00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. You maybe weren't expecting an episode today, but we are here to kick off what I'm going to refer to as Turkey Month here at Wired to Hunt, April is upon us. Turkeys are goblin and I think we all need a distraction from some of the stuff going on in the rest of the world. Here right now in April, COVID nineteens putting a downer on a lot of things impacting a lot of people's health. It's uh, it's a bad situation. But turkeys are one good thing we can look too. So I thought, let's do an extra podcast every week this month talking turkeys. So that's what we're gonna do. These are short and sweet episodes tactic focus, thirty forty minutes long each time, where it's gonna give you the info you need to get out there turkey hunting over the next weeks and months. So today we're kicking it off with Mark Drewy. If you listen to the podcast, you know who he is. He's one of the founders of Drewy Outdoors. An incredible deer hunter, incredible turkey hunter, and just always fascinating to talk to. So today talking with him about how he turkey hunts differently in different areas, different parts of the country, how he approaches turkey hunting for different subspecies, how he changes the turkey's mood, his favorite decoy setups, how he strikes up birds that don't talk, and a whole lot more. This is one's It's just jam packed the great information. So we're not going to beat around the bush at all on these episodes. I'm gonna let you get right into it with our first bonus turkey episode of the month with Mark Drewy. All Right, I am excited to be back on the line here with my friend Mark Drewy. Mark, thanks for joining me again. Man, I'm so happy to be here in Ark. I love the subject today, buddy, I'm excited. Usually we're talking about deer, but now you're finally getting into something that I love more than you. Well, yeah, you just admitted to me that turkeys are true love. And I was a little shocked by that. Is that you're willing to go public with it. Oh my goodness. Yes, they are my first love, true love. I've been fascinated with him since I was a little kid, and uh, I don't know why other than uh, my uncle's used to always come down to grade school when I was a little bitty kid, second third grade. And this is back when turkey seasons were new in Missouri, and if they killed a turkey, and both my uncle's, Marvin and Leroy, were both serious turkey enters, they would always bring their dead turkey by the school. And the entire school I lived in a very small town, you know, small classes twenty each, so you're talking maybe a hundred and seventy kids tops through eight grades. Everyone would come out and look at these turkeys and they would pick feathers off of them and give them to everybody. And I was always so proud of that because they were my uncle's bringing them by. And I don't know if that's what got me so fascinated with him at a young age, but I've always been fascinated with the wild turkey. Yeah, well, there's something, at least for me. There's also something just about that gobble just being able to talk and interact. And I've always wondered if if white tailed deer could gobble, I don't think I'd ever leave the woods at all the entire year. I would just be just done for it. Have no wife, no kids. You combine those two things, I'd just be shot. Boy. Isn't that the truth? You know? I mean, it's just so much fun. And likewise, if turkeys could smell, we'd never kill one. Yeah, that's very true. Uh So, Mark, We're doing these short and sweet bonus turkey podcasts where I'm pulling in various avid turkey hunters and just trying to go rapid fire with them on some turkey tactics and ideas for about thirty minutes. And with you, You're you're kind of unique compared to a lot of people in regards to turkeys because you get to travel a ton, you do these turkey tours, um And I wanted to kind of pick your brain on how you approach turkey hunting in different areas, in different regions of the country differently, Um too, I guess to set us off on the right foot, can you really briefly explain, like, what does this turkey tour thing you've been doing. I know you've got this series going on YouTube can you give us the quick cut cliff notes on on what that's all about. Just we have some context about where all you've been, what you're what states you're hunting all that. Sure, I generally hunt seven, eight, nine, ten states of Spring because I am so passionate about it. And we started doing what I called the Turkey Tour my goodness years ago. And uh, of course, with the advent of everything going online through social media and YouTube, we started doing our series online and um, it's really taken off. It has a great viewership across Instagram, Facebook, our our YouTube, and um, I start down south generally Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, somewhere down there. I love Georgia. Uh. Then I'll go to Texas, then