For many hunters, pursuing wild turkeys represents the pinnacle of the sport. The challenge of matching wits with these wily birds builds an almost mythical aura around turkey hunting. But just how difficult is it? This comprehensive guide takes an honest look at what makes turkey hunting hard, along with tips to find success.
What Makes Turkey Hunting Difficult?
There are several key factors that contribute to turkeys being challenging quarry:
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Wariness – Turkeys have remarkable vision and hearing, They quickly detect unnatural sights and sounds Approaching or ambushing them is extremely difficult
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Lack of aggression – Hens, not gobblers, do most aggressive calling in spring. Loud hen calls can actually repel gobblers intent on breeding. You must sound natural.
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Vocal competition – Your calls compete with real hens surrounding the gobbler. Mimicking those unpredictable live hens is hard.
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Terrain limitations – Gobblers are hesitant to cross obstacles like fences or creeks to reach your calls Setting up in the right spot is critical
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Weather conditions – Cold, wet, or windy weather can make turkeys become unresponsive and stop gobbling Bad luck with conditions can ruin a hunt.
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Pressured birds – In heavily hunted areas, gobblers become extra wary and call-shy, making your task far harder.
These factors combine to make spring turkey hunting extremely difficult at times. Even veteran hunters go multiple days in a row without filling a tag. Persistence, skill and adaptability are vital.
Turkey Behavior That Complicates Hunting
Certain turkey behaviors also contribute to the challenge:
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nomadic – flocks and individual birds roam over large areas rather than staying put. Patterning their movements is hard.
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roost shifting – turkeys frequently switch roost sites based on weather, safety concerns, and for no apparent reason. Locating the birds each morning presents a constant challenge.
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silence – gobblers can go completely silent for long stretches even during peak breeding season. This lack of gobbles leaves you guessing.
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hen competition – nothing is harder than when your calls get ignored because a gobbler found the real thing. Frustration ensues.
Tips to Make Turkey Hunting Easier
While turkeys present many difficulties, these tips can tilt the odds in your favor:
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Scout heavily – nothing substitutes for time in the woods locating birds, routes, strut zones, roosts, and food sources.
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Use realistic calling – mix soft clucks, purrs, yelps, and cutts like a real hen. Do more listening than calling.
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Set up properly – get above a gobbler’s elevation and between him and where he wants to go.
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Conceal movement – use blinds, camo, facemasks and avoid excess motion when approaching.
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Remain still – once a tom commits, don’t move an inch until he’s in ideal range.
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Pattern your shotgun – today’s turkey loads and chokes produce devastating 40 yard and in head/neck patterns.
What Makes Turkey Hunting Rewarding?
Though difficult, turkey hunting offers great rewards:
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Hearing gobbles – the sound of a fired-up tom shaking the countryside at daybreak is magical.
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The challenge – outwitting a savvy gobbler on his terms brings great satisfaction.
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Time outdoors – spring scenery, sights, sounds make the early mornings special.
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Adrenaline rush – a tom strutting into range gets the heart pumping like nothing else.
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Wild harvest – a successful hunt provides tasty and healthy meat for the freezer.
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Camaraderie – fellow turkey hunters share knowledge, stories and laughs.
Persistence Is Key
More than anything, killing trophy gobblers requires persistence through tough days. Advice from experienced hunters, constantly improving calling skills, never losing hope and learning to laugh at misfortune are vital. With the right attitude, equipment, effort and realistic expectations, turkey hunting gets progressively easier over time.
The wily wild turkey is a worthy adversary. But hunters willing to match the bird’s wariness and put in the work can find consistent success. Nothing worth doing is easy, and that certainly applies to turkey hunting. But the rewards are well worth the challenges involved.
FAQs on Difficulty of Turkey Hunting
Here are answers to some common questions about the difficulty of spring turkey hunting:
What is the #1 reason turkey hunting is challenging?
A turkey’s extremely sharp eyesight and hearing make stealth difficult. They readily detect anything unnatural in their surroundings.
What is the hardest turkey hunting state?
Georgia is considered one of the most difficult states for eastern turkey hunting due to limited public land and supersized gobblers that get heavily pressured.
How can weather affect turkey hunting difficulty?
Cold, wet, or windy weather can make turkeys stop gobbling and become less responsive to calling. Poor conditions increase difficulty.
