The Birds Are Winding Down: Last Ditch Efforts On Late Season Turkeys

Well, welcome back to the raised hunting podcast guys and today I'm again, I'm graced with the two special guests that we have. My two boys are here. We appreciate us. And it says he does. It's pretty cool because we're going to be talking Turkey still. We go. This is probably the last podcast of this season that we'll do on Turkey's I think. Until I kill another bird. Well, because we're rounding, we're winding down. We're getting there. But you'll want to tune in next week because next week I think we're going to be talking about some deer stuff. Which is crazy because some people are just getting started. I don't even know if they're just open yet. Yeah. Which is nuts. Because today is the second day of May and you know we're for us it's been open for three four weeks. So and we still got two weeks left, but that's what we wanted to talk about today was specifically the late season Turkey hunters. You know, and and what you're dealing with and what we've been dealing with and how we have counteracted and made it successful for us. So we got a few tips and things like that. So with that being said, let's talk Turkey boys. We think he's got the biggest bird so far. Wait what? Yeah, wait beard. I didn't weigh minor Joe's, but ours are definitely ours are probably like 23 24 is all I. The two birds I killed on opening day, one of them was considerably bigger than the other one. And I felt like the one was average, which was like the one that Nick killed and Melissa killed. I didn't weigh him because it was pouring down rain. And so I didn't have a place to do it outside the rain. I was so big the picture weighed 15 pounds. The picture weighed 15 pounds. Yeah. What the heck? I heard that from Shannon Sharp this morning. Did you know Steve Hart? So shout out to those guys. Steve Harvey and Shannon Sharper actually listened to this. Do you know their big fisherman? I knew Steve Harvey was. Yeah. He owns the Chick-fil-A ranch with like nine likes on it. Oh, so you saw the same tick tock I did. Is that what it was? Yeah, because Shannon Sharper, he's like, he's like, how big a fish you got Steve. And Shannon's like, he's like, bigger than anything you've ever caught. And he's like, I got one so big that my picture weighed six pounds. And I was like, that's good. I got to keep that one. I got to take note of that. So I guess to answer your question, I think that I might have the biggest weighted bird this year. But Alyssa has blown us all away with Spurs. Yeah, those Spurs are huge. Yeah. They were inching three quarters. So I mean, inching three eight. I don't think we'd kill any of the like just giant butter balls though that were. I measured them. I thought you just said yesterday they were in an inch and like seven inch. I'd say an inch and five eight. Inching three eight. Inching three eight. Which is still a big long hook and they're a hook. They look a lot bigger than an inch and a half though. It shows you how long a freaking two inch spur is. It's humongous. Okay. I'll kill you man. Pregu cha. I could go right through your jugular. And then I think I'm winning on beards. It's definitely combined. I don't even remember what my beard is. I've been all been like 10. So you've been around that 10 mark and but they've been some of the thickest beards we've ever killed. Which has been pretty cool. I just shoot. So let's talk about you're still hunting. So what is some of the tactics that you've switched to? Have you changed up what you're doing? Yeah. I've been a lot more mobile. And like I'm not. What depends on where I'm at. But I haven't been really caring to sit in a blind. It's like an spot. But that's just a choice right? That's true. You guys know that depends on five hours of the day. Would you for once in your life just listen? I do that a lot. I have chosen not to do to where we're at in some places like where we're sitting on the hill the one time. Like I'm not going to use a blind there. There's no place for one there. There's no place but I also don't care to give them any reason to even switch up their hat. But let's talk about that tactic. Because there's a tactic involved in that. As far as what they're doing. Yeah. I mean so it's later in the season we're not just getting these birds aren't just gobbling their heads off. And they're not talking at all. At least that specific bird is. Right. But he's doing the same exact thing every day to a tee. I mean as far as you know where he's going to be all day. You know where he's going to roost generally or at least down to a couple options. You know where he's going to be in the evening. And you know that he's got one of two places that he's going into the trees. So you all we've done with him. If you haven't gotten a shot on him but all you got to do is wait for the right day. We now every time we've gone and sat it's been there freaking raining or super windy or some weird weather that comes in that they don't even end up doing what they're doing. You know we messed up. Not you but I have hunted the same bird like four times you've hunted him two or three. Yeah. And we messed up on him. I mean we had him. When Easton says we have him down to like knowing what they were doing we had this bird down to knowing a place where he's crossing the fence. Coming through the fence. And so we set up on that going okay we just got to wait him out. And Nick and I were sitting there that day. And the mistake was we saw him strutting about 150 yards from us but he was headed East. I mean I'm sorry he's headed West. And so we decided to try to cut him off. And because we had had him close the day before he had been right there. And we thought that he got around us and went down to the West a little bit. So we circled around there. Got in there and everything was perfect man. I mean we were set up and saw hens like just milling around feeding right in front of us where like this is game on. And then all of a sudden we heard a gobble back up in the field where we had been sitting. And we watched Mr. Tom Turkey walk right through the fence opening there where we had been waiting on him