Oklahoma, then Kansas. And it's so nice because you're you're catching the opening day everywhere you go as you float north right. So then after Kansas, then I'll head to Missouri, Iowa, stay there for a while, and then I'll either go to Nebraska, uh, which I go to Nebraska, are ye, or I'll go further west. Last year I went to Oregon, UM. But this year, interestingly enough, I've really reduced my travel because of the the virus and the stay at home orders for so many different states, so I'm much more limited. I'm gonna stay on my home court this year. But I've hunted I don't know how many different states, maybe twenty through the years. But I've been to a lot of different places and had some phenomenal times with a lot of good friends. And do you feel are there very noticeable differences in how either the birds behave or how you have to behave as a hunter when you go from one reason to another, one state to another. To some degree yes, and to other degrees no. Sometimes based on subspecies, I hunt a little bit differently, and sometimes based on terrain where they live, I hunt very differently. You know, if you compare a hardwood forest in the Midwest to the open topography of northwest Oklahoma, vastly different and the turkeys react differently, they act differently during the day. Of course, those are two different subspecies as well. Um So yes, tactics definitely change based on region, and I hud a lot of varied regions and a varied topography. So the more visual it is, the more ground I cover, and the more I use decoys, the less visual it is, the less ground I covered by vehicle. When I say covered ground, i'm I'm covering big expanses, you know, looking for turkeys. If if you have the room to roam, Uh, that's what I do. However, if I'm you know, on foot, like I often am in Georgia or in the Midwest, then I'm walking and calling and slowly working my way through Turkey country. And I'm oftentimes in the woods or are just on the outskirts of those woods, and I'm doing a combination of the two, looking and calling. So uh, it's it's a visual game when you're in big, open country, and more of an audible game I think when you're in a little bit tighter country. I talked to someone on the same topic, I don't know a few days ago, and another thing they mentioned about changing Turkey behavior was hunting pressure. They felt like certain regions, like in their case, they thought the South had a lot more turkey hunting pressure and that significantly influenced how these turkeys behaved. Um, have you seen anything with pressure being different in different parts of the country. You're different types of properties that maybe influences what you do. Absolutely, I mean, you can pressure turkey right into not gobbling at all. Um. If that's the case, if you're hunting public ground or you're hunting really highly pressured birds, man, I'm I'm I'm backing off the calls almost completely, and I'll get almost inaudible with the stuff I'm doing. It's wing beat stuff. It's spitting and drumming with my voice. It's um scratching in the leaves, and it's more tactical, and I really slow down my overall approach. Um birds that haven't been pestered with too much, I'm a lot more vocal to and I'm a lot less patient with those turkeys. If I've got room to roam, I'm trying to find a hot one. If I'm limited in room, or I'm hunting really high pressured birds, then I'm much more patient. You know, I might spend days on the same turkey and barely move at all, try to figure out his pattern and kill him like a white tailed deer. Uh. They're still killable, but you've got to be smart and you'll kill a lot of those those birds mid morning through evening. That's uh something Sometimes you don't run into nearly as many hunters the later in the day. You get If it's an all day state afternoons or death on those heavily hunted birds, death death. I mean, that's the time to kill high pressured birds. So what do you do in that late afternoon time period. I mean you mentioned hunting them like a white tailed deer, But if you don't have like the history with an area where you don't know how they're moving through a region yet, how do you approach that time period when you're trying to figure it out still because you're typically not talking as much. Sure they're not talking hardly at all. I try to get into areas that I've already pre scouted, or I know from past history there's birds there, or I know from the sign that I'm seeing at that time, hey there's turkeys here. And then I I just slink through the woods like a dang bobcat, and I'll set up and I'll call light, real light. Every once in a while, I'll get aggressive, you know, and try and shock one into gobbles to see if I can get him to give his position up. If he does, then I'm going to him, and then I'm I'm switching back into low gear. So you you really got to train your ear because you're probably not gonna get a lot of gobbles that time of the day, or even