Rifle Hunting Turkeys; Anyone here do it?

Stands with feeders and rifles has been the norm for turkey hunting since I was a kid. Just out glassing and spotting on quads is also fun. laser range finders with ballistic tables for your rounds. It's probably been 20 years since I shot a shot gun. I remember as a kid biting down a piece of lead shot that was in some bird dinner.

Hard copper bullets are the best. 140 gr Gamekings @3100 fps out of my 29 inch 270 . Really great long range turkey round. They just leave tiny .224, .243,.270 and .7mm holes in the fanning Toms way down on the fields below. :cool:
 
There is or at least should be room for everybody.
I dont mind (the real pros.)among us having the spring season all to themselves.
Nor do i mind that there are long stretches of fly fishing only streams.
But come fall, just shut up and hunt or stay home in my book.
 
Some states allow Turkeys to be hunted with rifles from .22 Mag thru .223. This seems to upset some people for some reason. Are there any here that hunt turkeys with a rifle? To be honest this has always appealed to me. It is a clean head shot or a miss.

What is your experience?gun)

Check out this video with a pellet rifle head shot on a turkey.




HECK YEAH! shotguns suck! spray and pray that a piece of shot or 3 connect to kill.

kind of like the turkey shoots where your shot has to be closest to center. like you have control over that.

i went trap shooting not long ago and a true shotgun shooter called me out the second he saw me! he said , your a rifle shooter ,aren't you?

YUP!
 
Stands with feeders and rifles has been the norm for turkey hunting since I was a kid. Just out glassing and spotting on quads is also fun. laser range finders with ballistic tables for your rounds. It's probably been 20 years since I shot a shot gun. I remember as a kid biting down a piece of lead shot that was in some bird dinner.

Hard copper bullets are the best. 140 gr Gamekings @3100 fps out of my 29 inch 270 . Really great long range turkey round. They just leave tiny .224, .243,.270 and .7mm holes in the fanning Toms way down on the fields below. :cool:
🙉
 
Back in the 30s, my father used to go to "Turkey Shoots" just before Thanksgiving where they would tie down a turkey by its feet behind a log and the idea was to hit him when he stuck his head up to look around, with your 22LR. If you got him you could take him home. We ALWAYS had turkey dinner. That would probably be frowned on these days as cruel. Later they would set up wooden matches on a rail and to get a turkey all you had to do was light a match without cutting it down. The change was probably because of protests. We still ate turkey for thanksgiving dinner. They paid for the turkeys...and then some...by charging a fee for each shot you took. It was a charity event. They didnt make much off my father, he was small bore champion of CA in 1936..??..
 
HECK YEAH! shotguns suck! spray and pray that a piece of shot or 3 connect to kill.

kind of like the turkey shoots where your shot has to be closest to center. like you have control over that.

i went trap shooting not long ago and a true shotgun shooter called me out the second he saw me! he said , your a rifle shooter ,aren't you?

YUP!
Serious turkey hunters in the south don't spray and pray I'm sorry . When you find the choke and loads that your gun likes (as in a rifle ) some of us a scope on our turkey guns you know where your shot pattern is going . I haven't had pellets in a turkey breast in 25 yrs
 
The art to turkey hunting for most is to call a turkey in close enough to kill him with a shotgun . Yes turkey s in a lot of states are easy prey . Go to ms ,al or ga and it's a different story . Hunt in those states on public ground and you will discover how much of a turkey hunter you are
 
Turkeys are varmints! I was visiting and hunting during spring South Dakota Tom season. My buddy has 1200 acres of prime land on his ranch and totally fenced with quality T post and barb wire because he runs about 50 cows on the property. The neighbors might be some distance away, but they all have similar setups. One of the older friends down the road came over with a 1/2 case of beer to talk and when he found out that I was Tom hunting. He wanted me to come over and kill all those bastard birds that roost in the orchards around his house because they are so over populated and they just cover everything with crap🤣 I told him that their are game limits and toms only. Later that day it sounded like a war over at his house. The beer must have got Charley thinking and using high powered rifles was easy.
 
Same ranch story #2 Totally Posted 1200 acres. The bastard shotgun poachers. I get up in the morning and watch the deer and turkeys out the window on the bottom land fields. For me it's another day of putting in more T post fence and stretching barbed wire with the Bob Cat and tractor. I'm out working in the morning and you hear and see Tom's. I hear Tom's in a couple tree line areas near the open areas. I decided to have a refreshment break and I head up to the house. I got to thinking about these two Toms calling. So I grabbed my 270 with a 8X32 power scope and and walk down to an open area where I have the best view and out about 250 - 300 yards. I'm looking all over for where the sound is coming from. These two guys were in total camo gear and good, and it took me awhile to find them. They really blended in. I was so ****ed because I couldn't figure out how they got in Because I never saw a pickup. I thought about sending some rounds down near them. But instead I did the big circle sneak, armed of course and came up behind this guy calling leaned up against the tree. I don't think that he had ever had a big rifle pointed at him when I said leave your shot gun alone and call your buddy over here. I considered confiscating their shotguns. But I just had them unload them and walked them to from a distance to where their pickup was hidden off the property. I wrote down their LC and names and told them to get the hell out of here.

I talked to my buddy the land owner and he said that it happens all the time and over the years he has found gut piles on the property. He said that he would let people hunt all they have to do is ask or even offer to trade a day labor for permission.
 
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