and go right through there. He's left his hand for that. No he was following two hens. They all three came across and went through there. So and then he so and then what he did was he got into the got across the fence onto our side and then pitched right in the tree right there. So there was nothing we could do with him. The next day we tried we came back and tried to set up on the other side of him. And but I knew the chances of getting him to leave those hens was not good. Well in that situation too is there's not I've tried to like with deer you can figure out pretty well that like throughout the summer they're going to have a pattern. And there's a certain time frame in there where they're going to start changing that pattern whether it's when they shed their velvet and then they get to a new pattern or they go to something completely new after another week or two. With turkeys I feel like depending on the time of the season I've been trying to find like okay when are they going to be more patternable when are they not. And maybe I'm wrong but as opposed to the first week of the season they're doing the same things for a little like they do them for spans and it doesn't matter what time of your time of year it is. So like I had birds that were going to the same spot every day for about a week and then they just stopped doing that granted we hunted them but then they went and did the same thing somewhere else as long as you find it. The only difference like with this one is in being later in the season I don't we didn't want to call to him one because they weren't calling and two because if they're naturally doing something don't add anything. And just be as natural as possible. But other situations I'll just try to be where they're at and I still may throw decoys out and stuff because I know they're going to be there but later in the season like right now I don't want to give him that one specifically with how naturally we're hunting him. I didn't want to give him anything like even even to the point where we're like we may not even throw the like the Reaper decoy up when we when he comes closer we may just leave it and try to maybe use it to where he can't see it till he's close enough and use it just to cover me up to get to full draw but other than that it's I mean that's a really different we normally don't on him that that patterned or that actually I can only think a bushy bird is only one you've done similar to that. But I'm like we've been close I mean that's the thing is once you do pattern them and they are doing the same thing guy can get in there like I said we are just getting doing it going right consistently we haven't added decoys no blind we're just sitting against a tree and one of these times you'll do it right the other thing that I've been doing is it just depends like I'll sit in a blind if I can I'd prefer it but there's certain places like we're talking about that the birds don't want to like it's we don't know what it is but the only time we've killed a bird this year is not a blind out of that play or all in that place and so it just depends on where I'm at I've pretty much everywhere I'm at I've cut down on calling I don't call nearly as much I try to just try to be where they're at more so than bringing them to me I haven't put a Tom D. Quay up unless I've been with you I haven't put a Tom D. Quay out in the past week and a half probably two weeks just out of hand or two hands and you feel like that's because the birds that you're hunting have been hunted some I think that it they've been hunted some and for whatever reason I want to be as discreet as possible like so like if they're going to come up and see something it's going to be something simple and if it's going to be some simple it's just going to be a lone hand or another two hands standing there that they would be comfortable seeing and something where they don't see a fan from a hundred yards away or something like that and know that they're going to be getting into a fight or they're going to have to fight unless I find the right birds that are dominant enough like the three you guys had but I'm not worried nearly as much on calling or decoys as much now I'm more so trying to just get in the perfect spot be a little quieter maybe have a hand or something out and let them kind of do their things and make their own decisions to come to me and I would agree with that right up until and I don't want to get into that one yet but on Alyssa's bird Alyssa killed the last turkey that we've killed and so it was the latest and I would say that I was erring on the side of do I throw a decoy out here or not but what I'm now trying to hunt is trying to find birds that I think may have not been messed with yep and if you can find that they'll still react the same way so that's case I'm still good if I know that there's a section here I'm like there's really good chance these birds haven't been touched I'm just going to go out in the same way I always would yep so I'm wondering do you think that there's a I'm doing I'm trying to read on this and I'm finding some information but pretty not enough to be able to do right now but do you think that there's periods of the mating season with turkeys like there is with deer so you know you got pre-rut where bucks are out looking for just getting started they're not looking for doge at or chasing every doe they may check one or two but they're more starting to hit scrapes establish their areas you know and then you get into your rut where peak breeding season and then you get into your like your post rut where you can you know you can catch those really big bucks out traveling do you think they will go into a time where you get a little later in the season and these birds start going nuts you know where those toms are looking for the last hens to breed or they know that it's getting close because I don't think it really works the same as deer you know they're not having to go find those hens because the hens come to them but do you think there's like a period where they're like they know it's almost over and so he goes a little bit more loony than he usually I think we're there