Gobbers Up Close And Personal

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a single truck at the gate when I pulled into the parking area in one of my favorite old spots. I had gotten there early in hopes of beating the crowd.

It was only 4:15 a.m., but I was still surprised. I sat there in the truck for another 15 minutes rethinking my game plan. I hadn’t hunted this particular spot in at least two years, but it had been kind to me and several of my turkey hunting brothers through the years. The memories of the hunts there crept in as I began gathering my gear.

At 4:30, I began my long walk down the old logging road, and if it was still standing, I had a large old pine in mind just off the edge of the road about three-quarters of a mile in. I remembered a thicket of planted pines ended on the corner where this old tree was living. It gave me a good vantage point to listen from and allowed me to go in whatever direction I needed to if a bird volunteered to play the game.

I soon reached the old tree, and it was good to see it in good shape, still offering its base to lean against as I had done so many times before. I settled in and soaked up the crisp morning air and the sounds of the spring before dawn.

Somewhere close to ten after seven, I thought I heard a gobble echo from the river bottom farther down the road. I had to move in case I was right, so I got up and headed quickly on down the roadbed.

I had gone another 300 yards or so when the gobbler sounded off. This time I knew it was a bird. Daylight was slipping into the roadbed, and I knew I only had a few more minutes to position myself before I made plans to start working the bird. I cut a hard left and began dropping into the bottom. As I eased down the hill, I kept thinking I could get closer. With each gobble that he was letting go, I eased closer. I had played the game before many times, and I believed he had, too.

It feels right to me when I get as tight as I can without bumping a bird, whether he’s on the ground or in the tree, even more so on public ground. I believe birds have a comfort zone, or a “bubble,” where they are more apt to work to you a little more deliberately and a little more comfortably. Trying to get inside that bubble is a risky maneuver but often one that pays huge dividends.

This author killed this turkey right after fly-down time. He was able to sneak to 125 yards from the roost tree, which was close enough to be in the gobbler’s “bubble.”

When I first started turkey hunting, I soaked up as much information as I could on the subject. Several years later I began to understand that everything I heard was not fact-based information. In fact most of what you hear or read about turkey hunting is anecdotal information from those who turkey hunt. So, I had to sort through the giant database that I was hearing and reading and figure out what to keep and what to lose.

One piece of information that I struggled with from the get-go was how close to set up on a roosted gobbler. From there I began to realize that getting tight was productive if you could pull it off. I also realized that it didn’t just apply to the roost.

Tight To The Limb: In the early stage of my turkey hunting career, I would be willing to bet that if I asked five people how close to get to a turkey on the roost in the morning, I would have likely received five different answers. Everybody had their own version of the right way to do it, and all of them could be right at one time or another. I think the first version of that formula I heard was somewhere around 150 yards. When I applied the 150-yard rule, I recall thinking many times over that I was too far from the bird. It was as if I could only get a response from a gobbler on the limb, and then it would be over before it started.

I soon found myself waiting for the approval from a seasoned veteran to tell me it was alright to get closer. I finally realized that everything was dependent on the bird, your cover and the surrounding terrain as to how close you should get. This realization came on a hunt many years ago while leaning on an oak tree with Mike Moody in a snow-covered creek bottom in the prairie of South Dakota.

All was peacefully quiet until a songbird made a loud announcement to the rest of the world that it was time to wake up. After that, a gobbler sounded off in a large cottonwood down the creek. I whispered to Mike and asked him how close that bird was.

“About 80 yards,” he said.

“Too close?” I asked.

“Apparently not,” he replied.

And so began my lesson on how close to set up on roosted birds. Mike has been guiding on the prairie in South Dakota in the Missouri Breaks for more than three decades, and he has been responsible for the demise of a lot of Merriam’s gobblers. I valued his opinion. It was through Mike that I began to understand that “always” and “never” don’t apply in turkey season. Later I asked him if he always got that close to roosted birds.

“No,” he said. “Every situation is different. It’s a case-by-case basis to me. Sometimes it’s farther away, sometimes it’s just like it was this morning. If you get the same distance from every bird you work from the roost, you are hurting your chances.”

It didn’t take long to realize how true that statement was. Since that day on the prairie all those years ago, I have never had a yardage in my head as a set-in-stone guideline for hunting turkeys from the roost. I firmly believe that you should try to get as close to a roosted bird as you can without spooking him.

However, if you have history with a bird and know that he generally pitches out a long ways before his feet touch the ground, you’ll want to re-think your game plan about getting close to him on the limb. There is not much more deflating than getting tight on a bird and watching him sail by on his way to a landing strip 125 yards or so past you.

However, as a general rule I believe that tight to the roost works more times than not. If you are inside his bubble, you’re in a good spot, especially when he lands in it.

Getting Tight After Daylight: I enjoy a hunt where a bird works in from a long distance. It really pumps up the confidence when you pull one in from the next county. However, if you’ve ever been really close to a bird the instant you start working him, you’ve experienced a magical moment. Sometimes it’s just by chance and other times it’s planned when you get a bird in your lap. It’s difficult to set up on a bird inside that bubble, but it can happen if you play your cards right.

First of all, it’s important to know how big the bubble is. As is the case in turkey hunting with most scenarios, it varies. It might be within 75 to 100 yards, or it might be a lot farther. It largely depends on the bird’s unpredictable demeanor.

I have walked logging roads calling every 100 yards or so and finally decide to change it up and call a little more regularly. Then, after another 50 yards or so, I’ll have one blow my hat off. Maybe he liked it when he heard it so close to the last call or maybe he had been easing closer to me a few calls earlier. Either way, I’m thinking I have gotten in the bubble. That is why it’s important to take your time when slipping along an old roadbed or a ridge or a field edge. You have to give him time. You might get in his bubble or he might bring the bubble to you. I’m not particular on how I get there, I just want to be there.