on public ground in general. Get to where they're at and then don't make them gobble a lot. If you're calling a lot and you're trying to make that turkey gobble, guess what, you're drawing other people to your your spot. So try to get him killed without making him talk. That's part of the key to hunting high pressured birds and public ground birds. That takes a lot of patience, and you just gotta be willing to sit in the same spot, and you're gonna have a lot of times where you don't kill because you've gotta always pretend he's on his way he's coming in. Otherwise you're not gonna be ready when he gets there. Nine out of tim times he's probably not on his way to you. But that one time that he comes slipping in real quiet, you've been sitting there an hour and a half, two hours, when all of a sudden you hear him, drummond, better be ready or he's gonna nail you. Yeah. Man, it's so hard though, or at least for me. When the thing about turkey hunting that's so at least from my perspective, what's so exciting is the calling and the talking. I find myself just getting tempted to to just want that. And when you're not hearing that, your confidence Dwayne so quickly like either or not here, I gotta go somewhere else or it's not working. Um. We're somehow pre program to just need that reassurance of the gobble um. But then you learn very quickly exactly why guys are failing on public ground. You got you can't You can't hunt public or high pressured birds like you do unpressured birds. It's just it's two different games completely, like they're almost one any opposite of each each other. And the one on public and the high pressure bird, he's not nearly as much fun to your point, but he is killable. You just gotta switch your tactic. So I want to drill into a few of the things you talked about, but before getting into how to kill him, I want to jump back to something you said real quick about how you approach the different subspecies a little bit differently? Can you speak to that? How do you approach each different subspecies or whichever ones are different in your mind? You know, I'm a little more vocal with both the Merriam turkey and the Rio Grand turkey. To me, they call more often specifically the hen, not the gobblers. They don't gobble anymore than an Eastern. In fact, I find the Easterns that I gobble more than the Rio's are the Merriams, And I think there's a reason for that. Oftentimes, when you're hunting that big open country you see flocks of turkeys and groups of turkeys, they spend less time split up than Easterns do, in my opinion, And I don't know why that is, but I think I know it is. It's because the roost is is they're so limited in many of these places. Therefore, every damn turkey for many many square miles is all going in the same places, right, They all congregate to the same roost because there aren't many roost spots. Then they have a tendency to stay together all day and it's a much shorter period where you're gonna catch lone gobblers. Therefore, they're flocked up. The hens are very vocal all day, and the gobblers oftentimes they're looking at a hand all day and they're not They're not gobbling. They're not talking, so therefar I'm working on hens, and I'm much more vocal when I'm hunting rio grands or merriams. It's bigger country, it's more open. I use a lot of friction calling because I'm often dealing with the wind, wind speed, So I'm a big friction caller in those types of areas. Eastern's, I mean, those are those are the ones I love to hunt. Give me a hardwood ridge with an Eastern wild turkey, I don't care what time of the day it is, but let me have a conversation with him and and play his game and getting his roundhouse. And those are the birds that I love to hunt and go in there and kill like that's where I grew up hunting. It's the ones I feel like I probably have more success on. But uh, I don't call nearly as much. But when I get in there, when I get in there face and and the time's right, then I'm gonna pour it on and making goblin and change his mood. That's one thing about turkeys. They're in a certain mood. You can change that mood with your calling. You do that with emotion and energy and pitch and differentiation and sound and moving around, moving your head. There's a lot of different things you can do, and you're calling to add realism to it and change that turkey's mood. If you can fire him up, all of a sudden, he'll go from an uninterested turkey to turkey that's strut in the twenty yards and about to die. I want that. That's I love everything you just said. I'm curious about some of the details. But but the first thing I gotta know is we often hear that one of the biggest mistakes people make when turkey hunting is calling too much. Now, what you just described was like getting really aggressive and like change their mood, you know, force the issue. How do you know when it's the right time to do what you subscribe, change their mood, force