Why toms go silent and how to hunt them when they do.
Part I—High-pressure birds
Dredged up from a March-April 2000 issue of Turkey Call, we begin the first of a three-part series on hunting silent tom turkeys. Exploring some of the reasons why gobblers get tight-lipped—hunter pressure, stage of the breeding season and dominant gobblers—help alleviate some of the frustration every turkey hunter faces sooner or later. Notice the word “some” in the previous sentence. No matter how good a turkey hunter you are or how good your hunting area, there are going to be days when turkeys won’t gobble and there is no reason. For practicality sake, we’ll stick to the times when there’s a reasonable explanation.
This series of articles is dedicated to the late Bo Pitman, the “Turkey Whisperer.”
The first part of this series we’ll focus on hunter pressure, its resulting effect on toms and how to hunt these stressed-out birds.
We saw each other at the same time. The gobbler reacted by unstrutting his feathers and diving into the roadside brush as I skidded to a halt on the dusty logging road. Since I was at least 100 yards from the bird, I figured it would be worth a try to back up, park and ease into the woods on the side of the road the gobbler was headed.
The tom had been strutting in the middle of the dirt road, just on the other side of a rickety, single-lane wooden bridge. I eased toward the bluff overlooking the creek, set up and waited for 15 minutes before calling the first time.
I figured that mine wasn’t the first truck to spook this bird from the road, and that he might settle down enough to come to a call. My first few yelps were cut off by a gobble right where I thought he would be… on the other side of the creek.
I contented myself, trading yelps for gobbles as the bird held his ground. About 20 minutes into the setup, I heard the sound of wingbeats and pressed my cheek into the stock of the Mossberg 9200. A few seconds later, I caught a brown blur loping up the hill toward me. A coyote! After his unsuccessful stalk on the gobbler (the wingbeats I’d heard), the canine altered his course toward my calling to see if he make a meal out of a hen instead. I swung on the rascal and started taking the slack out of the trigger when a little voice reminded me that this turkey hunt would end if I dusted the bushy-tailed predator. When the coyote got to within 15 yards and caught my scent it kicked in the afterburners.
I sat quietly for 30 minutes, just enjoying the early April morning. Time was running short. I had to be at work in an hour, so it was time to try something different. I eased the camo cap from my head, flapped it on my leg and limb cackled with a mouth call. Half a minute later I heard the gobbler’s wings as he sailed off his perch and back down into the creek bottom. When his toes hit the ground he gobbled back. We played this game for a few minutes, neither one of us budging. This went on for 30 minutes, so I backed off and made a promise to try this bird again another day soon.
Two days later, I parked my vehicle in the dark, nearly a mile from the bridge. Slogging along the now muddy scar that two days earlier had been a road down the middle of a freshly logged tract of game management land, I wanted to reach the other side of the bridge to listen for the bird’s first gobble.
I stood there for half an hour listening to the creek and the wet dripping off the leaves. I didn’t want to use a locator call, since this bird had no doubt heard others honking on crow calls and owl hooters ‘til he was cross-eyed. I heard a hen start cutting up the creek and guessed that the gobbler might be roosted with her and was keeping silent. He had strutted right where I stood before, so there was a fair chance he would do it again. I sat up against a broad pine facing a puddle in the middle of the road big enough to set a spread of mallard decoys.
I yelped and cutt back at the hen and she came right back with more of the same. I got a weird feeling and turned my head slowly to the left and caught a glimpse of a long-bearded wraith slipping in the back door. It was tempting to swing all the way around the tree and try to quick-draw the gobbler, but I didn’t move a muscle.
And that’s just the way I sat for the next two hours—locked up like a dog on point. A jake and a bearded hen joined the gobbler to pick and scratch in the leaves for their breakfast. I didn’t dare call, hoping they would walk off sooner instead or later. When I could no longer hear them scratching, I eased my head around to take a look. I spied the three turkeys walking around a bend in the creek about 90 yards from where I sat. I scooted around the pine and aimed my gun at the spot where I last saw them. Three quiet yelps on a well-worn H.S. Strut slate, then I waited.
I couldn’t help but grin like the Cheshire Cat when the jake came back around the bend looking for me. The bearded hen followed 10 yards behind. When the pair walked to 30 yards I began wondering where the longbeard was hiding. I got the answer when the gobbler periscoped up from a slight depression 15 yards away. Again, I fought the desire to swing my gun to get on the bird. Patience won out when the gobbler pulled down his head and began walking toward the other turkeys. I eased my gun over and picked a low spot the gobbler would pass in three steps. A few seconds later the tight-lipped tom won a free ride to town in my truck.