and I really do you think that's a thing that I do think I think that there's cycles to it for sure I think there's a peak of when they're breeding and and I think some of the states actually plan their their seasons why they do them the way they do them is to avoid that you know and like back east and stuff where seasons are just starting they wanted to make sure some of those hens did get bred and you know that they are on their way I also think that's a lot more random though compared to a deer like in a deer reference you can kind of tell they all will start to go be doing the same things once they're in the center of it like we're in the center of the rut we can tell because there's bucks walking around stuck to the butt of a del and there's you just all sorts of different things with turkeys I feel like it's you we might be in that time of year but it's a matter of if you find the right one right because you're gonna sound like they're just all running around trying to beat the crap out of everything or whatever else it's but to some extent there is little that I mean that's how we killed Nick's bird I mean if you could find the right one he was gobbling his head off at 9 30 in the morning you know nobody around and and so we and that bird wasn't moving though no he was you guys had to work him yeah but properly to get him to actually go somewhere right that's what I'm saying is do you think that you're gonna get to a period here where even a bird that's been messed with is is fired up enough that you know 9 30 in the morning or whatever hands of left and he hears a call that he's coming run it I freaking hope so I don't think so that's like the first week or two you could get like even the hands right now get more difficult to call in I think well and that's because the hens have a nest to go to yeah you see a lot more single hens two hens together and they got a nest go to and that's where they're going to sit so that's where that becomes difficult I think what you're referring to the reason why I say that you may not see what you're talking about is because that's changing the entire dynamic of turkeys turkeys know that if they gobble and a hand answers she's supposed to come to him that's how it's supposed to work not necessarily for a white tail deer but you know just because a buck is going through the woods he has to go find seek out that dough I even think the doughs avoid the buck sometimes yeah oh yeah because they're so aggressive that's what I'm just saying is their desperation stage for a turkey you know where where it like elk is a great example elk is the best example that I can give to this is your big bulls I don't feel like they do this because they've been doing so much breeding but you know as well as I do those younger bulls those bulls that haven't been able to do any breeding you get into the later part of September and they hear a call and they are losing their shit you know like you find the right one it's not all of them but you find the right one where he bugles and then you hit one more call and he's already another hundred yards closer like he's not even thinking about it like you could have probably mess with that bull in the first week and he maybe came or he got you know he busted you or whatever where by that the last week of September he's so possessed that he's not thinking straight at all you know he just hears a cow and here he comes and I still say I don't think it's ever going to be that because the nature of the animal yeah you know and I that's what I was it yeah but I think the turkeys do I mean if they're gobbling and answering and stuff like that you can take advantage of that and I guess you know that's what before I talked about the tactics that we've used I wanted to talk about you've switched to a gun you filled it filled your archery tags so now you just said I'm going to go with a gun what have you changed are you changing to how your honey nurse just doesn't hunt it's not true completely I've been waiting for a list of the kill one but yeah I'm going to fun hunt to me sitting in I like I give you guys props because I couldn't do that like the other night you to when you guys sat there these two sat in the rain for probably I don't know five hours or something like that waiting on that bird that they're talking about only two hours two and a half three and it wasn't like the office of like three thirty but it wasn't raining the whole time only like two hours of it was but no one out of the office and when I got to wherever I was going it was still raining which was hours later but we were seeing turkeys yeah I mean so we're a little wet but not calling to them no to me that isn't that's not I mean it's turkey hunting it's not what turkey hunting is to me to me is what I want to do for the remaining days that I go out I want to go and find a bird that's gobbling and if he doesn't I'm going to walk another hundred yards and hit a call and walk another yards and hit a call and walk another hundred yards and hit a call until I can find one that will play if I can't that's okay with me I would rather do that than just sit and wait for one because I'm not my patience for turkeys is just gone I got none left it was never there to start with it's because I'm I'm patience with anything like that deer is the only thing that I can that I can really sit there for and even that that's why I told I said on his podcast I'm never doing all day sit because I just can't sit that I can't sit still that long that's part of what I love about elk and you know and Western hunting a lot is that I don't have to sit still you know I'm I'm not a big fan of the like what we did the other day that's not my preference but the reason I'm okay with doing that is because it's a completely I've never killed a bird like that I've never found a bird at that time of year where he's doing the same freaking thing every day and it's just a matter of time before he comes in the right way and then if he does come in the right way it's going to be difficult it's still like a lot of things have to go right for that one to work so that one it's not the most fun type of Turk County to