the issue, versus when you need to say, oh, you know what, I'm calling too much, I just gotta shut up. How do you think through that? I'll simplify that one thing that we we came up with years ago. We call it the three strike rule. So this is beyond the roost hunt. You're into the day they've already flown down. You did all the root st up and the turkeys naturally they shut up what hour after they fly down or so hour and af depending on what part of the mating cycle they're in. So now you're at eight thirty through the rest of the day and you're on the strike. You're looking for that next turkey. If I strike a turkey, we call it the three strike rule. If that's sucker will not answer me three times in a row to the same call I just gave him, you know, spaced out, I don't make him gobble three times immediately like I'll strike, And if one answers, I'm gonna wait two or three or four minutes, and I'm gonna hit him again. Boom, hit him again, Wait two or three minutes, boom, he hits again. All right, gobble three times in a row. To me, that is a green light. Go after that turkey. I don't care how far he is. That's one you need to head into and try and work. However, if you get a plain shock gobble and he won't answer again, those are turkeys that I have a tendency. If I've got more ground to cover, I will come back and try at a later date or later in the day and let him alone. Because they often went in the presence of hens will shock one time because they haven't gobbled in a while, so it's pure shocked. And then they won't gobble again because they're standing there looking at a hen. And that's one way to do it's a simple way to do it. Other ways to do it really come with I think experience and just knowing turkey vocalizations and how they react and how how they even gobbled to you. You could tell when turkey gobbles whether he's interested or not based on sometimes that old half hearted Oh he barely chokes it out, he's probably not overly interested. But if you call and he's you know, five yards away, ah, he buries you. That's a turkey that's interested. So you got to interpret, you know, his overall mood of the day as well. Now, say you don't have anything to do any there's no game in town. You heard one turkey all day he gobbled once or twice. I will go to that turkey, try to get as close as I can to him, either visually or audibly. If he won't answer and I can't see him, I'm just gonna sneak and call and try to sound like multiple hens in the woods. I'm scratching, I'm clucking in pern, I'm I'm fighting per and every once, so I don't call non stop. I will wait fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, give another series fifteen twenty minutes, and I might sit there an hour, then move a little closer. Sit there, call another hour, move a little closer. Wind will camper that rain. You know, you're constantly dealing with weather in the spring, so sometimes you have to play the overall weather of the day as well, and and let that work in your favor as opposed to work against you. I think sometimes guys try to force their hand on bad turkey days. We talked about it all the time. I told you about my three strack role, while I also I do not burn chips on bad turkey days. Turkeys are literally the polar opposite of white tailed deer. You want to go kill a deer. We've done podcasts many times. You've heard me say it. Don't miss a cold front, right, do not miss a north wind. That's how you kill deer on turkeys. Skip the north wind days, skip the cold front and wait for a warm front. You kill turkeys on a south wind and deer on a north on a on a north wind. Absolutely write it down. That is when you kill your turkeys, it is the best time. Uh. Do any other factors in your mind impact turkey killing success? Like very much? Pressure? I mean those things sometimes go hand in hand. I guess, is there anything or sunny versus cloudy anything like that? You know it. Really they're so situational because because you know, I would love to take a deer cast model and put it on turkeys and call it turkey cast. And I've studied it as long as I've studied deer, and I've come to the realization that they are very unpredictable as it pertains to whether there are a few things that are consistent, but in reality it comes down to whether he's looking at a hand or he isn't. It's very situational. You can take a bad weather day in terms of like, oh, I'd love a sunny, high pressure, beautiful bluebird day and think, Okay, the turkeys are really gonna act we all today. Well, they might very early in the morning, but then later in the day if they're looking at Hens, they're not going to. However, you could take a windy day, horrible weather front coming in low pressure and you think they're not going to talk today, But if he's by himself, he'll talk. They are less affected by the weather than whitetailed deer, in my opinion, because it is situational based on the timing of the year, how many hens