Posts by Donald Devereaux Jarrett

Opening morning of the 2009 turkey season had arrived, and I couldn’t think of a time when I was more eager to start the season. I had scouted the area I would be hunting a couple of days earlier and had found four mature gobblers and a wad of hens roosting on the edge of…

With deer season gone and winter throwing its last punches, my thoughts shift primarily to turkey hunting, a time that energizes my soul for a two-month period every spring. If you’ve never been turkey hunting, or maybe you’re a newbie, this article highlights turkey-hunting truths that should get you started in a positive direction. It…

When we think of drought we usually associate it with lack of water. We can also apply the term to the turkey woods when we go through extended periods of “dry” hunting. Let’s face it; there are times when we can’t buy a gobble, especially on heavily hunted public grounds. Those are the places where…

  Webster’s dictionary defines complacency as, “self satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.” This is a perilous state in life, and in the world of a turkey hunter, it eventually spells doom. When we hunt turkeys in a state of complacency, we are setting our- selves up for failure. It is probably…

I was feeling pretty confident as I stood beside my hunting partner Bobby Knight. It was opening day of turkey season and the orange glow of the eastern sky began to push the darkness from around us. The woods were coming to life as a half a dozen or so barred owls began their morning…

Reading a gobbler’s mood and following it up with the right call can be a deadly combination this spring. The importance of this lesson was taught to me on opening day quite a few years ago in Hancock County. My good friend Cal Marsh and I had struck out on opening morning. Right before lunch…

If I were a newcomer into the turkey-hunting world, my head would explode with all the choices I had when it came to picking out a gun and then trying to find the best loads to produce the most effective pattern on that gun. If your gun doesn’t produce a good pattern out to 40 yards,…

There are few things in turkey hunting more frustrating than a hung-up gobbler. I’ve had lots of birds come running to the call from great distances only to stop at an imaginary line just out of gun range. It’s like they know the distance at which my gun can do serious damage. Oftentimes, they strut…

Forty-five minutes had passed since he’d last gobbled, and I was exhausted. I had gotten myself into a battle with a tough, old bird, and the best I could figure he’d whipped me pretty good. We went at it on and off for about two and a half hours when he finally seemed to tire…