Here's a hint -- it's not me.

I asked Dale one time how he manages to kill turkeys so regularly when he sounds nothing like a real turkey. He told me that some of the worst turkey calling he's ever heard came from real turkeys. His point was that, in hunting, there's no such thing as a perfect turkey call. Unlike turkey-calling contest pros, live birds crack notes and make all sorts of weird noises that would never pass muster in a calling competition.

Instead of looking for turkey calls that sound exactly what I think a turkey should sound like, I now look for calls that sound different from others -- calls that are unusually high-pitched or raspy or loud, etc. If birds in a pressured area hear the same mouth diaphragms and slate calls day after day during the season, a unique-sounding call is going to stand out in the woods.

When you hear guys talking about an area that's loaded with gobblers that just don't respond to calling, head out there with a wing bone call or a tube call -- something most turkey hunters wouldn't use. That new sound might be just the ticket.

ADD A LITTLE MOTION
The drawing power of a decoy when you're turkey hunting is no secret. But as increasing numbers of hunters use turkey decoys, guess what? Gobblers are becoming increasingly wary of statue-like "hens" standing alone in a field or on an open oak flat.

We'd all like nothing better than to walk into the spring turkey woods at sunrise, sit under a tree and have a big longbeard come running straight to our calls.

It used to be that you could bank on a gobbler running straight in if he heard your calls and then spotted your decoy. Nowadays, however, it's not uncommon for an old tom to spot your decoy and then begin to circle it -- usually out of shotgun range, of course. The gobbler will eye your deke the whole time, and, when he doesn't see any signs of life, he will retreat.

Ever-adapting turkey hunters have picked up on this growing trend and have created decoys capable of moving. Some are powered by wind, some require a hunter to tug on a line and others are electronic. Of course, hunters should check their state regulations to find out what's legal where they hunt before they try one of these motion decoys.

The bottom line is, a moving decoy is much more realistic than a static one. I saw a video of a hunt in which the hunter had a turkey fan mounted on a pole next to his jake turkey decoy. The pole was spring loaded so that the hunter could make the fan spin back and forth by tugging on a string.

In the video, you see a gobbler stick his head up over some brush at the far end of the field. He sees the hunter's decoy, but he doesn't budge. Then the hunter tugs on the string and the fan begins to spin. The gobbler jumped up over the brush and ran full speed to the decoys. He immediately puffed up and started strutting, and then the hunter squeezed the trigger.