that they have around, and how overall tired they are. Turkeys are notorious for running their battery love. They're like a cell phone battery. It's charged up at a certain time and then it depletes. Well, you take those high pressure days that I talked about. If it's a pretty day and you go, man, they're gonna gobble their heads up. Those are the days I really don't like because oftentimes they'll gobble themselves out. First thing on the limb, they'll stand there and gobble fifty times, fly to the ground and get with hands, and then they shut up the rest of the day. We call it the high pressure hush midday. On the rest of the day they won't talk. However, you take a morning where they don't gobble on the limb, those gobbles are still in them. Turkeys is only gonna gobble so many times in a day that battery is still charged. We kill a lot of turkeys on bad mornings for goblin, but we'll kill them on up in the day because they're still inside and they're ready to ready to talk. Would you pick a roost morning hunt or uh, you know, nine am through the rest of the day. Which time period would you rather have to kill a bird? Well, the roof tounts the fun one because they're generally gobbling a little bit for you, so that's the most vocal. But I kill more turkeys between about seven thirty and ten o'clock than any other time of the day. Then and then again around m m. Six no. Five thirty seven in the evening. Those are the times that I killed the most turkeys. But I've killed him straight off the ruse fly down come in. I've killed him at noon one o'clock, that type of stuff. But the times that I kill the most would be those two times I just mentioned. In those two situations, that's typically when you've got a bird that's crem If I'm wrong, I guess, but that's the time period when you start getting a gobbler that maybe is away from the hens. Now finally he's kind of going on his circuit um, and then you have that situation that you described where you strike one up, and now you're gonna see, Okay, is this one that I can work in here or not? And you decide if you're gonna change their mood if you strike up a bird in that scenario and he wins the street the three strike rule and you're gonna get after him. Can you give me the details of exactly how you do change the mood? You listed a bunch of like possible things, but could you walk me through in your head? Okay, I'm gonna do this type of calling sequence, I'm gonna make this move or anything you can share on that. Yeah, absolutely, So the first thing I'm gonna do is try and kill him with the as least amount of calling as possible. So I always say I start at the bottom end of the ladder, and I worked my way up that ladder. So the first thing I'm gonna do, or softy helps clucks and purrs, well, the first thing I'm gonna do is try and get in a position where I think I can kill him. I kill most turkeys when my setup is within about a hundred fifty yards to start with. The worst mistake of turkey owner can make is make him tone deaf by calling too much to him when you're too far away. If that makes sense, So here that turkey and go, Okay, he's over there, tod, I'm gonna sit right here and call him all that distance. That's that's not the smartest play you can make. I will avoid calling to a turkey until I get to about one fifty one hundred. If you can do it because of cover in the woods, or if you can do it because of terrain, once you get in their comfort zone, that's how you kill turkeys. Once I'm there, I start real low and I find out what he's willing to answer to, and then I work my way up. And the single best way to kill a turkey is if you can get within a visual of him in an open area and watch his body posture, and watch how he reacts to your calling, because he doesn't always have to gobble to give you a positive response. I love having my eyes on a turkey when i'm working in whether that's just over the hump or whether it's out in an open field. And I will purposely wait until he you know how, they'll strut and turn and pirouette. I will wait till his body posture faces me, and then I'll hit him if he's facing a way. I almost never called to a turkey. It's just a bad, bad overall flow, bad signal. But when he faces me, I pour it on. I try to get him to continue coming to me, because sometimes I think turkeys don't know where they're going until they get there. So if you could play on that body posture and and wait till they're facing you, you can turn an entire flock and have them coming your way. You watch them. A grasshopper will make them doing one a D and go the opposite way from your calleing. So watch what they're doing if you can get there and then work them so the same holds true when you can't see them. I try to get close. I start low and I work my way up. If he sounds like he's gobbling away from me, I won't call. However, if he if he just gobbled and it sounded like he's facing me, in other words, it's loud or clearer, that's