Want More Spring Turkey Hunting Success? Think Like a Turkey.

Understanding what goes on in a turkey's mind is part of being a great turkey hunter.

With an understanding of turkey behavior, hunters can maneuver into position effectively.

Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90-percent mental, the other half is physical.” Much the same holds true for turkey hunting. No matter what your level of education or degree of turkey knowledge, a turkey hunter’s success or failure will ultimately depend on the conscious decisions he or she will make during the course of a hunt. And while we might not know how turkeys think, we have a pretty good idea what they think about. Arm yourself with a little logic, and the HuntStand app, to make the right moves this spring.

Smart turkey hunters glean an edge by learning all they can about the bird. There is an amazing amount of detailed research available for those who wish to study the regal birds in-depth. And then, for hunters in the know, there is also state-of-the-art equipment that delivers instant, practical, in-the-field hunting advantages.

The HuntStand app, for example, lets you log every roost, strut, or feed location on your chosen hunting tract. It also offers detailed satellite views of the terrain, allowing you to connect dots and find preferred travel routes. The app can also pinpoint your best bets for easy land access to help you avoid spooking resident birds.

In addition, the HuntStand app delivers current and forecasted weather conditions, the current moon phase, and projected feeding times. This helps plan a smart and productive hunt. With this helpful info, and much more, turkey hunting has indeed entered a new era of efficiency.

With all of this science and gear available, turkey gobblers should be extinct or severely endangered. That is, except for one small detail: turkeys are survivors! Their skills and instincts have been polished to perfection over hundreds of thousands of years of selective evolution, and they are totally focused on their continued survival. And while it’s true we humans who chase turkeys are vastly superior in intellect, information and equipment, we also are handicapped by one glaring weakness. We are humans and we think like humans! We have choices, options, and opinions that are often distorted and/or otherwise colored by human perceptions and emotions. This is why a consistently successful turkey hunter will try to get inside a turkey’s head. The difference is huge.

Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90-percent mental, the other half is physical.” Much the same holds true for turkey hunting.

Thinking like a turkey means you can’t consider turkeys on an “adversarial” level. Turkeys don’t consider you at all—until they see you. Your hunt is not “you against them;” you are simply hunting them. Turkeys are not matching wits with you or trying to “trick” you. Turkeys have no way of knowing you are imitating their calling. They have no idea that you even exist as anything more than a tall, ugly, two-legged predator. When they avoid you turkeys are merely being turkeys and thinking like turkeys—and you must keep reminding yourself of these facts. After you use your HuntStand App to assemble your scouting info, logical ambush locations, and weather conditions, take what you already know about turkeys, and use your head!

If you are thinking like a turkey, consider what you believe a turkey is thinking about at a given time and try to use that knowledge to your advantage. Sure, a gobbler might let down his guard a little when he is up to his eyeballs in testosterone, and a hen might put herself in harm’s way to protect her poults. But day-in and day-out, a turkey’s main agenda is survival. The late Lovett Williams had the best two-word description of wild turkey behavior I’ve heard. He said wild turkeys are “uncompromisingly cautious.” They are the square-root of paranoia.

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Turkey Hunting Scenarios to Know

With the above in mind, ask yourself what you would do in these typical situations if you were a turkey:

• If you were a turkey would you studiously avoid thick brushy places where visibility is low and danger might lie in wait?  I think you would. If you’re thinking like a gobbler, you know where he won’t go, so you won’t look for him there, or try to call him through such a place.
• If you were a turkey and could hear a hen yelping—and you could pin-point the exact spot where the yelps were coming from but couldn’t see a hen—what would you do? Would you think that was a man calling and run away? I don’t think so. If you were a turkey you would be confused. You would hold your ground and wait for more information; that is, wait for the hen to show. You would then be a “hung-up” turkey. If you’re thinking like a turkey you’ll set up so the gobbler can’t see where the calling is coming from until he comes over a hill or around a curve to find you.
• If you were a turkey and a bobcat jumped out of the shadows and nearly made a meal out of you, your initial reaction would be to fly up in a tree. Then what? Would you stay in the tree all day quaking in fear after such a close call? I don’t think so. If you scare a turkey he is going to get in a place where he feels safe, usually high up a tree, and stay there until he forgets why he flew up there. If you’re thinking like a turkey, give him at least an hour. Turkeys scare easily but they get over it quickly. They are too busy being turkeys to sit in a tree and shake all day just because of a close call.
• If you were a turkey gobbler in the spring and you heard a hen yelping 400 yards away, would you run right to the spot to investigate?  I don’t think so. You would gobble in response to the yelping and try to call the hen to you. She is supposed to come to you. When she doesn’t show up you would probably gobble again and wait. Maybe she didn’t hear the gobble. You might decide to get a little closer and gobble again, which usually means you are committed to investigating the yelping.
• If you were a turkey would you gobble at hen yelps but not investigate them because you knew they were artificial? I don’t think so. If you gobble at a call, it is because you believe a real hen is doing the talking. You have your turkey reasons for not coming to the call, which could include you being a subdominant gobbler trying to call the hen out of another gobbler’s territory, or some physical barrier that is keeping you from coming in. Whatever the reason you wouldn’t gobble at all if you didn’t think the hen talk was legit.
• If you were a big tom, gobbling and moving steadily toward the sound of hen yelps, is the reason you suddenly quit gobbling due to the fact that you don’t like the sound of the call, or because the caller made a mistake? I don’t think so. You have your turkey reasons for shutting up. It could be that you saw another hunter, a coyote or some kind of predator. Or, you saw a real hen that came to the gobbling.

