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 Ken You all right, welcome to the wire Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Like I just said, we are here for our second bonus turkey hunting episode of the month. We've got Tony Peterson back with us. You probably heard him recently talking deer with me. Now we're back to talk turkeys, and in particular, we're gonna cover a lot on how he bow hunts for turkeys. We're gonna cover some of his different tactics with decoys, in particular how he adds realism to them. We discuss some different turkey tendencies and whether or not there's truth to these myths or commonly hell beliefs. We're in talk calling scouting public land, how to find good public land turkey spots, and a whole lot more along those lines. It's a good one if you're ready to hit the turkey woods. Highly recommend you give us want to listen before heading out. So without further ado, let's just get right into it, all right with me on the line for our bonus turkey podcast conversation Tony Peterson, thanks for joining me again for another one of these chats. And Uh, I had to get you on to talk turkeys because the last time you and I talked turkeys, we somehow got Spencer new Hearth to admit to something about bobcats breeding with turkeys and all sorts of weird stuff, and it was one of my favorite moments of twenty nineteen. So it was amazing. Spencer, is that dude's like a legit alien or something. He's Can I tell you something else weird about him? Yeah? He gets up every morning at five thirty, I think, and he goes into his hot tub in the backyard and he doesn't have a fence, and so he just kind of walks out into the middle of his yard with all these neighbors around him, and he gets in this hot tub and he as a weird morning ritual that I don't really fully understand, but he spends an hour kind of meditating, it seems like, in his hot tub every morning in Montana. Uh. He's got purple like mood lights and stuff. It's a very peculiar thing, but it does help me understand him a little bit better. So I just thought you should know that Uh that I believe that and not not to totally derail this thing. Have you watched The Tiger King on Netflix show? I just have started on one episode in. Yeah, so tell me if you don't think that Spencer new Heart might belong at that zoo. Oh he would fit in perfectly. I could see him being like one of the groundskeepers. He'd be one of the guys that kind of was was reeled in underneath the Joe Exotics lure and helps out with things. Yeah. In fact, I think his new nickname should be Spencer Exotic. I think that's that's not bad. We started calling him the hot tub Hunter within the med Either team and uh, and there's just something about him that just is mysterious. Yeah, he's he's one of a kind. He's he's actually we we may even get together and hunt with him this year if possible, and I think that'd be a lot of fun if it works out. He's a character, he's a good dude. But but turkeys, other than Spencer or what I wanted to talk about today and what I've got kind of planned, what we've been doing for this month is kind of a series of bonus Turkey episodes where we just kind of go rapid fire through a bunch of different tactic topics and just kind of run down all sorts of thoughts that you've got on hunting turkeys. I know you do a ton of it. You're very successful. I've enjoyed talking turkeys with in the past. So if you're down, I I'm gonna try not to do the weird rambling circle your conversations that I sometimes have. I'm gonna try to just spit questions that you get ideas and just go down the list and cover as much actually helpful stuff as possible rather than me rambling a out philosophy or some crazy thing like that. Well, this is this is gonna be a hell of a challenge for both of us that I know. I'm gonna try to stick to my notes. So are you prepared to do the turkey hunting rapid fire wired hunt challenge? Definitely? Fire away, buddy, Okay, Tony Peterson. How do you go about finding public land turkey spots? Let's start their turkey hunt in public land? How do you find spots? Are good? Get on on X and find some trees that usually how I start yep, if if I'm heading out West, it's a it's a some kind of river bottom with some trees. If I'm in the Midwest or the east, it's trees with some kind of field nearby. That's that's how I start, and and is there is literally that The extent of your scouting is just finding some things like that, and then it all comes down to being on the ground and listening and seeing or is there anything I can do before I get on the ground? Um, you know, it depends on what I'm If I'm running and gunning with a shotgun, I'm I'm kind of taking the same the same approach I would for the white tails, where I'm looking for a big chunk of ground. So I'm looking for those few essentials, right there has to be some some trees from to sleep in and some cover for them, and there has to be some food around there for them. After that, it's going to be a matter of like how much ground can I cover and how how far can I get from the access? Okay, so then let's do that. Let's we're on the ground, you're covering ground. How do you actually scout a property on the ground for turkeys? Is it a matter of just walking field edges? Or walking through exactly what you're doing on your first day. Let's say, Um, you know, field edges are good because they're