Basics and advanced turkey calling

Hello,
Relatively new to turkey hunting, we have Merriams and Rio Grandes about an hour apart. Is there some definitive u tube or some other electronic show that does a really good job of presentation? I could waste a lot of time on this, and simply seek to acquire these skills efficiently.

Thanks in advance,

Get a set of Lovett Williams' CDs. Use your phone or a digital recorder to record your calling to compare to those CDs. It also helps to have another person listen and tell you how you sound different.

Hello and thank you for this info concerning Lovett Williams CD,s.

Gene S.

wildcat westerner said:

Hello,
Relatively new to turkey hunting, we have Merriams and Rio Grandes about an hour apart. Is there some definitive u tube or some other electronic show that does a really good job of presentation? I could waste a lot of time on this, and simply seek to acquire these skills efficiently.

Thanks in advance,

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There should be lots of information on the NET ! But you will find that some of the worst turkey callers are the turkeys themselves ! Many times I thought a call that I heard was a guy calling only to be surprised to learn it was the real thing ! You do not have to be a real great caller, get the basic sounds and the rhythm or timing of the yelps right and you will kill turkeys when they are not with hens ! Set up locations can also make or break you they don't like to come down hill very well, always take the high ground, and they are sometimes hard to get across a stream or some other obstacle, set up on the same side of such things as the bird is on ! Good luck !

Just a tip. Don't over call. I find a whole lot less is a whole lot better.

As someone said get on YouTube for videos, there are a lot of good ones and they're free. I would suggest a diaphragm call as you can make all the sounds/calls with little to no movement, which can really help finish a bird. If you've used a diaphragm for elk then it shouldn't be difficult to learn one for turkeys.

I'm far from what I would consider a great caller, but I kill several birds every year with the basics. Clucks in varying speed/cadence is usually all that is needed. IMO sometimes the best way to kill birds, especially the pressured public land birds I usually hunt, is to cluck a few times and let them know you're there and then keep quite. A lot of people over call and gobblers pick up on that quick.

The best practice I have found is to get out and hunt. Locate a hot bird (by calling of course) then get as close as you can before calling again. If he is with hens it's going to be hard to call him off. But try to emulate the hens. That's how you will become a better caller. In my experience they are always closer then they sound! So if you hear a bird and you think he's 400 yards away he's probably more like 200 yards away. You are going to screw up on some birds but that's the fun part. Learn from your mistakes and get close. Also another thing I like to do is put birds to bed. Call at dusk and locate them right before dark that way in the AM you have ateast an idea where their roost tree might be. If your lucky you might see them get into their tree. Be underneath them well before day light. When turkeys pitch out of the tree, they typically do so up hill, for an easier landing. So set up there to begin with. As stated you don't have to be a champion caller to kill birds. Learn how to cluck and purr and you will call in some birds. Good luck

Additionally IMO box calls are the easiest calls for beginners.

My oh my,

The accumulated wisdom shared by my fellow hunters in these last messages has probably saved me ten years of learning the hard way. I took notes on these last messages and really appreciate the accumulated wisdom shared with me. We primarily hunt in the Rockies and nearly all cases the Toms have been ABOVE us, which probably accounts more for our lack of success last year than anything else. Thank you all so much for your sharing your wisdom. I look forward to next Spring already and today I can apply for limited Turkey draw hunts in two hard to get areas, Valles Caldera and Via Vidalle.
Once again, thanks!
Gene S.

Been turkey hunting 30+ years and the best teacher of turkey calling is the turkeys themselves, specifically the hens. I learned my best hen calling by setting up in roosts both in the morning and evening when I would put the birds to roost and listening to what calls the hens made paying VERY, VERY close attention to the volume and cadence of the calls and doing my absolute best to mimic them as close as I could. Besides that YouTube is your best friend. Tons of turkey callin vids featuring actual turkeys.

But truth be known IMHO the best way to call in a Tom is to put yourself between the Tom and where he wants to go and you at that moment in time are the best caller in the world. In other words no Tom on earth is more willing to come to your calls if he already more or less is headed in that direction.

Forgot to add a good slate synthetic or actual in my experience is about the easiest call to quickly learn how to use well and be able to make all the sounds a hen makes. I carry one each slate and synthetic glass.
In my experience as has been already said calling less with serve you much better than calling more.

Once a Tom answers my calls especially if he is on the ground I only call once or twice more if his answer gobbles tell me he is getting closer and once I know he is getting closer I stop calling especially if I'm in the woods with limited visibility. If after my last call he gobbled back to me and he doesn't show in 30-40 minuets I remain seated take a VERY good look around, SLOOOWLY get up on my knees, take another very careful and through look around SLOWLY get up to a crouch, move about 40-50 yards straight farther away, get ready to set up quickly and while standing and facing directly away from the gobbler's last known direction, call again.

DartonJager said:

Been turkey hunting 30+ years and the best teacher of turkey calling is the turkeys themselves, specifically the hens. I learned my best hen calling by setting up in roosts both in the morning and evening when I would put the birds to roost and listening to what calls the hens made paying VERY, VERY close attention to the volume and cadence of the calls and doing my absolute best to mimic them as close as I could. Besides that YouTube is your best friend. Tons of turkey callin vids featuring actual turkeys.

But truth be known IMHO the best way to call in a Tom is to put yourself between the Tom and where he wants to go and you at that moment in time are the best caller in the world. In other words no Tom on earth is more willing to come to your calls if he already more or less is headed in that direction.