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These problems and many more like them call for “command decisions” that you must make on any given hunt. How you make them will likely determine the outcome of your adventure. No one knows for sure what or how a turkey thinks, but we have a pretty good idea what they are thinking about. You can use what you know to anticipate their reactions and responses in specific situations. You won’t always win this game but if you’re smart you will be glad you got a chance to play. And you will definitely become a better player if you can think like a turkey.

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What do turkeys eat in the fall? That’s a great question, and one that needs answering. Now is the time to find the preferred local food sources and log them (and their best approach angles) in your HuntStand app. Your next task? Prepare a wild-turkey dinner.

Opening day of fall turkey season blew in cloudy and cold. When I checked the radar on my HuntStand app to make sure the front that had dumped an inch of rain across my home Tennessee county had pushed on to the south, I saw that, indeed, the rain clouds had stalled out over Birmingham. Perfect! I would have been out there with the big birds in any kind of weather, but was glad the storm had passed.

Of course, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear any turkeys scratching in the wet leaves that morning, but the soggy ground cover let me slip in close to a stand of beech trees I had marked in the HuntStand app on my smartphone. I didn’t hear any turkey sounds when I got there so I called to see if anyone was home. My pleading “lost” yelps were answered immediately — by a bossy old hen telling me to get my stuff together and get myself back with the flock. The quick response made me grin into my face mask; thank you HuntStand! I love it when one of my best-laid plans actually works.

Beech Trees

Beech trees, found mostly in the south-central and eastern U.S., produce triangle-shaped nuts that are turkey magnets in the fall. They are nearly absent in the crop photos (one clear shot and a couple of partly obscured images) due to drought conditions that resulted in below-average mast production. Beech trees, with their smooth silver-gray bark and leaves that turn golden-bronze in the fall, are erratic mast producers, but you should check them every year for the burred nut cases. If you can find mast-laden beech trees as referred to in the beginning of this article, you will have an excellent starting place for your fall hunt.

I checked the beech trees in late August. Then, I made notes on my  HuntStand map showing the location of the trees, and also noted the fact that they were loaded with a bumper crop of triangle-shaped beech nuts, in my HuntStand log. I was able to meet the turkeys at my HuntStand location on a damp November morning because I knew the turkeys were likely to show up in the area as soon as the nuts started falling.

In the fall and winter months, preferred food sources make turkeys as predictable as they will ever be. If they are undisturbed, they will continue to frequent an area that provides reliable forage until the food sources dry up.  Once I realized I could pattern turkeys on food sources and mark their locations on my smartphone using the HuntStand app, their “need to feed” became the basis for my favorite fall turkey hunting strategy: Find the food, find the turkeys — and I could keep all the information in my smartphone!

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Oak Trees

White oak acorns are the next-most-abundant food in the crop photos. The white oak acorns were scattered on the tree I photographed — so the picture shows only a few nuts — but the rounded lobes on the leaves and the white-barked trees are what to look for when you are scouting.

Red Oak acorns are also high on the turkey’s preference list when they are available. They mature later in the fall and are usually more plentiful than white oaks, but turkeys will be there when the nuts start falling. Oak trees, both red and white, are the most-consistent mast producers and the most-reliable “turkey magnets” in my part of the country.