easy, but the thing that I look for a lot is rouss. If I can find a roost tree, and I you know, you've I don't know if you've ever hunted like Texas birds, but we uh. If you get into some of these states where there's sort of admitted roost spots, you find those year to year roost trees. And I always kind of thought that was an anomaly that you couldn't find in the Midwestern in in the East, and I'm realizing it's not true. I'm finding those places where there's just some trees that they're in every night of the year, just about and you know, it's easy to figure out the food sources typically, and so if you can start with where they're gonna be at first light and where they're gonna go, and you know, maybe how they'll build that circuit back in to come back around in the evening, it just gives you such a good idea how to go through the whole day. So I feel like it's maybe tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems pretty easy. How you go about trying to find the roost tree, which is either seeing something physically that looks like, oh yeah, that's like an ideal roost tree, or it's actually trying to roost them at nights, like going out there at last light and al hooting or crow calling or whatever to to hear where they're at, where you find them the next morning, whatever it is. So there's that way of finding something like that, But is there anything else you're doing to get that hub of the wheel or can you expand on that at all? Um For me, it's not so much listening to them. You know, I have bad hearing, and so I like to get out and actually get under the trees. You know, I kind of tie it into a bunch of shed hunting or winter scouting for deer. But I'm just looking for those piles of poop that looked like they've they've spent years on the same limbs. And then I know exactly what tree they're in, and I can look at the terrain and go, they probably fly up from that spot or that ridge, and so you know how the approach is going to be. Uh in the evening, and you can kind of look at the fields or the best landing zones and go, okay, this is probably where they're gonna land in the morning and how they're gonna walk away. So if I know exactly what trees they're using, it helps me build a better plan. Have you found any kind of trend with what that circuit typically looks like? For a for a gobbler, is it is it usually fly down to you know, a strut zone or some food source, and they heng up or whatever, and then they roam through some certain type of cover and then they circle back to a field or I don't know, is there any kind of generic trend you've seen with what a typical turkey circuit would look like. Yeah, well, for sure, a lot of it comes from fall hunting. You see, you see the circuit big time if you spend a full day fall turkey hunting. But in the spring, what I'm what's going to make a circuit as the hens, they're going to have a pattern, especially the earlier in the season you are, So they're gonna they're gonna do the same thing today what they did yesterday, and a certain amount of the times are going to follow them. And that's just like pretty much a given. So if you know what they like to do throughout the day. That that sort of starts to disintegrate as the season goes on and there's more bugs and they're they're nesting and stuff. But for the first couple of weeks of the season, in most places, if you're if you're opener is an a role that's pretty reliable as far as what the hens are gonna do and the toms are gonna be with them. And then you run into those, uh kind of the two year olds and the jake's and the roamers that aren't hanging tight with the hens a lot of times, and those birds are just you know there you kind of hunt those like you do running bucks, where they're like they're gonna take that logging road or they're gonna walk a certain route and go from strutting zone to strutting zone or check in fields and covering ground, and so there's two different things going on. But when you're talking about like starting the turkey season, paying attention to that circuit that the hens do, which is way more predictable than a lot of people think, that just puts you in the right place to not only catch like the top the dominant tom's but you'll catch some of those satellite birds that are kind of you know, they just got booted out of the winter flock, but they're not ready to go anywhere else yet. So it's it's just a good strategy to start with. Do you ever do you what am I trying to say here? There's certain things that we know that mature bucks do that are different than immature bucks than little dinkers, Like there's some certain things we can assume that mature bucks will travel differently in this way, mature bucks will bed maybe a little bit differently this way. Um Have you found any key things with mature Tom's as far as some generalities how they'll operate differently, um Man kind of like they're they're the ones who will start out with the most hens and hold the hens the longest. And so it's just a matter of and I don't know if you've ever hunted the the really early birds, like the late March Nebraska type of thing where you get to see you might actually be hunting while the winnering flocks are breaking up, and you'll have those days where you watch them and you see like turkey fights break up. Just they're they're just in such close proximity, and they're setting that pecking order, and