me but it's also another challenge it's a you're not sitting with a blind you're doing with your bow the best cover you have is maybe a Reaper decoy if you want to keep it up and you got to time everything right and time them right you got to be patient with them and it's not as interactive I would much rather have the mornings where you go and you find a bird that's goblin or whatever and you're calling to him you're working him in and he's goblin then that but it's the challenge part I think for me that is I'm okay with like no that's not gonna be my preference but I'll do it 100% because if I could do it it's gonna be pretty impressive depends on how much you really want to try to fill a tag yeah to me that's not worth it well that made the comment of I feel like we're sitting here waiting on a 180 inch deer because this is poor down right now it's like yeah maybe a 10 inch beard but um so and you guys have both eluded to it a little bit I think the one thing that I've changed when I'm hunting with someone that's carrying a gun this time of year or if I'm hunting with someone like yourself where you got your bow but you want to be more mobile we want to like go to these different places instead of packing a blind we're simply packing a reaping decoy what we're talking about is a strutting tom and we're using it as cover again we're only doing this in places where we know that we're safe to do it but it's the way so true reaping in my opinion is you spot a bird out in a field and then you just grab the reaper and you start crawling at them and then they hopefully will break and come to you or they'll take off and run off that's true turkey reaping we kind of have combined it with some calls and things like that to try to work them to come to a call but then when they get so close they see the reaper and that's what we did with Nick the other day so he and I had been we had been the evening before set up on the birds you're talking about they were coming through the fence they got through the fence rusted we couldn't we there's no place to hunt them that morning without we had to stay about 200 yards away which I knew was too far but we're gonna run to try and see stop so we get set up and it of course they go the other direction on us which is kind of what I expected well then I told him we just have to find the right turkey we need to find one that's doing the right thing and we have a chance so it's now like 915 or something and I told him we're gonna come about this in a completely different way and so instead of going into the farm from the north or from the south and coming into the way we normally come we came from the west and hopped up over a ridge and so we I knew we didn't touch anything because when we come in from the south we have to walk or drive through some fields and when we do that I think sometimes we could be busting birds and we don't know it so we came in from this direction hit a call trying to locate a turkey that we had been hearing that morning where like I knew there was one over there couldn't hear him but heard another one and this one was far away four or five hundred yards and but he was gobbling every breath and I mean it was like not calling to him or I mean he was just gobbling on his own so I said let's go see if we can get set up and we're gonna tradition do I had a blind set up in the field where we stopped and made a couple calls and I mean this bird is answering every single time you touch a call and finally after about 25 30 minutes so the first technique that I employed is I walked around the blind I walked around like kind of a food plot that I have there and tried to get the bird to think that there was hens feeding I see him swap calls a couple times as I did that and that there was birds in this area wouldn't work but he was 400 yards away probably and so he just stayed where he was at so then we decided I'm gonna try and do a drive-by on him and I know that sounds like a gangster hood like you know but what was your piece huh my piece was 20 gauge six yeah Nick with a 20 gauge and me with a Reaper decoy because it's not a real deadly piece and boy this was a weird out bitch drive-by so what we did was we started walking turning up to butter we started walking toward the turkey kind of but flanking him so not going directly at him but going in his direction kind of anyone passed him exactly and every time that we would go 75 80 yards something like that I'd hit a call and fortunately he would gobble every time that I hit that call so I knew he knew we were moving and man that we got within I must say 150 yards maybe something like that and he started moving toward us and I was like okay that's what we needed well we were in the perfect grass to pull the employee the Reaper decoy I don't know that we needed it I think we could have possibly done what we had done and then just kept calling and he would have come into that grass looking for us but he was out at about 50 yards 45 50 yards when he started to pass us and so then we got the decoy held up high enough that he saw it once he saw it then that was it and he came to 16 yards and that was a perfect one to do with your bow too it would have been you could have you could have actually done that with a bow and arrow but but Nick did a good job and made a good shot and we killed another big bird another two-year-old bird yep so but there that was if you were to talk about a turkey war and like you're talking about that was kind of even though he wasn't running to us he was gobbling like I need to find a hint I need a hint to answer me yeah but that was the right bird to go after yeah because he was fired up yep he was doing his thing you know so that made it really really I make today a heck of a lot easier whether you can see or hear them when you have to move on birds to know where they are while you're moving on if you don't you're a lot of times you probably are or did move to the right spot or moved to somewhere where you if you did it right you didn't bust them or anything but wherever you're getting to you may not be able to see them and holy cow the amount of trust you have to have in your