Other Trees

Ash seeds were also on the turkeys’ menu that fateful afternoon, since there were 10 or more of these single-bladed seeds in the crop. I wouldn’t call ash a “super attractant” because they are inconsistent mast producers (and they fall to the ground sporadically throughout the winter), but turkeys will feed on the seeds when they find them. To locate ash tree mast look for the light green seeds hanging blade down, side by side, on the outer limbs of ash trees in mid-summer. The mature tan-colored single-blade seed pods usually start dropping in September, but they can stay on the tree throughout the winter, so there is no concentrated mast drop.

Another preferred food that is nearly absent in the first crop photo (one berry shown) is the fruit of the dogwood tree. We have two different varieties in my area, the standard bright-red berry and one with a berry that turns black when ripe. Turkeys relish dogwood berries but the crop photo shows only one berry, since the drought affected fruit production that year.

Dogwood should be high on your list of food trees to find. The trees are easy to find during the spring when the bright white flowers tell us the turkeys should be gobbling, and in the fall, during a normal year, their limbs will be alive with bright crimson or shiny-black berries. Keep an eye on the dogwood trees in your area; when the berries fall the turkeys will be there to pick them up.

The green leaves and stems in both crop photos are mostly clovers. The small seeds are grass and weed seeds that are more prominent in the October crop photo. Clover leaves, grass and weed seeds along with buds and shoots are consumed in the fall randomly and don’t warrant any special attention beyond recognizing them as a part of the diet.

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Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds

The fruit and nuts and seeds that attract turkeys are clearly visible in their immature state on the trees and vines in late summer, so when I scout treestand locations for the upcoming archery deer season, I am also scouting locations for fall turkey food. I use my binoculars regularly to check the local trees and mark the “high food production areas” on my HuntStand maps — along with any other pertinent information, in my HuntStand log book.

Hard mast (nuts) and soft mast (fruit) producing trees and vines are very erratic and capricious in their production. A tree that was overburdened with acorns this year may not bear again for two or three years, and it’s much the same with wild grapes, beech nuts, and other hard and soft mast sources.

Once I find the food-bearing trees and vines, I check on them in late summer for production and mark the mast- and fruit-laden areas on my detailed HuntStand map. I make it a point to revisit each area as the season gets close, to see how much use these sources are seeing, and to determine the best way to approach them unnoticed by sharp turkey eyes. If turkeys are feeding in the area I want to be able to get as close to them as possible — undetected — so I can use the element of surprise to get the flock well scattered, or to find the right blind location if I am hunting smaller “boundary-restricted” tracts.

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Ag Crops

Don’t rule out row crops when you are scouting areas where they exist.  Depending on the condition of the grains and their availability, corn, soybeans, wheat, oats and milo are attractive food sources as primary forage, or as supplements to the forest foods. If turkeys are using the cutover grain fields, a blind and a couple hen decoys can be your best bet for a successful fall hunt. Even if the waste grains are plentiful, you will still want to scout the woods. The acorns, beech nuts, wild grapes and dogwood will still be visited on a regular basis, since they contain nutrients that are an integral part of the turkey’s diet.

Insects and Other Bugs

Surprising entrées in the smorgasbord of preferred foods according to the crop photos are “stink bugs.”There are six green and four or five brown stink bugs in the first crop photo above. I wasn’t expecting them to be on the menu because of the several, way-below-freezing nights we had before the turkey season opened. I thought the sub-freezing temps would delete insects from the bill of fare until I did some research. The stink bugs apparently “over-winter as adults under the cover of leaf litter on the forest floor.” It would be impossible to anticipate likely spots for turkeys to find bugs, but I thought you’d like to know what they are looking for when they scratch in the leaves.

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Studying the Crop

An example of what turkeys like to eat in the fall is illustrated in the photo above, of the contents of a rather typical turkey crop. The crop you see here came from a turkey hen taken on a late-afternoon hunt in south-central Tennessee on the 16^th of November.

The crop above was obtained in mid-October. The wide variety of foods and the amount (a full crop is about the size of a tennis ball) illustrates the appetite and the diversity of the wild turkey’s diet. Some preferred foods are not in the two pictures above, since the choices vary according to regional availability and time of year, but most of the items are widespread in their occurrence so I will identify and discuss each item pictured.

Wild grapes and grape seeds are the most-abundant items in the crop photos.  They are a preferred food when and if the turkeys can find them. The small, dark purple grapes are mostly seed and skin with just a thin layer of fruit covering, but turkeys seem to like the seed as well as the fruit. Wild grapes like these seem to produce best high up in the tree tops, so they are most-readily available to turkeys in cutover hardwoods and areas with recent blowdowns. The grapes will also be utilized later in the winter when the clusters dry and fall off the vine, so be sure to mark fruit-laden grape vines on your preferred food log.