you can start to see the two year olds peel off and the three Jake's here will peel off and they're they're like settling that stuff as you're watching, and it's pretty It happens pretty early. They'll fight later, of course, but you see those big Tom's and the mature ones, they they really they just win like they're they're the toughest, they're the biggest, and those birds they're gonna hang with those hands tight. And if you can find out what they're gonna do in a day to day basis, he might be a little harder to call off because he's already got his hands. But the way to kill that bird is with a full strutter if you can, if you can get in on his route where he's going to come through with some of those hens, and you've got a full strutter out there with a hen or two, that bird, that dominant bird is not gonna put up with it if you're close, if you're four yards away in the other end of a field, it's probably not gonna happen. But if you can figure out where he's gonna go with those hens in that feeding circuit that can be just unreal. So decoit a little differently? Do you call differently if you see a bird that you know is or you think is a mature, big old tom versus a two year old bird? Is there anything you do differently from a calling standpoint? There isn't for me. I'm sure some some people out there probably gobble at them more. Um I don't because I've never had I've never once felt like gobbling did me any favors other than just locating them. I mean, I gobble with a mouth call and so like finding them in the tree if I'm running and gunning or getting a getting kind of a shock, gobble response, gobble, It's awesome. But as far as like convincing that time to come in, I've never felt like it was the right choice for me. So, I you know a lot of hand in calling, and I'm a caller man. We've talked about this before, Like I I like to hold a conversation out there. I'm not one of those old school dudes who's you know, yelped three times and shut up for twenty minutes. That's not my style. So what on the calling front would you say is your signature move. Then do you have like that little trick like when you got to get him over the hump and they just don't want to go. They like, I'm gonna do my little Tony Peterson trick? What is that out? I take? I live off the mouth calls and slate calls, and what I'll do is really try to tick the hands off. And I'll do I'll call with the slate call and the yelp call, and I'll cut each other off, so it sounds like two hens going at it. So it's it's a yelping with one and then cut off yelp with the other. And then you start that if you if you fire that up right, it starts leading into that like real loud cutting. And you see this This is something you know you learn in the fall hunting is those hens have dominance too. And if you've ever you know, had that hen decoy out and had another hand coming and kind of half strut and peck your decoy, she's she's dominant. And once in a while you can get those birds to like really get mad and those hands will come in. And when you if you're out there and it's like noon and you haven't heard of goblin three hours and you get that live hand to do that, you'll hear gobbles. I mean, it's it's just changes the whole dynamic of the woods. And so I'll try that kind of dual calling thing to get them fired up. And I actually when it's early like that and I'm I'm working what I think is going to be that tom with a bunch of hens. I do a lot of scratching too, because they you know, they're just they're moving through in a feeding circuit at that time of the year, and it just I think it just sells the whole thing. How close do you think a turkey has to be able to hear you scratch? Mean, it's like the range where you would try that, man, I don't I don't know how far away they could be, you know, if the leaves are dry, they can hear that quite a way. Is and I think it's just a matter of I think, you know, like if you think about calling deer, I think one of the reasons calling deer is so hard is because it's hard to make it actually sound like deer making calls, you know, like you're never making sounds in the leaves and there isn't you know, It's just it's a different thing. But with turkeys, you know, you listen to hens, they they're calling to one another constantly, whether they're just kind of subtly clucking and yelping and there's always scratching going on. And so even if it's only you know, a hundred yard game or a hundred fifty yard game, it just it I think it just helps sell the whole thing. Yeah, So do you not buy into the overcalling concern that a lot of people talk about. Not really. I think if you're a good caller, it's it's really hard to overcall. I think if you're not very confident or you're just not you know, not very good at it, it's easy to overcall. So then what's the what's the thing you did to become a good caller? Because there any one thing that makes you a good color in your mind? Is it because you've master the yelp? Or is it because you listen to so many birds? Or I don't know, is there anything you could you point to to what makes you a good color? Fall? Turkey hunting? Go you you hold? The hell has time for that? Dude? You want you want to learn how to be a good caller, and you want to learn about turkeys and what they say to one another hunt in the fall. I mean, it's it's amazing how vocal they are and how many conversations