Fall – The Original Turkey Season

Photo Credit: Field Staffer Heather Sellon

When someone starts talking about turkey hunting, the first thing that most of us think about is a cool spring morning standing on a hardwood ridge or on a field edge, sending a barred owl hoot out into the burgeoning daybreak and waiting to hear that lusty, rattling gobble roar back from a longbeard’s roost. We think about sitting up on a wide spot on a logging road where gobblers like to strut to attract hens and watching them as they strut down that road toward us with their breast feathers gleaming with an emerald-like sheen in the spring sunlight as the low rumble of their drumming sends chills up our arms. We think about picking some morel mushrooms to have with our fried turkey breast the next day. These are all classic turkey hunting scenarios, but they miss the most classic and original turkey hunting style of all: the fall turkey hunt.

Turkey hunting became an American pastime back before there was an America. Native Americans hunted turkeys across this land before the European settlers came and founded the nation. They did so by camouflaging themselves with mud and paint and calling to the turkeys with calls fashioned out of wing bones of turkeys, reeds, or slate rocks. When the European settlers arrived, the prime time for hunting most species was in the fall because spring and summer were spent planting and farming. They would kill the animals they needed for sustenance whenever the need arose, but in the fall, they would focus more on this pursuit and smoke and preserve whatever meat they could. As you’ve no doubt heard since your youth, the Native Americans and the Settlers shared a bountiful Thanksgiving meal of turkey, fish, and fall crops. This is where the fall turkey hunt became an American tradition.

I’ve heard from many people over the years that fall turkey hunting is boring. They say that there are relatively few gobbles heard, and those that are heard are largely shock gobbles. You don’t set up on them and lure them away from hens like you do in the spring and there isn’t that intense battle of the wills between you and the birds. Some people don’t like fall hunting because they have a moral objection to shooting hens which is legal in most states in the fall, and if you don’t know what you are looking for, a bearded hen and a smallish tom can look similar in the fall with their muted colored heads. My response to these objections and statements is that someone who feels fall turkey hunting is boring has never truly been fall turkey hunting. Are the methods different? Yes! Are the conditions different? Yes! Do the birds behave differently? Yes! Is fall hunting boring? A thousand times no!

There are multiple tactics you can use when fall turkey hunting and I don’t intend to cover them all in this short article, but I will go over a few with you to get you started. First of all, to have any sort of success in the autumn turkey woods, you have to realize the current mood and behavior of the turkeys. Long gone are their amorous pursuits of April and May. They have found love for the year and are now just gearing up to get some meat on their bones for the long winter ahead. Poults are on the cusp of adulthood and large flocks are running together in community. Their singular focus is to eat and live. So, if they are not looking for love how can you call a fall turkey? I’m glad you asked.

The Scatter

One of the most popular methods of fall turkey hunting is to find a large flock and scatter them. The best way to scatter a flock is with a dog, but the legality of that varies from state to state so please check your local regulations. Another fun way is to sneak pretty close to the flock and then run in among them waving your arms and hollering like you just seen a grizzly bear while wearing a suit made of meat. The turkeys, if scared properly, will scatter to all points of the compass. If you try to bust them and they all fly off the same way, all you’ve done is scare them and made them relocate. If you scattered them properly though, they will go every which way. The hunter then waits for a while (some old timers used to say to wait 30 minutes to an hour, while some say to give it 15 minutes). What I do is get set up and then wait until the woods settle down and I start to hear the faint yelps and clucks of the scattered birds. Once I hear that or have waited 15 minutes or so (I’m a bit impatient and 30 minutes to an hour is an eternity to me) I start out by slowly clucking and softly yelping, like a turkey that was spooked but is trying to find their flock. I ramp that up slowly to some lost calls with several desperate yelps in a row after a few minutes with some kee kee runs mixed in. Since this is fall, there are many of this year’s poults that are running with the flocks and a good kee kee run or kee kee yelp can really bring the birds in.

The Flock Challenge

This is one of my favorite fall hunting methods because it fits who I am as a turkey hunter. In the spring, I am a big proponent of the aggressive calling run and gun style of hunting. Perhaps it’s my lifelong battle with ADHD that causes me to be less than patient, but I’ve always loved to call fairly aggressively to turkeys in an effort to get them fired up. In every flock of turkeys there is a definite hierarchy or pecking order. In this method of hunting, your goal is to get a flock of birds, especially the bird in charge, fired up at the possibility of a new bird in the area. I like to locate a flock of birds and start calling at them until I get a response. Remember, in the fall the response is most likely going to be an assembly call, which is a string of yelps. Once I get a response to my calls, I will set up my decoy in the middle of a logging road or on a ridge somewhere and set up and start aggressively calling back to the lead hen or gobbler. I cut their yelps off, cut aggressively at them when I call, and send out some desperate lost calls. Turkeys are largely social, curious, and cautious animals and a new bird on their turf is pretty interesting to a flock. In my experience, there is usually a few birds that start to work their way in with the rest of the flock coming in a little while after the first ones.

These are just two of the methods that can be super successful in the fall turkey woods. There are others, like challenging a fall gobbler with aggressive gobbler yelps and purrs or sneaking into a roost area in the dark and working the flock at fly down or setting up on known feeding areas. Again, some people think that fall hunting cannot be as exciting as spring hunting because of the lack of gobbling and the different actions of the birds, but someone who tells you fall hunting is not exciting has never had a full flock come in to your cutting in the fall forcing you to have to be very careful in your movements so as not to alarm even one bird for fear of the entire flock doing a disappearing act right as you’re picking out the bird you want to shoot, or they have never busted up a flock and called them back in, where you’ve got 6 or 7 birds coming in at you from all different directions at the same time. That is pure excitement and nerve shaking action, my friends. Also, what better main course for your Thanksgiving dinner than a turkey you shot yourself just a month earlier? A 10 or 12 lb. wild turkey cooked correctly will ensure that your family will never be satisfied with a 20 lb. Butterball bird for Thanksgiving again. There is no comparing the two, and the fact that you went out and got one yourself in the tradition of our ancestors for the fall feast makes it that much more delicious. So, if you like to hunt turkeys in the spring, but have never given it a shot in the fall, and your state allows it, give it a try. Even if you’ve never hunted them in the spring either, give it a shot. You might find your newest Fall Obsession!

-Heathe Pendergraft, Fall Obsession Field Staff