when I poured on. I love a turkey to face me when I'm working in big, big difference, huge difference in killing turkeys. Wait till they're facing you. Is there any other body language that you would look at as being positive, like when they strut up versus when they're not started up, or I don't know, raking their wingtips or anything anything else you look at. Absolutely, strutting is a big positive. You know they're just if they're staying there walking around all of a sudden and you see him and you feel like you're in a good position and you yell real soft and he goes into stress. He's interested. Uh. If he's in the presence of hands and not strutting, that's a tough turkey to kill. If he's in the presence of hands and strutting, you got you got a chance. Interesting, okay, So so okay, So let's say we've got that scenario. We can see him, he's given us a few gobbles, he's strutted up, so we think he's interested. He turns in our direction. Now you're gonna pour it on and you're gonna give him the mark jury special, the thing that no gobbler can say no to. Uh. And you mentioned that you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll start the bottom. But let's say we get to the top now, and it's okay. These other things haven't worked you gotta throw your ace out there, and this is your kill switch. You're throwing what is that special move? You've got the the thing that I will do. And if you watched the if you and it sounds terrible. I think every time I listened to it. I watched the Avan Next tour, and I'm it really doesn't sound good, but boy does it make make turkeys die. I love to hen yelp and then follow up with a low pitched jake up. I love that message, and I'm telling you they will. They You can make them tone deaf with that hen yelp. And you know how you call too much and all of a sudden he quits answering. They just get toned, deaf right, all of a sudden, throw in some talk, some real low stuff. Ah, he's gonna bury it. He does not like a jake in the presence of a hen. I kill a lot of turkeys with really aggressive hen yelps followed by a low tone jake up of three or four yelps. That's interesting. That's not something I've ever done. Um, but that makes sense. I guess if you watch the an X tour and you listen to me call birds and listen. It almost sounds like I'm making mistakes. It's like, boy, it sounds that sounds awful. Really, it really does. I don't like it at all, but it uh, it'll kill a damn turkey now better than anything I've ever done. I do it all the time. That or I cut, I cut real high pitched, and then I'll lower it down. I of changing tones to make it sound like there's a variety of turkeys there. Now, what about the visual side of this. I've seen you, you know, use a variety of different decoy setups, but especially this most recent set of the Turkey Tour videos I've seen. Uh gosh, I can't remember what the name of isle A laying down hand decoy, the laydown hand, and the avian HDR jake. Yeah there, Can you walk this through? Can you walk me through a few of the different decoy setups you might consider and what scenarios you would use each. The one that I go too most often is a laid down hand with a jake and it's it's just a slick down jake, beard out, kind of comfortable, doesn't look like he's too posture or anything. Uh, and I'll put him just off to the side like he's about to approach her and breed her because she's already on the ground. I kill a lot of turkeys with that setup. I also constantly have their trophy tom right next to me on the ground, which is a half silhouette strutter, and I have my fan in that. I kill a lot of turkeys with that combo right there. I have it for cover if you will, or to pick up and look to see if he's coming. If I'm out in the field trying to find him, I'll look through the fan and then I generally don't have a negative reaction to that that strutter. Once in a while, you will if it's a subordinate bird, but more often than not, they'll accept it and and come on in, or they might shy away a little bit. In that case, you can put the strutter down and they'll forget about it and come on in. But that's that's how I turkey out. Now, if there's a population dynamic that's at play, and you're going into a spring where there's a polo Jake's and not many long beards, I'm not going to put those Jake's out because oftentimes that group of bully Jake's will run off a big long beard and then if he sees a Jake with a hand, he'll just turn and leave because he's had his butt whoop too many times by those big gangs of Jake's. So if it really depends what the previous year's hatches were, last year was great because we didn't have a ton of Jake's and we had a lot of long beards. That's when I Jake decoy works the best. If you've got a year where you're low on long beers and heavy on Jake's, then I don't use the Jake nearly as much. I go with just the lay down hand. How do you how do you determine something like that? Is