you could hold with hens when you hunt in the fall. I just I, I guess I've just never thought about turkeys in the fine not ites a thing. I just have got my mind so filled up with bucks and bulls and all that stuff that I just haven't able to make time to think about it. But that's an interesting point. So what about your tactics and how any of this might change if and I think this is what you mostly do, correct me if I'm wrong, But how any of this is different for bow hunting turkeys because a lot of folks approach it with guns, but more and more and more people are out there with stick and string. Um, what do you do differently or what does your turkey hunting set up look like differently because you're bow hunting versus the typical gun hunt setups. Um, bow hunting, you know, you you want to build in as much scouting as possible so you're confident in that spot. You know, I think a lot of people you know they they I think they sort of look at bow hunting turkeys like a lot of people look at bow hunting deer. It's like, well, there's a field edge, I just gotta go get on and the critters will walk by. But there's so there's so many like little subtle things they prefer. You know, you can see um if you if you watch enough birds strut in a hundred acre cornfield, you'll see birds strutting in the same spots and it's like there's a subtle ridge there, like a little high point, or they can enter it from a certain way, or there's something to it. And so bow hunting, yeah, you you know, you might want to go out and put your blind on the edge of the field, but you want to be like on that spot, on a spot kind of thing. It's kind of it's just like setting up for deer. There's there's places they like to come in, there's places like to leave it. There's places they feel confident feeding where they can see in more directions, and so it's it's a matter of really putting yourself in a place that you have a lot of confience because you're gonna you're not gonna be mobile and then using the decoys that are appropriate for the time of the season and making them visible that that matters for bow hunting so much. What is your bow hunting set up? Then? I know last year we talked about some of your favorite decoy setups, But walk me through, like exactly, and not even just your decoy, but walk me through how you best like to set up a blind or whatever that setup is you're gonna use to hide and then and then your deco is, um, you know, the blind. The blind just depends on where the birds are where they're using frequently, whether it's a you know, a field or a logging road or something. You know that that just depends on the scouting. The decoy thing is so tough, and I should say this. I always brush in my blinds. Um, I don't. I'm sure there are lots of turkeys that would ignore a blind out in the wide open still, but I don't hunt them anymore. I don't. I don't. I don't see that tolerant behavior in blinds. And the one thing that I realized is even if a turkey tolerates it, my dear won't. And so if I go pop a blind out and have a bunch of deer blowing and starting and run away. It does mean no favors for turkeys, so I always brush them in um. And you know, when you think about access with that too, you're trying to be you know, if it proverbly you're hunting close to the roost on the first food source or the first travel route, but you want to be able to get in there and not spook them. And so there's a lot that goes into that as far as planning and scouting, but decoys we don't I guess we don't think about it very often, but you really it's kind of like a match the hatch thing with fly fishing. Like when you start the turkey season and it's early, those birds are more flocked up. And when you get into May and the back half of May, if you're hunting that late, there's they're solo or there's pairs of hens, and it's just the whole thing changes. And so when it's and they're less likely to fight and be fired up later in the season. So when you take the early birds there used to being around a lot of birds and seeing flocks, and they're fighting a lot. They're ticked off, like then the hands aren't really coming in yet, and they've just spent close proximity all winter to these all these dudes who are their enemy now. And so that that full strut Tom in the right situation with a bunch of hands is awesome, or that quarter strut Jake over the breeding hen with a bunch of hens when you start out, It's just that that's my favorite thing to use. I mean, that's that'll bring in all types of birds. And then as the season progresses, I start peeling off those hands, and if I get into like probably about may t on, I'm like one feeding hen and no, Jake's nothing that for me, that's been the best way to do it. I've read where you have talked in the past about the fact that having exceptionally realistic decoys is pretty important, maybe more still than you used to think. Can you just describe why you think that now, Because I when I first started turkey hunting, I just started turkey hunting about ten eleven, twelve years ago, and it wasn't something that my family did. Kind of taught myself how to do it, and I bought two like twelve dollar or plastic decoys from Gayner Mountain that just have the very vaguus similarity to what a turkey looks like, just the basic shape, I would say, And that's what I was working with for a whole lot of years. Why was that