Do turkey hunting success rates show it’s a hard hunt?
Around 50% of turkey hunters tag a bird each spring on average. This middling success rate does reflect the challenge involved.
Why are pressured turkeys in popular areas harder to hunt?
In heavily hunted zones, gobblers become extra wary of calling and decoys, making them much harder to draw into range.
Conclusion
Experts weigh in on whether the turkeys of today are more difficult to hunt than the turkeys of a decade ago
You set out for a long walk in the dark to the top of your favorite ridge, the one where youve worked countless longbeards over the years. As daylight slowly breaks, you owl hoot, almost shivering with anticipation. The show is about to start … except, it never does. You dont hear a gobble. It seems this is happening more and more in your neck of the woods. What the heck is wrong with these turkeys?
Its April right now. Plenty of turkey tags have been filled. Many more will certainly follow. But many, many tags will go unused. Its simply because turkeys are difficult to hunt. But are they more difficult to hunt now than they were, say, 10 years ago? Poll the average camo-wearing crowd in the coffee shop, and many would answer yes indeed, turkeys of today are tougher.
So we took the question to some of the top turkey hunters in the business. Quite a few of them work for or with Realtree. Several of them dont. None were shy with opinions.
Ive heard guys say, Hunt here because the Merriams are easy, or go there because the Rios always work, but a henned-up turkey is a henned-up turkey. When conditions are right, there are always a couple three- or four-day windows when you can wear them out, regardless of the subspecies. Its just like deer hunting; you can go and get your butt kicked for two weeks, and then one day its like the light switch is on, and bucks are running does everywhere. When turkeys get into what I call the kamikaze stage, theyre easier to hunt.
In my experience, that happens twice a season. Once early on, when the flocks first begin busting up, and again late in the season. Here in Georgia, the last week of April is one of my favorite times of the season.
I dont think turkeys are any tougher to hunt now than 10 years ago. I think there are areas where theyve been hunted more and are a bit more difficult to call than they might have been.
But I think a big factor is the way we call turkeys. It really has changed because of the access to information. Our calls are better now than ever before. Competition callers have really changed the way we call. It used to be you had a basic cluck and yelp. But now even our yelping is different.
All of this means we are more successful now than ever before. Sure, the turkeys are hunted more often by more hunters. But thats a good thing. Its a good thing for our sport, good for our industry and good for turkey hunting overall.
I have hunted many places that had new populations of turkeys, and for the first season or two, everyone that hunts them is an expert. But after three or four years, they get tougher. A lot of people think a turkey forgets an encounter with a hunter, but I dont think he does. You call in a 2-year-old bird and miss him. Next year hes a well-educated 3-year-old, and when there are several birds like that in a given area, the hunting gets tough. So in some ways, I think the hunter is changing the turkeys. Yet, todays hunters are more effective and successful than ever. They have better equipment, theyre better educated, and because of the abundance of the resource, they have more opportunities.
I suppose theres a reason Im not the turkey editor. And that reason is pretty obvious by the pile of unfilled turkey tags in my files.
But heres the deal — a truth that few people know and one that even I am starting to question. I once killed a total of 11 turkeys in five states and had a hand in 27 successful hunts in my home state of Michigan while calling for friends in a single spring season.
In the words of legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell, those days are looonnggg goooonnnneeee.
I dont think there is any question that turkeys are harder to hunt now than they were 10 years ago.
I dont know that turkey numbers have significantly declined. I suppose they have in some areas. But its more an issue of turkeys simply refusing to gobble. I dont hear half of the number of gobbles in a spring that I once did. And I think its a direct result of hunting pressure and hunters who simply dont understand the impacts of that which they do — particulary their wretched calling. In other words, they booger birds and make them pretty darned tight-beaked in the process.
Many will argue its because Im hunting when the turkeys are henned up. Well, if thats the case then the birds have been henned up since 2005.
If youre hunting a turkey thats older and more pressured, of course its harder. Thats why everyone loves dumb 2-year-olds. We had a gobbler on our farm in Missouri that I know was at least 5 years old, and he was tough. When youd call at him, hed turn and leave. It took me eight days to kill him, and I finally had to just show him a decoy with no calling at all.