that through running trail cameras and keeping NYE and things like that? Is it just watching them? Oh? Yeah, that's it starts in August when those when those polts and those broods first start coming out. You can figure out what your hatch was just by accounting how many poults you see versus how many hands you see on your iconics cameras. You know a good hatch would be like three to four pulse per hand on an overall average, and last year I was at like one to one point five. We've got a terrible hatch and and there in Missouri. Mhm Um, I gotta rewind just a little bit to something I'm meant to ask you, um in that previous scenario when we were talking about, uh, you know, trying to find that bird, and in the three strike rule and everything, something I wanted to get a little clarification on was how to best strike up those of birds. So you're in the late morning, there's nothing talking, what's what are your go too? Is to get something to strike up and give you a sign um, whether that be a shock gobbl or whatever it is. How do you get that first? You know, it depends a little bit of where I'm at, Like if I'm down south then they're not overly vocal, or if I'm in a high pressured area. I al hoot a lot even midday, and I have a tremendous amount of luck with al hooting alhood on my voice. I crow call some, but I alhoot more often than not. And I'll try that first. And if you get one to react to that, that's great because then you can move in on him because you haven't given a call yet. If that doesn't work, my absolute go to is a aluminum call wooden peg and I go through a series of helps and then I cut real out and then I shut it off abruptly, and I get a lot of turkeys to respond to that combo. I've struck and killed so many turkeys with that combo. It's not even funny with owl hoot or anything that. Is there a risk of overdoing something like that? Like is there any downside if you're moving around an area you still haven't heard one? There's no downside of hammering it quite a bit when you're moving through, right. I think there's a downside to yelping because anytime you yelp, if there's a turkey that's willing to come in and are yelping or calling in general, if there's a turkey willing to come in and he's not goblin, you're liable of calling in and not know it. I think that happens a lot to guys, and they don't even know what's happening because more often than not, later in the day, they just don't strike very well anymore. They used to back in the eighties, but the populations have evolved and there's just so many turkeys. They don't gobble up in the day like they used to. Now, if you get up in the upper Midwest or say out West, you can still strike a lot of turkeys midday because the populations are growing and they're very aggressive. Their testosterone is a lot higher. But if it's a fully developed the populations at its peak carrying capacity has reached, they don't gobble as much in the middle of the day. They'll still come to a call, but it's hard to strike them. So that's why I generally start with an owl hood because oftentimes I find they'll hit that before they'll hit a turkey call, just because it's different and they haven't heard it in a while. Yeah, okay, Now, what if we fast forward to the end of the day and it's it's it's a state you can hunt all day. It's getting close to when then were moving back up to roost for the evening. What's your go to for that time of day? Are you trying to kill him at that point or do you give up and just want to roost them for the next morning. I'm usually hunting them. Uh, sometimes I'll move and call if the weather's right and I'm at the right time of the year, like early in the spring when they're just starting to establish their breeding and whatnot. They're breeding pairs or they're breeding plots. I'll call because a lot of turkeys are still they're going through fights and all that stuff. Their testosterone is real high once they get hand up, and then I'm hunting like a deer hunter, and I'm on a food plot on a pretty top. You ever notice in the afternoons, when it's a sunny day and the winds are calm, you see turkey strutting everywhere in the evenings. I call it turkey thirty. I like to get there at four thirty, gets set up on a known strut zone in the afternoons, have my decoys there, and then sit there and call and see if you see if we want to come out to the field. More often than not, they're gonna show up between like five and six thirty or seven somewhere in there. Six thirty is turkey thirty to me. But you gotta beat them there otherwise the spot you're getting in place. Do you find any is there any nuance to picking the right strut zone, the right feeding area? Do if you find that there's any particular scenario that, oh man, this is the killer scenario versus a random corn field or something like that. Yeah. I like green fields in the spring. Um my clover fields that I killed deer off of. I kill a lot of turkeys