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This week, I have been doing my best to go to bed early and get as much rest as I can, instead of staying up until the wee hours of the morning. I do this each year during the week before finals, not because I need to be well rested for exams, but because the opening day of Pennsylvania's spring turkey season always falls on the weekend before finals. This means that at 5 a.m. Saturday morning, I will wake up to the alarm on my phone playing "Hunting The World" by Colt Ford, giving me the motivation to get out of bed and go get my hunt on.
Just like fishing, hunting in PA is controlled by a state department. The Pennsylvania Game Commission sets the seasons, harvest limits and all other regulations for hunting. For the youth hunters, the turkey season opened last Saturday, but this Saturday marks the start of the four-week season for all other hunters, which lasts until May 31. Hunters must stop hunting at noon Monday through Saturday, and no one is permitted to hunt on Sundays.
The spring turkey season allows a licensed hunter to harvest one male turkey, also known as a gobbler. After harvesting his or her first gobbler, a hunter may then purchase a tag to continue hunting and attempt to harvest another. Hunters may only purchase one extra tag.
Other important regulations include which weapons may be used and blind restrictions. Unlike the fall turkey season, when hunters may use a rifle, only shotguns and bows are permitted during the spring gobbler season. This makes it tougher on the hunter, because he must call the turkey in close to him, generally 20-50 yards from his setup. The blind regulation states that if a hunter is hunting from a blind, it must legally have a "roof" overtop of it, making popup ground blinds a popular choice. However, others may choose to just sit with their backs against a tree.
The typical turkey hunting morning begins at 5 a.m., depending on how far one must travel to his or her hunting spot. However, there is much preparation that must happen before the season begins. Just like for deer hunting, a hunter must scout turkeys, learn their patterns and see if there are any longbeards (mature gobblers), or if there are mostly jakes (immature/young gobbler) in the hunting area. Scouting may be done with a trailcam, or a hunter may choose to spend a couple mornings in the woods listening to the turkeys and calling them in to see a select few of the gobblers in the area. The scouting done prior to the season will help a hunter decide where to setup a blind or which tree to honker down by on the opening day of the season. It is best to have the blind set up a couple days early so that the turkeys have some time to get used to something new in their territory, and also to reduce the noise when the hunter gets to his spot before the sun rises.
More preseason preparation done by turkey hunters is working with their calls. This step in preparation may drive a wife or girlfriend crazy, because a hunter will spend time improving their turkey calling and trying new calls. This is usually done inside, and not in the woods because a hunter does not want turkeys hearing the various calls, because they may get used to the sounds and not answer to them during the hunting season. A good portion of turkey hunters own more than one call, and want to perfect their calling, or keep themselves in tune from year-to-year.
Another step in the preparation is patterning the shotgun the hunter is going to use. This is done by firing shots at varying distances with different ammunition loads. By doing this, the hunter will see how each brand of ammunition fires the best out of his or her gun at a range usually between 30 and 50 yards. Each brand of ammunition shoots differently out of every gun; Therefore, patterning shotguns prior to turkey hunting is a very necessary step in preparing for a turkey hunt.
The evening before the opening day of spring gobbler season for any turkey hunter consists of laying their camouflage clothing out and checking that their calls are ready. Typical spring turkey hunting clothing includes the following pieces: lightweight camo pants, button down camo shirt or a long-sleeve camo tee shirt, lightweight camo gloves, camo cap, and a camo mesh headnet. Some hunters may choose to substitute camouflage face paint for a camo headnet. It is important to have clothing that will cover as much skin as possible, because turkeys have very sharp sight and the light color of skin sticks out like a sore thumb to them. Because their sight is so keen, I also prefer to wear special sunglasses with camouflage lenses to cover even more skin, and also so that the turkeys are not able to see the whites of my eyes and see me blink. It is important to have all clothing and gear ready the night before so that the hunter does not have to scramble in the morning to try to find stuff. I always make sure that all of my calls are in my turkey hunting vest the night before, and I also make sure that I have sandpaper to sand down a couple of my calls.
Calls typically used by turkey hunters include slate (friction) calls, mouth (diaphragm) calls, and box calls. Another less common call is a wingbone call, which is made from a turkey wingbone.
Slate calls are generally round with wood or plastic holding the part that is struck with a striker. Strikers for friction calls are generally wooden, but also come in carbon. These calls are not always made of slate, but also glass or carbon. In my eyes, these are the easiest, and sometimes most effective, calls to learn, which is why I have three of them: a slate, glass, and carbon call. They do not take long to learn, and the most important vocalizations needed for attracting a gobbler can be produced by using them. The most important sounds are clucks, yelps, putts, purrs, cutts, cackles and kee-kees. However, there is a downfall to friction calls, which also goes for box calls: movement. These calls require a hunter to be moving his hands, whereas mouth calls allow a hunter to have the gun up and ready to go while he is calling in a trophy longbeard.
Another group of calls that may be used are locator calls. An owl or crow call may often times cause a gobbler to "shock gobble," which in turn will give away its location, allowing a hunter to set up in an area closer to the gobbler. Another call that will sometimes force a "shock gobble" is a gobbler tube, which produces the sound of a turkey's gobble. What forces "shock gobbles" are a loud noise produced by locator calls. These calls are best used if a hunter is entering the woods after daylight, or mid-morning.
Upon entering the woods before daylight, a turkey hunter will set up decoys. Two decoys are generally used; one portraying a hen turkey, and another portraying a jake, or young gobbler. These decoys are set up 20 to 30 yards from the hunter's location, and will help draw attention away from the hunter, and will also make the gobbler feel more comfortable because he believes the calls are coming from a real turkey, and not a hunter.
After decoys are staked into the ground and the hunter takes a seat in his chosen location, it is a waiting game until the sun begins to rise and turkeys become active on the roost. Gobblers will often gobble while still in the trees they roosted in, before flying down to the ground. I feel this is the best time to begin calling, by using a flydown cackle, which imitates a hen's call after she has landed on the ground. This will excite gobblers and usually entice them to fly down and work their way towards the hunter imitating a hen. In my eyes, hearing a turkey gobble on its way to me is the greatest sound on the face of the earth, and it gets my heart pumping as fast as it does when I see an antlered whitetail deer step into a clearing in the woods. The excitement makes it hard to stay calm and steady, but that's part of the sport of hunting.
As a gobbler comes into sight, it may be a longbeard with one or more jakes following him, or he may be alone. At this point, many hunters prefer to stop calling with the typical hen yelp, and begin to purr, which keeps the gobblers calm. Some hunters prefer to sit and watch the gobblers strut for a few minutes, but when I have turkeys approach me, I prefer to pick out the one I want to harvest and not waste any time, because I have watched enough hunts on Outdoor Channel, and don't want to risk the turkeys picking me out and being spooked off.
Some hunters prefer to only harvest mature turkeys, or trophy birds, which generally have beards that are 9+ inches. I feel that any turkey is a trophy turkey, because it is such a tough task to imitate a hen turkey when calling, and also to not have a turkey spot you when he approaches your location. Because turkey hunting is such a tough sport, spring gobbler is my favorite hunting season, and I look forward to it year round. I get excited about it as soon as April rolls around, because this is when turkeys begin to gobble and the scouting begins. No other challenge in my life has yet to surpass the challenge of turkey hunting.
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