the wrong decision? Um? It depends what you're doing, you know. I mean that's what I started out on too. But we only shotgun hunted, and it really you know, there's been an education curve out there for the birds. Like we we killed off a lot of the dumb ones. And yeah, I'm not saying the turkeys that we have now are smart, but they there maybe a little bit less tolerant of this kind of stuff. And so if you're shotgun hunting a running gun, and it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you spend up for decoys. If you do, you you probably have a little bit better of a hunt. But you only need that bird in that forty yard range. And even if he comes in there and he gets a little spooky, he doesn't want to commit closer, it doesn't really matter, or it shouldn't. You can dust him at forty or whatever. Yeah, you can shoot him right in the face when it when it when you're bowing and you want that bird. I mean, I literally want my birds like five to seven yards away, and I want them in that decoy trance where if I shoot him. And I've had this happen like probably three or four times in the last few years. I've shot birds right through the chest and had him fly up, come right back down and keep fighting my decoy and shot him again. And there's just you can see them with those really good decoys that have the right body posture. It's not just you know, it's not just like a paint job, even though the best ones look really good, but they're conveying something with the body posture. And there you can just watch these birds. I mean, I'll never forget I killed the bird and Iowa two years ago. This monster Tom late season, we called him in. You know, it was like ten o'clock in the morning, ten thirty. Got him Goblin, and we watched him hit this field edge and he probably hit it, I don't know, hundred yards away, five yards away, started walking in and kind of just slow walking but in our direction, and when he just got close, you could just see that it just flipped the switch and he just went full strut right up next to the decoy and just like started bumping it. And he was kind of like cautious on the way in, but you just you could, like you know how it is with a buck. Like sometimes they're standing there and you'll make a call and he'll just do something and you go, oh, it's one. He'll start licking his lips or something, and you go, this is just you just feel it, like you just saw that change and it's gonna happen. That happens to me more than ever when I use really good decoys, Like I think, I think spending up for decoys is better than than it's the best money you can spend on turkey hunting. What's your favorite decoy Dave Smith's And do you have like a specific if if I could only afford one David Smith decoy, which woman to be the It's a quarter strut. I think it's a quarter strut. J It's the one. It's the Jake that everybody uses. I think that decoy. Well, I've had more just amazing tom commitment to that to the point where like just just as an example, I went out last year in Minnesota and I had this this scout spotted out or a spot scouted out, and I I put that set up out there, and I had a couple of hens, but I had that that jake decoy over a lay down hen, and I called in a bird at like nine o'clock and I saw him come through the woods and as soon as he laid eyes on it, he ran in. And that that jake decoy has like a pretty stout metal um oversized steak. That tom came in and hit my decoy so hard he bent the metal steak and he started fighting and pushing that decoy around and I shot him right through the wing button out his back and he flipped up, ran down the road, turn around, and came back and walked up to that decoy and I shot him again. And I mean I I shot him when I was like, I couldn't believe it. I got it on film when when I cleaned that bird, I had run a like a two inch mechanical basically from his wing butt down over the top of his thigh through his chest and he came back to fight. It was just carnage. I don't I don't know how he did it. When the second shot, he didn't have anything left in him. But they just that that decoy or those decoys. It's incredible, man. So what if I just I don't have that kind of money. I'm not going to be able to toss whatever it costs to get one of those Dave Smiths. What if I have to settle for a more formable model. But I'm a creative type. I like arts and crafts or I like to get funky with things. Are there any little modifications or tricks that I can do to make up less expensive model a little bit more appealing. I know I've heard some stuff about ways you add movement, different stuff like that. Yep, yeah, you can add movement. I I used to do that a lot more um with with glue in some of those those down feathers from turkeys on, like around the head and the legs to add a little movement. But the one trick that I've heard a lot that I've tried it in the past, and I've seen this in wild birds is you can paint your your jake head white. And that the theory is, and I don't know if this is proven or not, I think it is, but when they know they're about to actually breed ahead, their head turns white, and so you'll see I actually think Dave Smith has a new DECOYLT that has a white head. I'm not sure, but we've seen that in the past where companies come out with that, and I think a lot of people don't want to buy it because we think tom head's a red like you look at him on the