Month: March 2023

Restuarant owners love to hear that the turkeys weren’t gobbling that day because they fill up around 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. with hunters looking for breakfast who gave up for the day.  We can and MUST break this dependance on gobbling to hunt turkeys, and if you are hunting right, you never need to hear a gobble to hunt all morning and fill your tag.  Listen to this podcast episode to hear it all!

Turkeys gobble for a number of reasons, it is not solely about mating. And they may gobble year-round. Likewise, turkeys can mate without gobbling, it is certainly not required. In fact, they will often not gobble while mating. Weather plays a part in gobbling as well, as do many various other factors, many of which are not fully understood. What we know for sure is that if we hear a turkey, we know one is there. But the opposite is hardly true. Not hearing a turkey only means you don’t hear a turkey. 

First things first, you should not pick a hunting location based on gobbling, you should select it because of sign. Real, tangible evidence that turkeys are in that area. If you scout and do that, you will have something that very few turkey hunters have. Confidence. You can be confident that whether you hear them or not, gobblers are in that area, and you have a chance to call one it and take it home. 

Most turkey hunters have no confidence, if they do not hear turkeys, they assume they do not exist and are not in their area. And without scouting, there is no reason to think they are in your area. So, the hunter who scouts well is not fazed by a lack of vocalizing toms, but the hunter who does not scout has no reason to stick it out if they do not hear any birds.

You can hunt and take turkeys no matter what sounds they make or do not make. It may require a change in strategy, it might take some different tactics, but you absolutely hunt them. And taking a turkey that never gobbled is no less fun! In fact, it is a great challenge, greater feat, and often feels like a greater accomplishment.

Turkey hunting is not birdwatching. If you work hard and do not take the easy way out, you will find turkey nuggets on your table again and again.

Listen to the whole podcast episode to hear more.

Most the time it is easy to tell the difference between male and female turkeys, but sometimes it is strangely difficult. Bearded hens can make things more complicated but a lot more can happen that makes it even harder to tell the difference between a hen and a gobbler.

People often ask, what percentage of hens have beards? The answer should be simple but data from researchers varies greatly between 3% and 20%. The most commonly accepted statistic I have found is around 10% of hens have beards. And hen beards tend to be shorter, thinner, and less pronounced than the beard of tom. However, what normally happens is not what always happens.

Hens and toms can share a lot of traits they aren’t supposed to have at times. Hens can have plumage similar to gobblers at times. Gobblers can have no spurs, lighter colors, and different head colorings. Some hens can be larger than normal and some toms can be smaller than usual.

At the end of the day some turkeys can be so mix-matched that it is not possible for even a trained hunter to properly identify them in the field, even if they have them in hand.  You may think I’m joking, but occasionally a bird comes along that even biologists cannot identify without checking its reproductive parts.

The big thing hunters need to know is what are the laws for taking a bird. If a turkey is legal and you want to take it, you probably should. People often say that killing a bearded hen is the same as killing a whole hatch of poults. But the truth is that predation and winter kill more turkeys than anything else.

That bearded hen may get eaten by a coyote by the end of the day. The whole hatch may never last a week if foxes and crows find it. Very few of those birds will live long enough to see the winter and fewer still will survive to breed. Nature consumes many of the turkeys that hunters think they are saving.

But the bottom line is this, if as an seasoned turkey hunter you have come to a point where you prefer to pass on bearded hens for the chance it may help the population then you should. If you’ve never taken a turkey before and you see a legal bird, and you want to take it, you should. Each hunter needs to follow their heart and conscience, not the collective input of Facebook groups. 

Listen to the podcast episode for much more!

There are not many things we hunt where hearing matters more than it does for turkeys. Every gobble, cluck, purr, scratch, and footstep provides us with the strategic audio input we need to hunt these majestic birds. And yet the very practice of hunting turkeys damages our ears, both from gunshots but also loud calling. On this episode I interview Dr. Bill Dickinson, an audiologist and founder of Tetra Hearing, to talk about how important our hearing is and what we can do to protect and restore it. 

Tetra Hearing Free 2-Year Service Plan. Just add this Service Plan to your cart and use this code at checkout: NEWHUNTERSGUIDE

• Tetra AlphaShield Written Review
• Tetra AlphaShield Video Review
• Tetra AlphaShield Podcast Review

Most people do not think that one or two shotgun shots a year hunting turkey is enough to damage their hearing. The truth is, one shot, the next shot, could be the one that changes your hearing forever. And if it’s not, it can take a just a little bit more of your hearing away. Most people lose a little here and there until all of a sudden, they realize they have a real problem. 

But perhaps even more harmful than shotgun noise is loud calling. A box call or glass call can easily exceed the safe hearing threshold and cause you hearing damage every day you walk into the woods whether you pull the trigger or not. 

But if people do not protect their hearing hunting turkeys, they likely do not protect it hunting pheasants, deer, ducks, doves and other game. And every day you walk into the woods you are hurting your hearing for next season. You are also hurting your hearing for work, family, and everything else you will do for the rest of your life.

Hearing protection is not just important, it is crucial. And thankfully we have more amazing options available today than ever before in history to protect our hearing and even help us hunt better. Tetra Hearing has created the most sophisticated hearing protection and augmentation technology ever seen.

This is not just technology that prevents hearing loss, but it compensates for hearing loss and then enables you to hear the game that you are hunting from further away than you could normally, even with perfect hearing. Dr. Bill has created something truly amazing and special that is bringing back the joy of hunting for so many who were no longer able to hear turkeys gobble. And it is enabling a generation to protect their hearing and enabling them to hunt for a lifetime without sacrificing one of their senses every day spent afield. 

On this episode Dr. Bill breaks down some of the complexities of the human hear and how it works, the technology that goes into protecting it and enhancing our hunting. But more than that he shares how important hearing is at all levels of life. His work truly celebrates this amazing sense God has given us and all of the great things that flow out of it into our lives. 

Listen to full podcast episode to hear the interview, stories, tech, and much more. And you can watch my review of the AlphaShield’s below. 

When it comes to hunting spring turkeys, there is one thing that trumps gear, strategy, calling, ammo, stealth, and everything else. And that is SIGN. You could be the greatest turkey hunter in the world, a championship winning caller, with the best equipment that money can buy, shooting gold platted TSS shells accurate to 100 yards and none of it will matter at all if there are no turkeys there. Finding and hunting over sign is the single most important part of turkey hunting. 

You can make a lot of mistakes chasing gobblers and still get opportunities, still get seemingly “lucky” and take birds home. You can sp0ok birds day after day, you can miss birds, bump them, call badly, and worse, and still occasionally find success IF there are turkeys there to be hunted. It happens all the time.

But you can also waste days, weeks, and entire seasons hunting in places where there are no turkeys to be found. Sometimes they are areas that look like they should hold turkeys, sometimes they are areas with perfect food and habitat, and sometimes they are just traditional or convenient hunting areas. But none of that matters to the turkeys and will give them any reason to be there. We need to find them and go to the places where they are.

Scouting is an unending part of turkey hunting. We should scout before the season, during the season, and after the season if we want to find areas that have turkeys this year and may have turkeys again in future hunting seasons. Turkeys are sometimes drawn to specific areas and habitat year-after-year because in the spring it is quality turkey habitat. And if you can find a few of those honey holes, then current and past scouting can pay off by providing future benefit. But every year we need to be on the lookout for sign.

Sign comes in many forms and in this episode, I talk about numerous ways to find it and make good turkey hunting strategy decisions. Listen to the full podcast episode for more!