Don't Give Up on Late-Season Turkeys By DAVID RAINER
Don’t fret if you haven’t bagged a gobbler yet. And you can count me in that crowd, even though I had a gobbler at 15 steps earlier this season.
According to two of the top turkey hunters in Alabama – Larry Norton of Butler and Ron Jolly of Tuskegee – some of the best hunting of the season should occur from now until the end of the season on April 30. It may not be the most entertaining turkey hunting, but the chances of success rise as the nesting season reaches its peak.
“I think it’s going to be pretty good,” said Norton, a two-time World Champion caller. “A lot of hens are already out by themselves in edge of clear cuts to start sitting on the nests. Those old turkeys that you saw earlier in the season with eight or 10 hens are down to two or three now. Those are the ones you put on the back burner the first of season and come back to him now.
“We had one like that that a buddy of mine killed the other day. He was uncallable the first of the season because of all of the hens. He answered you early in the season, but until the hens started leaving him he wasn’t going to come to you. The other day, my buddy called real soft to him and he answered. He yelped and the turkey cut him off and came running to him.”
Jolly, the chief videographer with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and producer of the Outdoor Alabama TV show, echoes Norton’s assessment.
“Right now, it’s just now starting to show the hens are dispersing,” Jolly said. “My experience is the first week of the season is always good – they’re not educated enough. In the middle of the season, they’ve been pressured enough that if they’ve got a hen in front of them, they’re not going to leave her.
What’s fixing to happen is that hen is not going to be there. She’s going to be on the nest.
“The gobblers left are going to start covering ground, like a buck checking a scrape line. He’s not going to put all his cards in one place. He’s
going to start searching.”
This time of year, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. is the magic time for Jolly.
“The middle of the day is best for me late in the season,” he said. “If you can crank one in the middle of the day, usually you can kill him, if you don’t make a mistake. They’re more susceptible to calling. They’ll get lonesome. For the first time since the first week of February he’s not having everything his way. This is when I like to cover ground. If I can get one to gobble, I’ve got a good chance of getting to a place he doesn’t mind coming to.”
If you’ve got the turkeys located, Norton refrains from too much “cutting and running” and gives the gobblers a little more time to come to him.
“The gobblers are starting to ramble again because the hens are leaving them,” Norton said. “It’s more likely that the hens are having to go lay when they fly down. They’re going to head to clear cuts and thickets. You need to stay put, because once the hens get to where they’re going they’re going to lose him. A lot of times, he’ll walk all the way back to where he heard you calling. He can walk right up in your face.
“I may sit there for 30-45 minutes to let the hens get away from him. Just feel the turkey out with the calling. My theory is that if he answers you, he’s callable. But he may not come to you until he’s through with the hens.”
Norton remembers one example that fit that tactic perfectly.
“The turkey followed the hen to the clear cut,” he said. “I told my buddy that it would take about 15-20 minutes for that hen to lose him. I said, ‘After that, he’s going to gobble one time, I’m going to yelp him one time and you’re going to shoot him about three minutes later.” I looked at my watch and it had been 20 minutes. He gobbled. I put my facemask up and asked my buddy if he was ready. I yelped one time and he cut me off. Within a minute, we saw his red head coming through the woods and he walked right up to us.
“Patience is going to be the key the rest of the season. You’ll hear fewer and fewer turkeys. You can get in the road and cut and run, but if you get one to gobbler you’d better stick with him, even if you have to hang around two hours. If he’s answering you, he will come.”
Jolly thinks scouting is invaluable right now to find our where the hens are going to nest.
“A hen is going to get out in the morning, peck around and feed and then she’s going to go sit on the nest,” Jolly said. “The gobbler knows where the hens are nesting. And strut zones are still important. Odds are, the places where he’s strutting around, there’s a hen near there. That’s a good place to hang out. A loading site in a pine plantation is a good place to be. Odds are he’s going to end
up there at some time.”
Both Jolly and Norton think it’s probably time to pack up the gobbler decoys until next season.
“At this time of year, I want a single hen,” Jolly said. “I don’t want a strutting decoy or
jake. Early in the season, the Pretty Boys and B-Mobiles, people have had a lot of success. The reason they work early in the season is the gobblers are still together. If a gobbler has a buddy, they tend to be more aggressive. They’re more apt to try to kick that gobbler off that hen. A single gobbler is not that brave. He may be shy or just flat out run.”
Norton said he was trying to bag a bird with his bow the other day and that shyness cost him a shot.
“So many of the 2- and 3-years-olds have been whipped by this time that they can be intimidated,” Norton said. “They’ll shy away from strutting decoys. I had my bow the other day and called a gobbler up, but he stopped about 20 yards from the decoy. He kept eyeing that decoy and never would drop into a strut so I could draw.”
Jolly also considers a decoy to be a waste of time in the woods.
“They walk by and don’t pay any attention,” Jolly said. “It needs to be in a field or a road, somewhere where it sticks out. It works better in the corner of a field. I like to put that decoy past me. A lot of times that gobbler will drag up 50 yards short and expect the hen to come to him. If the decoy is 10 yards past you then the turkey is 40 yards from you.
“But remember to use common sense when you use a decoy. My general rule of thumb is that I need to be able to see at least 60 yards in the direct line of fire. That will give you time to alert an approaching hunter.”
Jolly insists it’s not time to get out the fishing gear just yet.
“Turkeys are going to do their thing, no matter what,” he said. “But I think we’re a little
late, so I think the rest of the season will be good because it’s been a
hard, henned-up spring so far.”
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