, which was keeping this and other birds from displaying or gobbling.

Hunt the boss

Situations where a dominant bird has the rest of the resident toms scared silly makes for some tough hunting. Birds often gobble from the roost and then go silent when they hit the ground. The best solution to this problem is the most difficult to accomplish—Kill the dominant gobbler. Often, the rest of the gang will crank up soon after, as they try to reestablish their pecking order again.

But how do you kill the dominant gobbler, you ask? It all starts by singling out the dominant bird and hunting him until you kill him. Sometimes it will wreck a season, but it can be done. On more than one occasion, I’ve roosted a dominant gobbler with his hens and scattered them the night before I planned to hunt. The next morning, the old bird was rather lonely and practically landed in my lap.

In lateMarch 1998, I was hunting with writer Glynn Harris and biologist Luke Lewis at Dennis “Skinny” Halmark’s lease near Hackneyville, Alabama. I had spent two days hunting for a gobbler that was ruling the roost on part of Skinny’s lease. The bird wasn’t gobbling, nor was he letting any of the other toms strut or gobble.

That afternoon, I took Glynn back to the food plot at 1:30 and set up below the hill to catch the birds moving up a skidder trail that led into the opening. We sat there for 1 hour and 45 minutes, calling every 20 to 30 minutes. Nothing showed, so I decided to move.

When we packed up I took the lead and headed up the hill to the food plot. When I was about three steps from seeing into the food plot, I shouldered my Mossberg 9200 like a SWAT Team officer and advanced. When I broke the rise, I saw a gobbler standing there in the shade. He ran and I swung on him and rolled him at 26 yards. The hi-velocity load of Winchester No. 5s broke his neck. The tom weighed 20 pounds, had a 12 1/8-inch beard and sported 1-7/16-inch spurs. This dominant bird didn’t give a hoot about gobbling, and was content to strut and wait for the hens to come to him. I never would have had a chance at this crusty old limb-hanger if I hadn’t been ready when the opportunity presented itself.

Stay in the game

When birds are keeping quiet, old-fashioned patience is the order of the day. A few days ago, I was in Arkansas after four days of filming for Turkey Call Television. After the camera crew was on its way back home I had one day to try and fill a tag.

Hunting from daylight to 3:00 p.m. with Roger Hook, we left the woods. Roger had to visit one of his sick church members at a local hospital, and I grabbed a sandwich. I was still chewing the last bites of a bologna sandwich when I grabbed my gun and vest and headed back for another try. I had been sitting for about 90 minutes when I heard a single yelp from the brush-choked valley below. I yelped back, but nothing answered. A few minutes later a crow winged over head and cawed at the turkeys below.

The longbeard couldn’t help himself and answered with a half-hearted gobble. I yelped softly and the birds started heading my way… silently. A few more yelps and the mature bird eased up the hill to investigate. At 30 yards I stopped his progress with a load of Federal No. 5s. Staying in the hunt, even when the birds weren’t gobbling much helped me bag this Arkansas ridge runner.