gut like can I know I'm in the right spot I know they're right over that hill we just got to give them time makes it extremely difficult extremely I mean I guarantee you and then too you go too far you jump them yeah you don't know it yeah you know and then you can't figure out why you shut up or whatever that's where this bird was super helpful because every time I stopped and checked you know let's just see he was just letting you guys know just come over a little bit further a little bit further than you guys can shoot me you know yep how did you think their hearing is really good like significantly better than ours oh way better I think I think they're rated or if you read about it their vision is incredible especially with the field of the field I know they can see but their hearing is incredible as well well I can tell you this we'll get there in just a second when we talk about Alissa's turkey the wind was blowing 30 miles an hour that's not even an exaggeration I was looking at my phone and it was saying that we had wind sustained at 22 miles an hour and we were getting gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour and so it's blowing the decoy all over the place and things like that and that bird was able I couldn't believe that he could hear me but I could tell that when I hit a call that he was answering me you know and so yeah no they can hear very very well are you finding some statistics let's say yep this is outstanding hearing is an asset to all prey species dixon's compilation of wild turkey experts revealed that a wild turkey's hearing is acute although it lacks the external ear flaps or pinna which concentrates the sound waves field observations suggest turkeys hear lower frequency and more distant sounds than humans that's weird for having such small ears well in their eyes not only can they see is it 270 or 315 it's like 300 degrees something like that there's only one sliver right behind them that they can't see but the the field of vision but also there like how far they can like they can see very very well in detail I can't remember what they said it is it's not what anal over 10 by 42 binoculars or something some like seven power binoculars on their head yeah I can't think of what it's two hundred seven five degrees I think let's see well the thing is when they but they pick up on the slightest movement I think it's 270 or 15 in their head in addition to their incredible visual acuity turkeys have a field of view of 270 degrees dang i'm good come on you're saying 300 I said 270 degrees or 315 it's one of the two this is impressive on its own but when you consider how turkese strategically bobbed its head and rotates its neck it's almost constantly taking in what's going on at a full three full 360 degrees around it yeah they do a very good job of like oh what you're saying the movement I think if it wasn't for their uh for their fan when they're strutting it'd be impossible to kill one like he did outside the blind yeah you ever get the full draw if here's the thing if turkeys could smell oh we'd never kill them there'd be huge population booms yeah because we wouldn't be killing them they would be really hard to kill they would be that they would be like a top of the food chain yeah so thank goodness they don't smell you all right but let's other tips we got well i want to talk a little bit about elissa's because that's the last one i mean that was just a day ago um or two days ago and this one i went back to first day of honey yeah basically um i pulled out all the decoys i went to a blind that had been um that i set up before the season um i walked by the turkeys to get to that blind i mean it literally did not stop where i would normally say okay i want to set up here um i just trusted my gut and said okay i'm going to make them come to that north field that's what i call the place where i had the blind set up is the north field and i said well if i can get them to come to the north field but i felt like we were pretty far away because we had that strong strong wind and that's this and i'll tell you what as you hunt more anyone out there listening and you have experience like i killed two of them in the rain this year and i'm not a big fan of the rain i don't like it but this makes two times in a row that the really really hard wins because joey's last year was just as windy as it was today or yesterday um we're still killing turkeys you just got to get close enough to hear them it's just hard to hear them i hard to make sure they hear you and and that was the issue that i had so that morning when we set out the decoys so this is my shooter i'm running the camera and i get in before i get in the blind though i made a few calls to try to make sure that that bird did hear me i wanted and it sounded like just one turkey i mean that's all we were hearing was one gobble and but i knew i got him to answer before i climbed in the blind once i got in the blind shut up for a while and then and then i kind of was doing what and you probably are mimicking me or we just have seen that in that i was limited on what i was calling i was like all right just don't overdo this well i was wrong it wasn't until she shot the bird at 7 45 in the morning or almost eight o'clock something like that yet we've been talking to him since 5 45 and it wasn't until number one this is something that people need to you need to listen don't go turkey hunting with just one call yeah i switched calls i might have multiple but man do i have all right i have one that i'm using but yeah boy am i's loaded up with a lot of other calls well i mean i have relied on my diaphragm call 100 percent this year pretty much but i switched to the slate call and when i switched to the slate call it was like i turned on a whole new system i don't know if it was because the wind was blowing and it's sharper it's i think they were hearing it more clearly where maybe they weren't picking up exactly where i was before but when i switched to that and then i also switched my cadence i went instead of yelping at those turkeys i started just cutting at them and man when i started cutting at them they were freaking out