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Find the Food

Turkeys are “buffet” diners. They are going to feed on something, somewhere, every day. Your job is to locate the buffet line. You can set up a blind on the food and wait for the turkeys to get there; or scatter them and call them back.

Another good tactic is to carefully approach a known food source and locate the flock with “lost” calls, as discussed at the top of this article. If you are wondering how that hunt turned out, the turkey that answered my call was close.

The next move was mine. I eased carefully out of the draw I’d used for cover, and answered the first alarm putt by sending a load of low-velocity No. 8’s into the sky (I use dove loads to scatter the flock because they are cheaper and don’t kick as much as turkey loads). Then came a quick follow-up shot in the direction the flock flew, followed by two more shots in the air when a few turkeys flushed out of nearby trees, and I had the flock scattered to my satisfaction. Then I simply eased up to the flush site, stuffed some turkey loads into my shotgun, and waited for the turkeys to start calling.

Twenty minutes later I struck up a conversation with a young hen. I echoed the “kee-kees” and yelps she made right back at her until she walked into shotgun range. How sweet it was.

Locating a flock is more than half the battle in fall turkey hunting. Knowing where their tables are set, marking the locations and logging food and use frequency, will make that job a lot easier and save you a lot of “turkey searching” time. Then, when the season opens, all you have to do is fire up your smartphone; HuntStand will have you “dialed-in” to the best place to start your hunt on opening day. As the old saying goes, life, and turkey hunting, is so much better when you have a plan.

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Among the current wave of cutting-edge turkey hunting tactics is fanning and its many variations: reaping, creeping, and crawling. In gaining a deadly tactic are we eroding turkey hunting traditions?

I killed my first turkey gobbler in 1961 so I guess you could call me old school and old-fashioned, even though I have tried to stay on top of new developments and trends in the world of turkey hunting. My respect for and admiration of the magnificent bird has only increased through my many years of intense scrutiny and avid pursuit, and everyone who knows me knows I hold wild turkeys in the highest esteem. Yet I am a little embarrassed—even disappointed—when these regal birds display a behavioral flaw that makes them appear, from all perspectives, to be downright stupid.

The wild turkey’s nearly flawless survival instincts have served them quite well for hundreds of thousands of years; they haven’t had to change much about their behavior to continue thriving, but there’s a fairly large caveat to this statement. Gobblers in the spring have an exploitable chink in their armor. A glitch in their git-along, if you will. A kind of selective blindness that allows a full-grown human, in wide-open plain sight, to crawl into effective shotgun range by simply holding a turkey tail fan in front of his face. This behavior is such an uncharacteristic anomaly in a creature so highly programmed and aware of its surroundings that I still find it hard to believe a gobbler can be so easily duped. And yet, sad to say, he can.

And leave it to humans to find an exploitable weakness. I first heard about the “tail fan” tactic back in the ’80s from friends who hunted in New Zealand, and even saw it work first-hand, but when considering New Zealand we’re talking about a country so overpopulated with feral turkeys they are an annoying nuisance. Knowing all New Zealand turkeys had come from domestic stock, and had no natural predators, I didn’t give such “tame turkey” tactics much consideration, other than thinking it would never work locally, stateside, with truly wild turkeys. I was, of course, quite wrong.

I do know the sight of a tail fan has a mesmerizing effect on turkeys. If it didn’t, a 12-pound turkey hen would never allow a strutting 20-some-pound gobbler in bad need of a manicure to walk on her back until her internal organs were nearly mashed out of her body—but I never in my wildest dreams imagined a tail fan would turn into a popular hunting device. Wrong again!

Using tail feathers to approach a turkey is developing a growing number of advocates, especially among a younger generation of neophyte turkey hunters. This growing popularity, I believe, is due in large part to TV shows and feature articles touting the tactic. It seems traditional turkey hunting strategies have become tired and redundant after so many episodes of, “strut, gobble and boom” scenarios (and realistically, how many different ways can you shoot a turkey?). So when something new comes along the media is quick to jump on it. The personalities and pundits describe this “exciting new tactic” in glowing terms by giving it catchy names: “creeping,” “fanning,” or even the most-demeaning of names: “reaping” (Let’s go reap some turkeys!). The term even seems to hold some real appeal for the younger generation.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no personal problem with how anyone chooses to hunt turkeys, as long as their methods are legal and not detrimental to the turkey population. What I am concerned about is losing sight of, and growing away from, the portrayal of turkey hunting as a calling and a craft. The thought that this noble pursuit is a singularly unique and demanding activity that requires skill, intellect, patience and deliberation—as opposed to something as simple as crawling across a field with a handful of feathers.

