Turkey Hunting

Brandon Gassman  

10/12/11

Turkey hunting is one of my favorite types of hunting, especially during the spring. There are two turkey seasons in the year, fall and spring. In the spring you are able to call in the toms with hen calls. In fall, the toms don’t respond to the calls. Since they do in the spring you can get them really close. Often when calling them in my dad and I set out hens to help draw the toms in. There are many different types of calls such as box, mouth, and slate calls. My dad used to use only mouth calls, but a couple of years ago we tried slate calls. I think slate calls are a lot easier to use. We still have to use a mouth call whenever they get in close to reduce movement. With slate calls you have to rub a striker back and forth on a slate, so there is some movement. The turkeys have great eye sight and can often pick up the movement of the striker, so we switch to a mouth call. The mouth call requires a lot less movement and the turkeys don’t see it. I started hunting them when I was nine. I shot my first turkey in the fall, but spring is a lot more exciting. My birthday is during the spring season and I have harvested a turkey on my birthday three times. Last spring I thought there were quite a few less birds and that made it a lot harder to harvest one. Turkey hunting is a blast and a ton of fun.