shelf, you know, and Cabela's or wherever, and you go that that doesn't look right. But if you've ever been out there and you've hunted birds enough, I've killed a few birds that their head turned white while it was the whole thing was going down. And I've heard that from people who are way had way more turkey experience than me and observing birds. So I think that's something that's that you know, it's worth trying out because if you want to take off a gob or show them that. Uh. One more thing decoy is you said that you want those birds coming right in close. Exactly how far away do you like your decoy is set up from a bow hunting blind or whatever you're in that my jake is gonna be or if Jake or the strutter is gonna be like five to seven yards and I want it, I mean I want it stupid close. I want it so that I can't miss. Speaking of can't missing, what are the shots you are willing to take with a bow at a turkey? And where where exactly do you like? Dame? Um? I like them when they're not in full strut. If I can help it, Um, I I have shot him. If if I if I shoot him full strut, I like on the side, because I can kind of aim around that wing button, tell where I want to put it. But if it's if it's a bird that's not in full strut, I'll shoot him anyway he's standing, because you can just you know, you're aiming for that volleyball in the middle of their body. And so what I really like is at tom that's facing away from me, I can shoot him through the back, through the vitals and not in full strut, because then you just you could you have a better chance of just breaking them down and running it through a whole bunch of good stuff. How do you what do you like? Walk me to that point where you're gonna aim. So the turkeys walking straight away, you're gonna put a dead center mass, you know, from left or right, but up and down? Are you going a couple inches above? Like the where the tail meats or I don't know, how where do you pick your spot a little higher than that? Um? Probably you know you're probably trying to hit like maybe two inches below where the wing butts are somewhere in there. Maybe three inches below kind of depends, you know. Sometimes they walk low like a we think of like a tryand to source rex walking. And sometimes they're up high, you know. Um, but I like I like that facing away shot. And you know, part of that's just because it's a little bit easier to get drawn on, and but it's you know, they're always moving and there's there's so much it's so dynamic that you just gotta I really think the best advice is to get a standing turkey three D target and shoot it at a whole bunch of different angles. What about fixed versus a mechanical I'm I'm a mechanical guy with turkeys. I like. I like big cuts fair enough. There's not anything too huge that you're gonna knock into and have issues like a shoulder blade on a deer. Right. No, UM, I will say that I did. I shot a bird one time. I don't. A couple of years ago I shot a bird in full strut that was, you know, maybe ten yards away, and you know, I shoot pretty heavy stuff, and I hit that sucker directly in the wingbone and got I didn't hardly get any penetration. I was like, we just have I knocked him over. He took off and ran and he died in the field. And so I thought, oh, it was better than I you know, I thought my initial impression was just wrong. But when I went out there, I only got like five inches of penetration in my arrow actually broke on him. And it made me wonder if there was already like a crack in that arrow or something, or some kind of somehow it was compromised, or if a turkey wing could actually do that. I don't know. Um, So we talked about setting up you know, decoys and the blind and everything for your bow hunts. Will you ever run and gun with a bow if you're set up and it's just not happening, it's late morning and you want to get Nancy, will you go wing it? Yeah? Yeah, mostly I mostly regret it, but yes, I'll do that. It's just hard, man. I mean, I've tried the gilly suit thing, and I've tried some of those little portable blinds, and it's it's possible. I've killed a few that way, but it's just not very easy. Is there any one thing that has made it a little more successful? Do you have any like? Is there the best practice you found yet? Yeah? Carry the good decoys with you because you need them in that situation, you know, I mean, it's it's one of the things I actually kind of forgot, you know. I grew up putting my back to an oak tree and hunt with a shotgun out in the open, and I started doing that more in the last few years. Again, there was a while where I really didn't. I was mostly just bow hunting, and you forget, like, man, you can't get away with anything out there when they're when it's just you and the turkey, and it's fun because you can. It's it's you know, there's there's a lot at stake every little movement you make, and so bow hunting you've got to think, all right, well, the you know, the big movement you're gonna have to do. You really got to plan around that. And it's that's not an issue when you're in a blind. You know, you you can draw, you can get your moment to drop pretty easy when you're in a blind, and it's not the case when you're out there in the open. You know, you mentioned, um, you know how different it is versus being in the cover versus being out in the open, And that that makes me think about one of the other challenges