Many hunters rely on hunting birds straight off the roost, but what happens when the early morning gobbling fest fades? Troy Ruiz explains what he does to find and kill a midmorning gobbler!
Between my own success as well as mentoring youth hunters as well as my daughter here in central MN we have harvested 8 turkey's in the last 5 years. One was at 5:25 am and the rest were between 10:00 am and 1:30 pm. I shot a 5 bearded Tom during our last season at 12:30 pm. that bird is in the NWTF record book as number 6th place in MN for an A-Typical turkey in MN and 692nd in the country.
The Tom I shot at 5:25 am never made a sound. He just walked out of the woods to my decoy. One of the Tom's I shot was on a morning that I never heard a gobble. About 12:00 pm I heard a close gobble and I gave a soft yelp and he instantly gobbled and started spitting and drumming. Some people don't believe that you can actually feel the drum when the bird is close, but I know otherwise. That bird came in without hesitation and my hunt was over. To me it isn't about having to kill a bird, but all about seeing them and getting them close. We were on the youth hunt and only had about 20 minutes to hunt when two lone hens appeared in the field so I tried to give the kid an up close view of a turkey. I knew there weren't any other birds so I kept clucking and purring at the hens and had them less than 5 feet from the blind. They had no idea we were there, but the kid had a blast.
Every turkey you ever call in drums. They don't have to strut to drum. Drumming is their way of calling hens. It sounds like a car stuck up , going from forward to reverse repeating. It is real low frequency, some people just caint rear it. I have a friend who just caint hear it, he has been beside me and would tell him I hear drumming but he just caint hear it. Conditions right I can hear it 150 yds.. If you see one slick back and his tail bounces up , he just drummed.