The weight of the gobbler slung over my shoulder felt good as I squished my way back up the red clay road. The long walk gave me plenty of time to replay the hunt, and the amazing absence of strutting or gobbling this old bird did on his last morning. Thinking back, I tried to count up the number of silent gobblers that got to wear my tags. I lost count when I ran out of fingers to tally up these devilishly tough birds to hunt.
Without a doubt, finding spring gobblers when they are not in the mood to talk has to be one of the most frustrating situations turkey hunters face. I’ll admit it’s not as much fun as working a bird that gobbles with every breath, you don’t have to fold and toss in your hand. Just reassess the situation and play the cards you’re dealt.
Hunter Pressure
One of the biggest culprits of hush-mouthed toms is hunter pressure. On the Sumter National Forest, where I frequently hunt near home, the few turkeys that live there start getting educated to every sort of man-made bird sound that a turkey hunter can make about three weeks prior to April 1st.
About the fourteenth time a gobbler gets “shocked” into answering a crow call he senses get a little sand-papered. After a while, all the gobblers must think that the crows and owls have all started driving four-wheel-drive trucks with big, knobby mud-grip tires. On the public lands where I hunt, the birds still answering locator calls on opening day usually are in a race to see who can do their best impersonation of a bat hanging from the check station’s scales.
Several years ago, I had another South Carolina gobbler teach me a valuable lesson. Like others, I had located this bird on a previous hunt and had returned to try him again. This particular bird gobbled once from the roost, but I didn’t answer him. I waited until he flew down, then started working a slate call, yelping and purring occasionally. The bird was making slow progress when a truck ground to a halt on an adjacent gravel road.
We both heard the door hinges squeak and the obliging “caw, caw, caw” as the hunter tried to raise a gobble. The silence prompted the hunter to climb back in his truck, slam the door and drive on down the road. I waited 15 minutes and yelped a few soft notes. A half minute later, the tom gobbled once from the spot he last called from. Over the next two hours, not one, but four more trucks did a repeat of the earlier hunter, and the gobbler never answered any of them. All they accomplished was hanging up the gobbler on the way to my calls. Luckily, all of the hunters drove off between the times when the gobbler answered any of my calls. Patience and a low-impact approach put this bird’s 1 1/4-inch spurs on my hat band.
Humans are not the only hunters that feed on wild turkeys. We rank nowhere near the top of the list of wild turkey predators. From the time an egg is laid, only one in 10 make it to their first spring. I don’t have any scientific research to back up my opinion, but I’ve noticed in areas where wild turkey populations have leveled out, or even declined, that predators can play a role in the amount of gobbling activity. Sometimes it takes a few years, but an area’s predators learn how to hunt for nesting hens and strutting gobblers. When a bird survives an attack after gobbling several times, he’s just smart enough to learn that he’s attracting more than hens with his loud calling.
Over the last decade, I’ve had more hunts than I can count busted up by coyotes, foxes, bobcats, dogs, wild hogs, and believe it or not, a pair of bald eagles. On the other hand, predators are what make the wild turkey such a supreme hunting challenge. If they had no predators, besides man, they would be no more fun to pursue than chickens.
If you are faced with a situation where predator activity is dulling gobbling activity, follow the basics: scout for strutting and feeding areas. Once you find the open areas where turkeys are spending their days, look for ambush sites where the gobbler will feel secure coming to a call. Always go with your first instinct in setups and give the gobbler enough time to show up. Resist the urge to move calling locations if a bird doesn’t answer your calls. Again, my own mistakes, like getting up and spooking a silent tom that’s on his way in, have taught me that patience will put more birds in the bag than running around the woods looking for a better spot.
One of the best I know who specialized in hunting turkeys that get a lot of hunter pressure was the late White Oak Plantation’s Bo Pitman. He a supreme field strategist who combined an intimate knowledge of where turkeys like to hang out and soft, subtle calling. His low-key approach consistently put gobblers in gun range of waiting hunters.
If the spring woods seem quiet, all is not lost. Play out your hand and you just might come up a winner.
In the next edition look for more anecdotes and tips on hunting silent gobblers when they’re henned up.