The true essence of turkey hunting, as I see it, is communicating with another species using its own language and on its own turf—and carefully manipulating individual birds to the hunter’s advantage. But what about the creepers? Do we put these individuals in another category? Do we label them turkey hunters or turkey creepers?

There are more, deeper questions as well. Will the allure of the active pursuit and instant gratification of creeping up on a turkey eclipse the desire to learn and appreciate the time-honored turkey hunting traditions? Are the “creepers” missing out on the thrill of intimate conversation with another species? On the satisfaction of planning a successful hunt strategy? Are they missing out on the feeling of accomplishment at the culmination of a successful, hard-won encounter? These are questions I ask myself when I am contemplating what the future holds for the sport of turkey hunting.

There are many more turkeys now than when I started turkey hunting, so I think my generation is leaving the resource in pretty good shape. But my generation is also on the way out, and a whole new group of potential turkey hunters will soon be taking our place. Will those new hunters take the time to learn the basics of turkey hunting, those time-honored traditions, or will they shoot for the soft spot?

I hate to even admit that turkeys have such a gaping hole in their biological armor, but the weakness is most certainly there, should anyone choose to exploit it. You might have guessed my own personal choice by now. I have avoided exploiting this turkey weakness. In my mind my choice to avoid fanning is every bit as clear-cut and definitive as my choice to avoid exploiting how a deer behaves in a spotlight—but that’s just me. I’ll say again: I have no problem with how anyone chooses to hunt turkeys as long as it is legal and doesn’t do harm to the population. And I’ll admit there is a certain amount of strength and stamina involved in crawling across an open field—something I don’t think I could handle these days, even if I had the desire.

In the end my message is fairly simple. As turkey hunting evolves, I just don’t want us to get too far from what I love and respect about turkey hunting, too far removed from the pursuit that reached out and grabbed me by the throat and so enthralled me as a young outdoorsman and has continued to deliver—over so many decades—many untold hours, days and months of pure enjoyment, adventure, and yes, even hard-won lessons. I am a better outdoorsman, and man, for all of it. I can only hope that with solid parental instruction, and the deft teachings of conservation organizations like the National Wild Turkey Federation, the grand tradition of turkey hunting will continue for generations to come. It’s been said that when it comes to opinions, everybody has one. What you’ve just read are mine; it’s my hope that they’ve struck a chord among my turkey hunting brethren.

Warm-season song dogs require a different game plan than fall and winter coyotes.

Summertime coyotes bridge the gap between spring and fall.

If you are into using calls to attract and manipulate wildlife, you are most likely a spring turkey hunter. And you will probably soon be suffering from a case of post-hunting-season depression that starts kicking in about the end of May, or the first week in June. Those mean and ornery blues like to strike a week or two after the local turkey season closes, and this nasty case of depression can last until sometime in late August or early September—when the first bow seasons begin. But the blues can be avoided if you know how to hunt summertime coyotes.

My advice? Do not despair. We are talking about coyote hunting … in summertime. And what’s not to like? You get to camo up, sneak into the woods in the early a.m., pick a spot with favorable wind conditions checked on HuntStand, then set up and call. Sound familiar? It should. My favorite strategy for summer predator control is as close to turkey hunting as you can get without a gobble. The only real exception being you’re dealing with some highly advanced noses. But once you see a big song dog bounding across a field, making a beeline for your calling stand, I’m betting you will be cutting back on your time at the beach this summer.

Coyote Setup Science

It just so happens that a coyote’s nutritional demands are greatest from April through September, due to the extra burden of bearing and raising pups. Prey species like deer and turkeys are more vulnerable in the summer months, especially during nesting and fawning time, and you can be sure your local coyotes are taking advantage of this situation.

You might get some verbal grief from fur hunters and trappers who might want you to wait until winter to call your local dogs, but waiting until the pelts are prime will most certainly increase the mortality rate of the prey species you want to tie your tags on this fall.

In spite of increased hunting pressure and loss of habitat, coyotes are robust survivors. They are extremely over-populated in many areas, so most states hunt them year-round and impose no limits. But there can be restrictions so be sure to check your local regs before making a plan.