and to the point where you're like i should be able to see these turkeys i should be able to see these turkeys and but it still took them 20 minutes before they finally showed up but when they came in they came in just like they did on the first day they saw that decoy and here they came but i knew we had a piece of information from our night before is hunt because we hunted a piece of property that had not been hunted we got permission from someone and he was like yep you guys are welcome to hunt there and i was like oh boy because we i had been driving by this place and i knew no one had been hunting in there and i was like here we go well he's a farmer and he had to run the property he told us that he said i've got to go in and do some work in there but you're welcome to hunt and he we felt like he ran the turkeys out you know now not that they would have left we actually thought that it was going to help us to use it so we get set up yeah because i was because they were there so often in in this particular cornfield that we didn't think we could get in there yeah well turkeys don't seem near as tolerant as deer during season of any vehicles you know like deer you can get away with drive the truck biome don't stop and a lot of times unless they're somewhere where they're getting poached a bunch uh you know you're okay and the farmer can drive his tractor biome whenever turkeys it seems like it doesn't matter what rig it is they don't like it even yeah well that's that that gave you the information to knowing that evening that you had three new birds probably close to you yep on a different piece yep and that that's one of the reasons why we went where we went um the other one was getting out the evening before and alhooning them and got them to gobble and that helped no one calls it alhooning i really feel like it's just yelling yeah i just i just like to make sure it's loud enough that actually really good i don't know how you do it but my mouth yeah it's not quite or it's not loud enough though yeah mine's not very good but it's really loud i would say that's the one con of a of a diaphragm is that it when you know how to use them it becomes such a convenience that you get lazy and you know use anything else yeah i don't there's several times i didn't take my other calls with me and i wonder now if i was missing opportunities where i might have gotten a bird to respond because i wasn't even try on the others yeah see i i if anybody gets the opportunity to do it do it because i learned this from the up first morning that me and joey sat we had the two birds the two toms that flew down at 40-50 yards and goodness gracious was i more annoyed with those birds than any other birds because they just strutted right there and they would not come any closer but it was a great learning experience for me because i basically got to sit there one teaching joey i don't know how to this bow for turkeys and two i'm like okay i'm calling at this bird like this and he's not really like he'll strut right there but he doesn't do much but i can't get him to come in so then i would switch i'm like let's see if i can start swapping through some calls here and see what they like more or what they don't and you could literally see the different right there just the fact of switching a different call that okay now they may not that they still wouldn't come in but one of them would gobble or one of them would start strut the other one would start strutting with the first one things like that and so you can really start to learn that a difference in a call is huge sometimes because sometimes all you got to do is switch one little thing and they're like okay that's it because i've i didn't even heard you have like a really raspy mouth call versus just a little less raspy mouth call and they won't gobble at one then you throw the other one in and boom right there it's like they're just looking and it's day to day it's like what the next day they might be feeling something else and you got to figure it out but that if you ever get the chance to have birds close where you can kind of give them a couple different options then you can watch their body language see how they act with it and what they may maybe don't like very much and you just learn a lot and i had two hours of throwing every call i had in my pocket out to these birds to see what they liked and what they didn't and how they liked it well that and that's the the we i know we've talked about it in the other podcast patience patience patience the other morning like i said this started at 545 and we hit a spot about 6 30 i think it was for about 30 minutes where the birds shut up and i and i think a lot of people would have given up at that point would have been like oh they must have moved on because i mean we didn't hear them at all they weren't i was throwing calls they're not hearing me now again the one thing that i kept telling myself is the wind is blowing that hard they could be gobbling and i'm not hearing it's not hearing it and but at the same time i was like we're going to stick this out number one we're we're committed to the blind and the decoys that we have sitting there you know and i was like i don't want to try to move on them and but it was it was i'd say it was a good 35 40 minutes and so that's something that i would tell people is that's not uncommon it happens a lot where you hear the gobbling from the tree hit the ground they might gobble some still then somewhere in there they just quit don't leave hold on i mean give them 30 minutes 45 minutes see what it because all of a sudden they gobble again and maybe and in this particular case they didn't gobble again right where they were they had moved some into the field i was talking about that i didn't want to walk through and i was like heck yeah i think they're up closer so and but that was the first time that i had broke out the slate call yeah the moment that i used the slate call everything changed and and they came straight to the slate call matter of fact as soon as i saw them though um once i could see them i thought i'm pretty sure they could see the decoy i didn't have to hit another