Getting Aggressive with Spring Gobblers

Troy Esau

The snow has melted, your trigger finger is itching for some action, and you're looking to get out of the house after a long cold winter. Spring turkey season is a great way to get back into the woods and kick off another year of hunting. I am pretty fortunate to have grown up and live in an area with a healthy wild turkey population and have had the opportunity to harvest quite a few over the years. Here in Manitoba, we only get one tag per year, which can be used in either the spring or the fall season. There are many places in the United States where you can get more than one tag, but our population in Manitoba isn't quite strong enough to handle that quantity of harvest yet.

There isn't anything quite like hearing that first gobble breaking through the silence of opening morning to get your heart going. It is a sound like no other, echoing across a field, or through the trees, just as you get your decoys set up and ready. After legal light hits and the birds pitch down into your view, you really start to get excited, and then without warning, the turkeys do what turkeys do best; they hang up, leary of your setup. The toms are “henned up,” and the ladies decide to take another route becasue they sense something different in your setup or location. I have had this happen countless times. Sure, it is great when they march right on in to your decoys, and you just get to watch the show until it's time to let it fly and shoot your turkey of choice. In many turkey hunting situations, you need to change up your calling tactic, or try to change your setup to get that leary gobbler, or group of turkeys, into range so you can get a shot at your target bird. From all of my personal hunting experience, hunting these birds requires being aggressive, rather than hoping the birds will suddenly change their mind and work towards you.

There are many ways to be aggressive with turkeys, but remember, with whatever tactic you try, that a turkeys eyes are their best defense. Their eyesight is incredible, and you need to make sure you are out of sight while hunting or changing your setup. I can recall one hunt where we had about 3 toms and 5 hens hung up at 100 yards, and they started to work away from us. Once it was clear they were headed in a different direction, we stopped calling to them all together and decided to try a different approach. One caller stayed with the decoys, while I backed into the trees and snuck within 50 yards of the birds. Once I had gained that much ground, I yelped at them a few times and the toms imediately reacted and started gobbling hard at me and strutting in my direction. At this point, I slowly worked back to the decoys, calling periodically as they followed. Once I had closed in on the decoy setup again, I got the other caller to resume calling to the birds, to try and pull them past my location and hopefully into the decoys, to get a shot opportunity. This time, it worked flawlessly, and my buddy was able to get a shot and harvest a beautiful bird.