But its not always pressured gobblers that make the hunting more difficult. Take a hen thats with a gobbler when he gets shot, or gets called up by herself and spooked by a hunter. Pretty soon, when she hears a certain type of calling, she wont come to it. And if shes with a gobbler, he wont either.
Pressured turkeys get increasingly harder to hunt because people dont use the correct tactics. They call too loud and spook hens and dont adequately conceal themselves. All of those mistakes educate turkeys quickly.
I think a lot has changed, but habitat and population changes affect turkey behavior more than anything. Along with that, hunting pressure can definitely affect them, as can any increase in predators.
Another huge factor is age structure. Just like whitetails, birthdays can make gobblers much keener and their moves and actions more precise. Thankfully, at some point during season, old turkeys may let their guard down. Hunters need to capitalize when the time is right.
There are a multitude of changes that occur, but the bottom line is gobblers are going to gobble to attract and/or find hens. Their surroundings and phase of breeding, laying or incubating will determine how much a gobbler will gobble. Lastly, the amount of hens and sub-dominant gobblers may be shut down due to the continuous butt kickin they take from mature gobblers! So yes, turkey behavior constantly changes. It always has.
To a point, yes, I think turkeys are harder to work now than they were 10 to 15 years ago. At the same time, though, there are a lot more turkeys now in some areas than there were back then so, in those areas, its the best its ever been.
But there are also a lot more turkey hunters now, and I think thats had a pretty big impact on how we perceive things to be. There are just as many turkeys in most places, but those turkeys are getting educated pretty good.
There are more predators now as well, and I think that keeps the turkeys from gobbling. Add those predators into the mix and you can have a situation where it seems like the turkeys are harder to hunt because they just dont gobble as much.
But lets not give them too much credit. Theyre turkeys and theyre not the smartest critters in the woods. But, yes, I do think theyre getting a little bit smarter.
I dont think the makeup of a turkeys brain has changed any since I began hunting them 20 years ago, but I do think some factors, particularly hunting pressure and the stage of the breeding season, can make localized populations of turkeys easier or more difficult to hunt.
Take the turkeys at Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky / Tennessee, which are consistently the most difficult Ive ever hunted. Although numerous, those are big-woods birds, which makes seeing them difficult. And they receive enormous amounts of hunting pressure, probably due to all the outdoor writers who wont shut up about the place, despite having never actually been there.
Any turkey that stands on the same ridge and gobbles for an hour in LBL during hunting season is probably going to have an encounter with a hunter. So they quickly learn to shut up. I think the same effect, at least to some degree, can be seen anywhere turkeys and hunters exist.
Are turkeys more difficult to hunt these days? Not when compared to my start in the 1970s. Guys would go years without tagging one back then and not find it all that unusual – getting one by the feet was a major event. I say this as a beginning turkey hunter back then. Even killing a young spring gobbler or legal fall hen was seen as a trophy moment, as it should be. This was before elaborate pop-up blinds and hyper-real decoys, of course – assets to the modern turkey hunter. Those wild turkeys were tough in the pre-restoration years (and sometimes scarce), even though the north-central Pennsylvania ridge tops we hunted had some birds even when they had bottomed out elsewhere.
Are turkeys more difficult to hunt these days? Yes, no and maybe depending on the birds and hunters involved. I think in some ways were spoiled here in the post-restoration golden years. Punching tags is expected. Too much emphasis is sometimes placed on killing and not enjoying the hunt. Turkeys are supposed to be tough. Thats why its the best hunting tradition for some of us – the difficulty adds to the pleasure. Its all good – the scouting, locating, sitting on birds, calling to them and sometimes even tagging one.
Some final thoughts: Many of us start out down south and out west each spring season. Floridas Osceolas see a lot of pressure, so they arent always pushovers. Texas Rios can be tough, but if you make a mistake on one, redemption can be just ranch pasture away. Nebraskas hybridized flocks on the other hand are so plentiful you can scratch out a few for your early season – and look like a turkey hunting superhero doing it – before hunting Easterns later on, which in my mind is the toughest of the subspecies, hands-down. Hunting pressure in the eastern half of the United States makes them this way.
I love em all – the easy and hard ones. Grateful for the former, I know dues will be paid to the latter. And sometimes even those low-pressure Merriams birds can be tough to figure out. Im cool with that.