Use The Terrain: If you are one of those lucky enough to have ever experienced making a call and having a bird gobble inside gun range, you know that is one of the most exciting moments you will ever have in the turkey woods. I have had it happen quite a few times over the years, and it never gets old. One thing has always been evident though when it happens. If it hadn’t been for that little rise, that thicket or that big old rock or some sort of barrier that prevented the bird from seeing me, that close and personal gobble would’ve never happened.

I believe one of the best scenarios in the turkey woods is when a bird gobbles, on his own, that you didn’t even realize was there. It’s a great situation. It gives us the opportunity to consider where we want to work him from and how we’re going to try and tighten up on him.

Terrain can allow you to move on a bird that is oblivious to your presence. If he has no clue you are in the neighborhood, you can get yourself into positions you likely would not be able to otherwise. Keeping uneven terrain or other physical barriers between you and the bird can get you very close to him.

If you can get in close before you ever call, it can have a huge impact on your chance of success in calling that bird into range. Also, the closer a bird is to you when you set to work on him, the less chance there is of something messing the hunt up before he can get to you. For example, if you are set up 200 yards from a bird and calling him, there’s a decent chance that a hen could intercept him or there is some obstacle in the way that he doesn’t want to cross over.

Old Trick With A New Twist: When a bird hangs up on a pair of hunters it’s common for one of those hunters to move back 40 to 70 yards and start calling. The gobbler thinks the “hen” is leaving and comes right to the gun. It’s a common trick that works so many times, but what about the hunter who is all alone and has a bird that won’t get close and personal? You can use the same trick with a twist.

I recall a bird that flat refused to come to my setup. He had no intention of closing the final distance, and apparently he wasn’t going to let me see him either. I guessed the bird to be 100 yards or so from me when I concluded that it wasn’t looking good. I dogged the calling off for a while, and when I got tired of the silence, he broke me. I called softly to check on him.

He gobbled from the same spot he had been in the last time he spoke to me. I was becoming more clueless by the minute. I wasn’t going to leave a bird like that. It was like going home when the fish are biting. You just don’t do that.

So there I sat for a good while longer, trying to figure out the next move. I wasn’t even sure whose move it was by this point. I thought about what I might do if I had somebody there with me, but I was by myself. Then, while thinking about the walking-away scenario, it hit me. I recalled a book I had read a few years prior called The Old Pro Turkey Hunter written by Mr. Gene Nunnery.

He told a story of a hunt for a particular gobbler that nobody could get to ride home with them until he threw something at the bird that nobody had tried. He got up and left the bird. After putting some distance between himself and the bird, he would call to the bird and the next time he gobbled, he was basically standing where he had last worked him from. The bird would lock it down until Mr. Nunnery retreated.

This happened a couple of times when he got an idea. The last time Mr. Nunnery walked away, he did it in double-time fashion. After throwing a call in the bird’s direction, he quickly ran back to his last setup. Shortly thereafter, the bird came strolling down the old roadbed where he ran right into a hot load of lead.

I always loved that story and now I believed it was as good a time as any to give it a shot myself. The only difference was I only walked away once. I probably went 60 or 70 yards back, made a call and high-tailed it back to where I had been sitting. I was actually shocked when the bird appeared some 10 minutes later around the curve of the treeline on the creek. He died about two minutes later. He panicked when I left, and when I ran back to my setup, I was already in his bubble.

Don’t be afraid to get creative or borrow from someone else’s success story. It won’t work every time, but when it does, you’ll be glad you tried it, and you’ll always have it to try somewhere else down the road.

It’s hard to beat slipping in tight on a gobbler before daylight though, and that’s just what I had in mind last spring on the bird I spoke of earlier.

Not all birds and situations will allow you to get super tight on a roosted gobbler. The author and Troy Aeschliman were only able to get 150 yards from this bird on the roost, but the end result was a dead bird.

I had made it into the bottom and realized there were a lot of areas where there were little to no leaves on the ground, and it offered some quiet walking. It was just light enough to realize that the bottom was very open as spring had yet to touch the limbs. It resembled late winter, but this turkey was all about springtime and the ritual that only a turkey hunter can appreciate. I had butterflies in my stomach the size of the hens he surely claimed along that river bottom.

The next gobble he offered made me cringe. I could not go much farther but was able to see a small oak tree growing on the inside of the bank of a washed-out ditch. It would be my setup if I could reach it. I was able to get there and settle into the ditch. It offered me a tabletop view of the open hardwoods in front of me. I waited and listened in the dim light hoping for the assurance of another gobble. It didn’t come. I was wondering if I had messed up by going that last 15 yards. I was relieved when I heard the unmistakable drumming from an old pine tree just across the river 80 yards away. I sent him a three-note tree call. He hammered it and fluttered across the river to my side. He landed just out of sight over a small rise in front of me that would have him at 40 yards if he dared to take a peek. He opted to swing wide of the rise and sounded like he might be going away until I grabbed a box call and threw a fly-down cackle at him. When he gave me the opportunity 15 minutes later, I seized it.

He was an old river bottom bird with a long beard and sharp spurs. He was a limb-hanger in every sense of the word. He had played the games many times, no doubt, as he had lived his life on public property.

There is a time and place to tighten up on a bird and it’s worth it when you can pull it off because we all love them in our lap. Sometimes though, we have to get in theirs to make it close and personal.