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I agree 100% setting up where a known strut zone is or on a trial that he uses to get there is a good first step! I have just sat and watched and listened to the same gobbler several mornings before season already, and sometimes you find them birds that do the same thing every morning ! I have also seen some that very seldom did the same thing twice on different mornings! also if you put them to bed and have a good distance between the hens and the gobbler setting up between them can be good if they don't fly the whole way to one another, I have seen this happen also and sat there and watched and listened to them go the other way ! Again I am not one to take defeat kindly and I have at times been successful getting ahead of them and letting them walk into me! I can tell you know what your doing and that being said I don't have to tell you to never stop thinking, it's amazing the things that I have thought of to counter some of the things they pull ! many times I have thought I knew exactly what they were going to do, only to have them do something totally unexpected, I don't think they even knew they were going to do it ! I have always loved matching wits with them and as far as being smart, they are just being turkeys and get a lot of credit for being smart that is only them using their keen senses and being turkeys ! I do believe they can be spooked from different things and I have shot and missed gobblers and ended up killing them the next day or two! You know what to do ! I will not try to call them to the same location where I spooked one or missed him, but have been quite successful changing the location by a 100 yards and also using a different call than the one I was using when I missed or spooked him ! I am 67 and have hunted them seriously since the mid 70's ! We didn't have face book and all the gadgets of today to learn from, I was in the turkey woods calling many birds in and experimenting with them before season, seeing what I could and couldn't get away with ! The one main thing that will ruin your hunt is movement ! I have actually had birds on top of me that would not leave, I have even thrown stones at them from around a tree where they couldn't see my arm moving ! Had a lot of fun learning, I would call loud and soft and to some birds it didn't matter and others if I called too loud they just quite responding. I have never hunted any other state for anything, only my home state of PA ! There were some instructional tapes out back when I started and the one guy I had a lot of respect for and have met was Ben Rogers Lee ! He said there are turkeys that NO ONE will ever kill ! He told me a story about being invited to hunt a place that had a legendary gobbler that no one could kill, long story short they set Ben up on this bird and when they left so did ben he said he drove down the road a couple miles and called a nice gobbler in and killed it and rushed back and waited for the other hunters, he said if they haven't been able to kill he probably wouldn't be able to either ! When the hunters joined up around noon Ben said he was congratulated on being able to kill the unkillable bird in that area! We both had a good laugh over that story ! He was a very comical guy !

I use the Plumbers Goop to attach the soundboards as well as the playing surfaces.

I've made more notes from all these messages, and the most succinct were: not overcalling, getting into an intercept position,avoiding calling them in exact positions where they have ben spooked or shot at before, and really watching your movement.
There is a basic, I am still not sure of: camouflage- what is right for you, do you need anything else suchas netting etc., do you use cross sticks etc. to keep your shotgun still, but ina horizontal plane?
Thanks, you guys have really helped me out.

wildcat westerner said:

I've made more notes from all these messages, and the most succinct were: not overcalling, getting into an intercept position,avoiding calling them in exact positions where they have ben spooked or shot at before, and really watching your movement.
There is a basic, I am still not sure of: camouflage- what is right for you, do you need anything else suchas netting etc., do you use cross sticks etc. to keep your shotgun still, but ina horizontal plane?
Thanks, you guys have really helped me out.

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I like to use a red dot scope because I can better sight a shotguns pattern in better than you can with basic sights, well some you can't sight in you just have to hold so the very center of your pattern is where you want it to be ! I have used the cheap BSA brand for over 25 years and have had NO TROUBLE with it, I have left it turned on and drained the battery once right after I started using it ! I now always carry spare batteries, they hardly take up any room ! I do not use X sticks only my knee to rest my gun on, this works real well when you are setting up against a large tree ! The gun seems to be at the exact level that I want it to be at, one word that I feel is very important ! ALWAYS set against the tree with you less dominate side facing the direction you expect the turkey will appear from this give you a better radius of swing with your gun ! Set tight against the tree, I prefer to just set down on a cushion and have my knees up in the air and being right handed have my left side facing the direction from where I suspect the turkey will come from and have my gun resting on my knee ! Do not!! try holding your gun up off of your knee, this is where a lot of turkey hunters have made a fatal mistake ! I don't care how strong you are if you get stuck in that position, you may be in it for a long time and not be able to move ! Your gun starts to put on weight that you never dreamed it could after you have held it up off of you knee for a while and eventually you will start moving the gun and the longer you hold it up the more radical the movement becomes and a turkey has been known to see a gun barrel move at a 100 yards, so let the gun rest on your knee and shoot from this position if you can, it is a very steady rest, and if you have to move the gun some always do so when the turkeys head is behind something, a tree, bush, rock, or even his own tail when he is in full strut ! If you do have to move the gun when the turkeys head is not be hind something do it very slowly, they will see this but you will often have enough time to get your dot or sights on them before they get out of range, provided they are close when you start ! A fast move with your gun to get on a turkey usually always results in either an instant flush or a running turkey ! Hope these tips help you some day bag a long beard ! P.S. I think anything with some green in it for the spring woods will be an ok camo pattern, nothing that has faded white or any of the extra dark patterns, you don't want something that sticks out ! Also if you are using a blind it would probably be best then to use some kind of a shooting rest or sticks to avid having to hold your gun up for possibly a very long time and be careful also in a blind that you don't bang your gun into anything making a noise or movement that might spook the birds !