Late-arriving hunters will find plenty of lovesick gobblers waiting for them after 10 a.m. Let the predawn hunters clear out and then get down to some serious calling! Photo by Steve Carpenteri.

“See you boys at lunchtime,” my buddy, Bob, said as he rolled over in his bed. Three of us were headed out the door long before sunrise to try to catch a gobbler coming off the roost on a spring turkey hunt. Bob hates getting up early, and he said he’d just wait until midmorning to hit the woods.

“I’ll hunt for one of those toms whose hens have all gone off to sit on nests,” he’d told us the night before.

Dawn broke to the sound of turkey gobbles thundering down the mountain valley. I crept toward the source of one of the gobbles and set up when I figured I was about 100 yards from the roost. The tom gobbled his head off in the tree. And right on cue, I heard yelps coming from all around me. By tracking the moving sounds of the hens, I could tell the birds all were converging on the gobbler’s location.

Before long, I heard the telltale sound of flapping wings as the gobbler left his roost and flew down to meet his ladies. When he hit the ground, he let out one gobble and I never heard a peep out of him again. I called and called for a good hour, but I got no response. Obviously, the flock moved away from my position. (Continued)

Sleepy and with a grumbling stomach, I hiked up and down the mountains for the next three hours trying to get a gobbler to respond to my calls. Finally, at around 11 a.m., I heard a bird gobbling in the distance.

It took me a good 15 minutes to cut the distance between us to a few hundred yards. As I was trying to pinpoint exactly where I thought the turkey was strutting, I heard a loud “Boom!”

I waited on the logging road to see if I knew the hunter who’d just shot, and who comes out of the woods with a limp gobbler slung over his shoulder?

Bob.

“Did you have a nice morning?” Bob asked with a big grin on his face. “I got up, cooked some breakfast, watched a little TV and got out here about an hour ago. This guy came right in to my calls.”

BREAK WITH TRADITION
Turkey-hunting tradition says to be in the woods before sunrise to be successful on spring gobblers. There are times when you get under a bird on the roost and he flies down right in front of your shotgun barrel. But how many times have you been out there at first light only to have a gobbler fly off the roost to his hens and then walk off with them, no doubt thumbing his spurs at you?

Ever since that day a few years ago, when Bob showed me how successful the mid- to late-morning period can be in the spring, I’ve found myself more inclined to sleep in before heading out for my gobbler.

LATE MAKES SENSE
Why should you consider this tactic, which breaks one of turkey hunting’s cardinal rules? Simple. Just think about how turkey courtship and breeding works. Many hunters think the females lure in the males, as happens with most other game animals, such as deer and moose. With turkeys, however, it’s the gobbler that calls in the hens.