call they were coming they came on a run yeah i never understood like why you don't want to carry multiple calls like uh slate calls but like a genuine slate call versus a glass pot call sound gosh they i mean yeah they sound different but holy cow they react completely different too another pro tip for anybody out there that i went through this year of mouth calls i've never i've just never been good at them or taking the time to genuinely try to learn them so i'm like okay i've got to get to the point where i can use these proficiently or that's right right here we freaking go with words again anyways i wanted to get to the point where i was comfortable enough to like i could use my mouth call without anything if you're questioning yourself what i did if i had birds answering and stuff i need to practice i need to be like i practice outside of the blind and stuff when i'm at home and things like that but you got to practice in the woods and so what i would do is i would call them and i'm like as long as it sounds all right keep calling and stuff and just see if you can get some answers and things like that but at the same time sometimes i would just use my slate call and then call with my mouth call because i know it doesn't even if it sounds terrible they're going to hear a good hand call in there so you can kind of cover yourself up so you can learn your mouth call and everybody can do it one of the best things though that someone can do if you want to learn how to blow any call or use any call and that's listen when those hens are and and just listen to those hens and it's almost like it etches into your brain and you can hear that because there are hens that sound like a slate call there's hens that sound like a box call there's hens that sound like a diaphragm call then there's hens that don't that are horrible they sound just terrible yeah they sound like a smoker so you're the question for you okay in a certain situation like we'll go over decoys and stuff you go to a certain place like there's tons and tons of jakes here so maybe i'm going to throw a tom decoy out so that i don't put another jake into the mix and there's all sorts of different things you can do but as far as calls if you're in a certain area you hear you're listening to hens and you hear just a really clean hen yelp or something are you trying to match that are you trying to give him a completely different type of hen um there's two ways i'll go about it one i i like the mimic hens i mean i i'll copy what they do but i mean as far as trying to copy like exactly how they sound would you like if it's a really clean hen versus raspy would you do a clean yeah i mean that's what i'm saying i'll try to mimic them as closely as i can that that whether i got to pull out a different call to do that yeah um but then the other one is i find that a lot of times when i'm hearing a hen cutting is something that really agitates them yeah you know it's almost like i don't know whether you're saying that you're just much louder but it definitely has an effect on them now i've seen when i've seen most of the cutting from turkeys it's been when they come in and then they're trying to find you they're like okay i came all the way over here and now where are you and then they'll start cutting real loud and so anyhow i don't know if that's what they're they're assuming that someone has showed up there that wasn't there before and so they're trying to figure out what's going on but the other one that i employed the other day on elissa's and like i said this is late in the season is i that might be the latest that i've ever used the freak out session where i got two three calls going at once and you know just to sound like it's a flock of turkeys over here messing around so if you guys are over there gobbling maybe you'll because i do think once we got out of the blind after she shot we jumped two or three hens i think they left those three hens to come over to us um you know so i don't i can't swear to that but the three hens that we jumped were right where the toms had come from so um so i think what is so for late season give people three tangible tips that they can go out and apply right now one is later in the day that would be the number one that i would tell them that be be ready to not kill turkeys till late in the morning meaning two three hours after daylight um and and um don't expect them to just freak out but if you find that freaking out turkey do whatever you can to get close to that turkey he's killable okay so one be more patient as far as staying the woods longer or go later don't even be afraid to like if you got something that you got to go do but you got you know if you can go get your stuff done first thing in the morning yes you give up the knowing where they're at off the roost but how much later though in hour eight three hours eight nine o'clock i mean that not you don't think that's going to be tough to find them though at that point i if you know your birds well enough you probably have a good idea where they're at i've really especially this time of year i like that nine nine thirty ten o'clock to one o'clock okay so that's one is staying the woods later yep eight thirty to ten thirty okay number two two is i would scout as much as you possibly can and see if you can pattern a bird because it seems like now they'll get into a situation where they're just doing like this bird at east and talking about it was i didn't go by there today typically i drive by that place to look and see if they're out there and i didn't go by there today but it was probably six or seven days in a row that that bird he was in that field every single day yep you know so that would be number two i would say is look for that pattern scout them in pattern scout them in pattern if you can and then number three i would say don't be afraid to switch calls you're gonna have to be you're gonna have to be a little more finesse because some of these birds are going to have been messed with you're going to have to be able to work you're going to have to don't be afraid to change your decoys setups don't be afraid to sit with no decoys you get birds