I think that we often faces turkey hunters, which is figuring out what to do when turkey is not wanting to come towards you. They're hung up for some reason or another. And you always hear these different theories or wives tales about well, you're not gonna be able to get a turkey to jump over a ditch, across the stream or do different things like that, like physical barriers. Um, is there any truth to that kind of stuff? Um? I've heard things about uphill downhill, like they're not gonna want to go up hill, or they're not gonna want to go down a hill or there whatever. Um is that any of that kind of stuff stick with you? Or do you just go of it and be really good at calling? Well, you know, they're individuals, man, Like some some birds aren't gonna fly across a little creek or a river. Some birds will come across so fast. I'll make your head spin, you know. I mean, it's how fired up are they? What kind of bird are you dealing with? You know? And my thing if I if I have those birds hang up, you know, because sometimes it just happens. They get to like fifty six yards and they're just not doing it, and I kind of just let them go. Like it's sometimes I think that's just what you're dealing with, you know. But I'll never forget, dude. I was in uh I was hunting public land in South Dakota a couple of years ago, and I was on this this top of this bluff and I could see so far and I had a big flock rooster close to me, and they all went away. And later in the morning, like six yards away, way across the valley, I saw these birds walk in and there was one strutter in there, and I could see a jake and and some hens through my binoculars, and I called, like I yelped as loud as I could, and you could see when the sound of my call made it all the way over there, that jake took off, ran down the hill and sailed and flew right into my decoys, and it was like it was like incredible. I shot him right through the back. It was like it was dumb and there was everything between us to keep him away. And that was just the one burder. He's like, he's like hanging out and there's a strutter there. He's like, I'm not getting with these hens, and he heard one and he's going, I'm I'm shooting my shot. You know. Yeah, you could just see it like there's my there's my opportunity, and know, you don't know when you're gonna run into that bird, and to think that you're not going to run into it is you know, it's silly. They're they're they're living things out there. They're like they're the rules that we make up. They they just don't. They're just not universal. It's the same thing in the dear world, like they're gonna do stuff that they're not supposed to. And if you're out there and you spend more time watching them and more time calling them, you just realized, like there's a certain amount of birds. They're gonna go uphill, downhill, through fences, whatever they have to do. Yeah, when you find yourself in a situation where he really won't though he really won't go over the fence, or he really won't go across the creek, or you don't know why, but for some reason he's hung up and you can't see him, but you just hear him just kind of stuck. What are your go to moves to try to unhang a turkey? Um? If if I've tried everything in the book and you know, like change my calling strategy and shut up on them and got fired up, um, and I can still see them out there and they're not gonna do it, I I almost treat it like they're not there and it more and try to work something else and just see if there's something else going on, because you know, just it just happens, like there's birds that just won't do it, and you know, you could maybe add some movement into your decoys. I've I've tried a bunch of stuff like that and that, you know, the strutters you can spin and you know, bring the tail up and down, the tail fan up and down, and I've never really there's just like something about it where some of those birds you can just read them and go, this is not going to happen, Like unless I move and re set up somewhere else, this bird is not coming to this setup today and you just I kind of just accept that. Yeah, so do you do what you just described though, Well, you sometimes get up and change position on them a lot. That's something that I've had some success with. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean it's you know, it's so easy if your gun hunting to to swing around and try to call them into the woods. And you know one thing that and you can do it bow hunting too, and I have done it, especially if I see a couple of birds and they're like, yeah, this is where we're gonna be, not not where you are. But the one thing that I've seen, and this kind of comes from the deer world, is there you get a lot of you get a lot of looks when you're on field edges with turkeys, but you get those birds and maybe it's just because you can see them and you know they're doing it, but you get those birds that hold up and aren't coming in. And I think there's a different dynamic at play when you're in the cover and you're on that little logging road or that little tiny meadow and you're in the woods. A lot of those birds seem more likely to commit in those situations. Because it's you know, the theory is, you know, they got to get closer to see what's going on. But I just think that there's less pressure in there. And sometimes they're like, this is a place where I run