off of those in the in the spring. The bigger they are, the better. Uh. Pasture fields are also magic, man. You know, you get all these big hardwoods. All the roosting goes on in the hardwoods, and boom they exhale every morning because all the turkeys are going out to the pasture. Us are where all the food is. You know, all the bugs, all the worms, all the plovers, everything they're eating is out in those pastures. Uh. So you know, I like big open, open country where you see turkey strutting quite often. That's where I go set up. But the evening's gotta be right. You don't want to do it on a real window evening. It's not nearly as effective. If that's the case, I'm going to a bottom field that gets sheltered from the wind if it's a calm evening. I like the ridge tops someplace that I've seen them strutting in the past, and we kill it. We kill it pile afternoon turkeys. They're not nearly as vocal. Once in a while you'll catch one that's vocal and ready to rock and roll, but more often than not, it's a quiet visual hunt where they see it, and boy, they will flat go beat the tar out of a Jake decoy in the evenings. We kill a pile a big godlers in the afternoons on Jake's So what is if if you had a magic wand, Mark, if I gave you a magic wand and I said, you are the maybe maybe let me change my analogy here, you are the king of turkey hunting. I'm gonna give you a secon and you could tap someone on the shoulder and change how they turkey hunt. You could change one thing about how the masses turkey hunt, the one mistake that drives you nuts. So the one thing that you wish people would listen to you about or or something, if you could do that, if you had the power to fix that one issue, what would that be? Stop bumping them? So many people hear that gobble and they go, go, go, go go. It's like a magnet, right and everything everybody's going to that sound and turkeys are the most unbelievably keen bird in the world. They're on the ground all day. It's an absolute miracle when you see a turkey walking through the woods that they're still alive because everything's trying to kill it. Right, So you know, they're good at living, and they're they're good at living because they can see like no other. And I think guys spook probably fifties the turkeys thereafter. I think they're spooking them because that they just don't know when to sit down, don't know when to stop, don't know when to glass. Make sure that little periscope and that's that, that's the deal. He's got that little periscope that's the size of your fist, barely over the hilltops, and he sees you long before you see him. And people just misinterpret where their gobbles at and they're spooking those birds. So their approach is too fast and too aggressive. They need to slow down, take their time because time means nothing to those birds. They don't wear wrist watches, and it really doesn't mean anything for that turkey. All he's gonna do is fly down, eats, drut, do his thing, same thing he's been doing all spring and the gobble puts everyone in in like, oh, I gotta get there, I gotta get there. It kind of you know, gets your emotions high, which is why we're out there. But you really got to slow down and take your time with turkeys, Like that's the big mistake that I see people making is spooking that bird and you're out of the game. Well, Mark, as I've always come to rely on you for great words of wisdom. All his a lot of fun. If people want to see your turkey hunts the spring, if folks want to follow along with what you got going on, where can they see the Turkey tour and everything else. YouTube is probably the easiest place. Our dear cast all of the Turkey tours within deer cast. Uh, it's free. All of our do d t V, um all of our content is free within deer cast. If you want it all in a one stop shop, you can check it out at deer cast dot com. You can go to YouTube check out d d t V, or you can check it in I G t V or Facebook, any any place that you can find our content. We've got the Turkey tour airing. It's great stuff and um so is this chat. I can't thank you enough. Mark. I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next time. I can swindle you into talking deer too. Anytime, brother, just don't ask them about fishing or stuff or anything else. Turkey and deer, I'll talk. I'm fine with that. That's my ticket to good Well. We got a lot of common perfect Thank you, yeah, thank you, So that is a rap. Thanks for joining us for our first bonus Turkey episode of the spring. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you check out everything Mark just mentioned Instagram, Facebook, their YouTube channel, deer cast. It is all great um and certainly will help you out here come Turkey season as well. If not at least scratch the itch if you can't be out turkey hunting. So with that said, good luck turkey hunting, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

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