that are starting to scout that i mean starting to skirt around you and it's time to pull decoys so three is get creative get creative do you think that when bird has it figured out you know he does the deal where he we've all had it he steps out in the field and he sees the decoy and stuff and he's coming to the calls and then he's gone do you think he's associating the blind with danger the decoys with danger or both like i see a box and i see turkey decoys and i've seen this before and i'm out like you think if you just had the decoys that he may still come or if you had no decoys and just a blind then he may be like oh okay do you think there's a specific one he's I think the the blind and decoys is number one it looks just like what he's expecting to see and then decoys the only thing that might get him on the decoys is now that we're able to employ some movement with some of the techniques that we have where we have remote control they look alive um be i just i go back to the three birds when you killed the one where you ran across the field and that they wouldn't come anywhere near our setup and we had a blind and we had three decoys out and then the moment that you started crawling out there with that reaper you didn't get out of our decoy setup we had a moving decoys though i can remember whether we did there or not yeah i don't think we did no we did i'm telling you right now the movement is it was enough right the movement is great but sometimes you're either moving them too much or they don't i don't know what the deal is because those same two birds two hours literally stood there and strutted at 40 yards and my tom decoys spinning and not like crazy spinning but like spinning actually don't it's doing well like yeah i'm like man this looks really good i don't have anything on it it's turning when i want it to and stuff just because of the wind and they did not come in until i gave them a different type of movement and and that really was what you did i mean you just crawled out there but once soon as warren crawled out there they just like right at you oh here i'm going over there yeah so but i mean if if you take that that might have been a nap i think that might have been like a cordial agreement of hey you're over there and you got your one hand or whatever so we're we're cool but then when we start when i started coming at them they're like uh no you're not gonna enter our zone you know i'm saying that's what i felt like better be careful son yeah you better know where you're stepping so i think it's our territory i definitely think that that's where moving decoy we're reaping if you're it's legal and it's safe where you're doing it can be lethal that second half of the season um it can be lethal at the beginning half but you don't necessarily need to employ it yeah so no i think that those are some good things to like um watch and see we've had uh we've honestly had a better late season than what we've had in the past i feel like our i know people listening you're probably like gosh you guys have killed nine or ten turkeys or whatever um there's several of us hunting we're putting a lot of hours in we've had opening weeks that were better last year for instance was a better opening week um i haven't had as many call-in cycles you know where i've had i i i haven't we just haven't been on as many turkeys we've been like where i shot my bird but that was a one watt of them and they still were not going anywhere but they're just we haven't had as many turkeys as last year period i don't think no and the other one and i don't know about you i think you might have but i've not seen a single strutting jake i've i've seen jakes but not one strutting i've seen a couple this year have you actually i've seen a couple that are strutting it not strutting though was he? you say a pack you just say a pack our cameraman just said pack when he was describing turkeys that's like you don't say that that's flock of turkeys anyways you have seen but i've also seen multiple jakes with hens when there's plenty of toms in the area and there's three four jakes with heads strutting around i've also seen a lot of jakes hanging out with toms i see that periodically i don't i've seen it every once in a while but not as like this this year it's like they're always together you see that in a brassco bunch i've seen more bearded hens this year than i've ever seen still here always a lot of bearded hens yeah but i don't ever see them then i still ain't got to shoot one in the mom passed one i think you're wrong there's some bearded hens there's not a lot dude i've got video at one of our places of eight together with beards when it was in the fall a few years ago we were deer hunting so they're like look at this yeah it was a freaking it was a little gag all the way they were taking some kind of i think i wonder if they missed their ass from the same hatch i don't know i'll try and find the video maybe they're all friends with each other or sisters you know that's what it was yep yeah their mom has bad jeans all right well is there anything else we want to add i think that's what we wanted to just kind of give some people a last little bits of tips and techniques man because and then make sure you're spraying yourself for ticks because the ticks and the and the jiggers have been atrocious lately but other than that um it's fun to hear them i mean they're still gobbling on in the mornings and gobbling in the evenings and and we'll hear them all the way up into camp you know like the second third week of june we'll still hear birds gobbling yeah so yeah well cool anything else before i wrap this up that's it all right fellas guys and gals make sure appreciate you guys we want to ask you again make sure that you guys are filling out the reviews for us we sure appreciate it it's worked phenomenally so send us topics yeah and if you got something that you want to hear us talk about even if it's turkeys we might save it till next year but uh we will talk about we still have some time we can discuss if we want to do it this year we can all right so this is the raised honey crew signing off thank you guys very much