Coyotes are extremely territorial during the summer months when they are feeding and raising their pups. Their quick, hostile response to interlopers and their increased nutritional demands make them as responsive to calling as they will be all year. And if you like calling game animals as much as I do, it’s a match made in game-calling heaven.

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In May and June female coyotes are giving birth. I start calling sequences with distressed coyote vocalizations (yips, short howls, and coyote pup and canine pup distress squeals) to stir up parental instincts. I like to make regular use of an open-reed predator call, but the coyote pup distress calls on my Johnny Stewart digital call are more consistent and much easier to make. If I get no response to my “pups in pain” calls, I’ll lay on some rabbit or rodent distress cries.

In late July and August, pups are more mature and their appetite rules behavior. I might start my calling sequences with a short howl or two to grab attention, but my real emphasis is on prey-in-distress calls. If I could use only one call during this period, it would be a cottontail distress call. I like to travel with a whole pocketful of squealers and squeakers, plus my digital call.

If the wind is blowing, coyotes tend to circle downwind to scent-check the caller. However, In the early morning calm, they usually come straight to the call so that is when I do most of my hunting. I typically start calling 30 minutes after first light and continue until it gets too hot for me and/or the coyotes. Typically, I call for 45 seconds to a minute and a half non-stop with a remote caller, with shorter sequences when using manual calls. Then, wait and watch for two or three minutes.

If I am in an open place that looks good and I am comfortable, I’ll continue to call at those intervals and stay put for 30 minutes or more.  If I am in the woods where the leaves keep the sound from carrying well, I’ll move every 10 or 15 minutes to cover more ground.

Finding a Summertime Hotspot

Finding productive coyote hunting locations shouldn’t be a problem for you in the spring and summer months. I like to hit the local roads and look for fresh-cut hay fields. (The fresher the better.) The hay-cutting and gathering equipment turns those hay fields into smorgasbords full of easy meals for hungry coyotes, by stirring up (and often skinning up) the rabbits and mice and birds that live and nest in the tall grass. The fields in my area are usually cut and baled twice a year; in late spring and early fall, so you should have numerous opportunities to exploit these coyote magnets.

Even better, you shouldn’t have any problem obtaining hunting permission. It would be most unusual for a farmer to ask you not to hunt coyotes on his place, and as a bonus, you just might develop a relationship that allows you to also help him control his deer and turkey populations. Simply put, effective predator control opens doors and opportunities.

Gearing Up for Battle

Again, my gear is reminiscent of turkey season. I camo up from head to toe complete with gloves and face mask, the same outfit I would wear chasing the wariest of toms. I prefer to check HuntStand and choose days when slight or no wind is forecasted, but if conditions are breezy and my chosen ambush spot offers 360 degrees of visibility, I will set up with a cross wind, double-checking my precise setup with the HuntStand HuntZone. When I am hunting around hay fields in the daylight, I like to set up in the woods, 10 to 20 yards from the edge. I know the coyotes don’t mind hitting the open fields to look for mouse and rabbit nests, but they seem to be more relaxed and respond to calling better in cover where they are less exposed.

Wherever you set up, be sure you have adequate concealment with maximum visibility, preferably with some type of obstruction to cover your back. I do most all of my predator hunting in the Southeast, so I don’t have the advantage of the wide-open spaces found out West. To compensate I try to get as concealed as possible in my setups, and try to stay alert as possible. I know from experience that things can happen very quickly in such close quarters.

3 Great Coyote Hunting Guns: The Triple Threat

Setting up in the woods also favors my choice of weapons. Most mornings I’ll be carrying my trusty 870 Remington (3½-inch 12-gauge magnum) stuffed full of No. 4 or 5 shot. Rifles seem to have more appeal with today’s predator hunting crowd, but in the field and forest country where I hunt, things can happen fast and I want to be ready. The shotgun is fast and final. If I set up right, most of my shots will be inside of 40 yards and the 3½-inch loads pushed through an extra-full turkey choke are lethal at such ranges.

When I am working on predator control, I’m not taking any prisoners. I know coyotes have to make a living, but they are prolific breeders with few natural enemies, and their numbers must be controlled to maintain a healthy balance. Your local hunting efforts won’t place coyotes on the endangered species list but every one you take out of circulation means one less consumer of huntable wildlife roaming the woods. And of course, in the process you’re out there hunting and having a ball.

Bored? Downtrodden? Take this feature as a wake-up call to get over feeling sorry for yourself just because spring turkey hunting seasons are winding down or over. It’s time to get out there with them.

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