into birds a lot and not hunters as much. You wrote an article for Mediator somewhat recently, UM about the situation you just described, which was birds that are maybe decoy shy or spooked by the decoy or something like that. How do you do you do you do what you just described, which is you just head into the woods when you have that kind of situation or is there anything else that you would think about when you have that kind of scenario? Um, It depends what I have about for decoys. You know, if I've got the strutter out and I have a couple of birds that are you know, they'll hold up at fifty six yards and not do it, then that strutter is gone. Um. The same thing with a jake. If if I have if I can see long beards and they're not committing, I go okay. Probably the first bet is to take the tom or the jake away and then see if that changes what's going on. And sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't, but I I had that happen a couple of years ago with that strutter. I had a spot that had a really big bird with a bunch of hens coming through, and I put that strutter out on the hopes i'd get him, and I kept having like nice good looking birds come in and go I'm not I'm not going to do that. I pulled it and replaced it with the jake and the lay down hen and killed a great bird, you know, the next morning. I mean, it's just so it's kind of you're just you're just kind of reading it and going, Okay, well this is this is on today, or this just isn't doing it, and you start changing things up and pulling things out of the spread and going how can I how can I get a different reaction? Is there a scenario where you'd go decoy list completely um with shotguns a lot? Yeah, I don't. I don't mind sitting out there and just calling with bull hunting. Probably not. I'll get down to a single feeding hen or a single they call it a leading hand, there's walking hand. But I would have a hard time bull hunting without decoy shotguns. Yes, you know, what's I think we should wrap it up here. We're doing these you know, kind of short and sweet episodes for our for our turkey deal here. What do you think, if if there is anything, what is one thing you do as a turkey hunter that most other hunters would think weird or crazy or just not in anybody else's book. Is there anything out there that you're just a little different on? Um? You know, maybe my calling style is is real aggressive. I think a lot of people if they saw how much I called in the you know, I put some stank on it, I think they'd be like, that's not that's not what we're used to. I think that. I think the craziest thing that I do is I spend a lot of days sitting dark to dark in the same blind bow hunting turkeys. And you know those those spring days are long, and that's that's when you, like, you want to talk about being bored in a quarantine right now, when you're in your house, go sitt in a freaking turkey blind for you know, fifteen hours in a day, especially on a day when you know you maybe have some cold weather something coming in, and it's just shut down. Man. It is brutal, that is it's tough to do all day sits for deer. It's I can't do all day sis for turkeys. That's that takes a certain amount of stamina that I'm impressed by, Tony. It's it. It sucks, but it can be you know it. It came that came from hunting Nebraska a lot in the early season, where you know, when those birds are flocked up in the morning and they're all on a food source, you might not have a workable bird until six o'clock in the afternoon, but you don't know, and so we'd go out and sit and you would have just drudgery for like ten hours, and then all of a sudden birded fire up in a new place and you know, coming through the brush or something, and it just change everything. And so it it's stuck with me that it's it can be worth it, But man, it can be torture. I guess that's sort of the name of the game of hunting. Sometimes you gotta push through the tough stuff to occasionally have those special moments that you're rewarded with. Right, yeah, big time? All right, Well, Tony, thank you for talking turkey with me here today. Um, it's always a good time. It's always pleasure. Thanks for having me on, buddy. All right, Well that is it. I hope you guys have enjoyed this second installment of our bonus turkey hunting episodes. I think we mentioned it towards the top, but if not, I just want to remind you all that we have been putting out a whole ton of turkey hunting articles over at the meat eater dot com. I mean, we've got articles from Tony, We've got articles from myself and a whole slew of turkey hunters from all across the country, covering every imaginal topic. How to kill a bird off the roost, how to run and gun for turkeys, how to use different types of decoys, different types of calls. I mean, we got you covered, So I hope you're able to check those out and put them to good use. Um. I know times are tough right now for all sorts of different reasons. You may not be able to get out on the hunting trips like you used to be able to. But I am hoping that you're able to find a little time to get out there in the outdoors. Uh, for no other reason than to just get back to a tiny bit of normalcy um, a breath of fresh air, and a turkey galbl can do wonders for a person. So I'm hoping you're safe. I'm hoping you're well and that your family is is healthy too, And until next time, stay wired to Hunt.