Silent and Still: Keys to Better Turkey Hunting

While it's easy to second guess yourself, persistence and patience do pay off.

March 13, 2025 By Adam Heggenstaller

I had my doubts. It was almost 9 o’clock, and the gobbler hadn’t made a sound. I’d been sitting against a hemlock in silence since well before first light, which was an eternity to second-guess my decisions that morning. I probably should have hunted another bird … I probably should have called a little … I probably should have gotten closer.

No, no, no. If I had learned anything about this turkey, and anything about myself this season, the best play was to stay still and be quiet. This bird was worth it, though every minute made it harder to believe that was true.

had found the tom before sunrise on the second morning of the season, nearly four weeks earlier. He had gobbled several times in the tree, giving me enough guidance to slip within 150 yards and start a conversation. He replied to my series of yelps two or three times and cut the distance between us in half, but then moved away just as quickly, his gobbles fading in the creek bottom. I never saw him, but he was surely with hens.

The next time I hunted the bird, I set up closer to his roost, between his tree and the area where he had disappeared the first morning. When he gobbled it sounded like he was 50 yards away. Two minutes after legal shooting light, I made a few soft yelps and got my cheek on the gun. He flew down, gobbled on the ground 15 or 20 times and walked away in the opposite direction that he had gone two mornings earlier. It sounded like he didn’t come a single step closer. I got up, ran a semi-circle around him and heard his hens shortly after I sat back down. They weren’t interested in my calls, but the gobbler answered one time slightly above me on the slope and another time farther up and behind me. His hens had led him past me, but they passed me out of sight. I went uphill after them but didn’t hear a sound the rest of the morning.

This went on for the next two weeks, with me trying to predict where the gobbler would go and him and his hens doing the opposite. He was always with hens, and he never gobbled past 10 o’clock. I spent several mornings waiting for him to sound off later, thinking he’d lose the hens and come looking. Never happened. At that point in the season, the regs in Pennsylvania permitted hunting only till noon. If the gobbler ever got lonely, it was after hunting hours.

He always roosted in the creek bottom, and I had a pretty good idea of the two or three trees that the bird was using—or so I thought. The smart play would have been to confirm my hunch the evening before I hunted him next, but I couldn’t swing it. Instead, my plan to slip in super tight super early fell apart when I walked under three hens, which sat in their tree watching me until it got light enough for them to flap off in a tremendous racket that let every turkey within earshot know something wasn’t right. Not surprisingly, I heard no gobbles that morning.

That brought me to the final week of the season, a season I had committed to hunting a single bird, with not much to show for it other than a lack of sleep and an abundance of frustration. Perhaps I should have hunted another gobbler, but as Tom Kelly put it in Tenth Legion, I had found “one to spend the season with.” I wanted this bird, and I wanted him in the morning.

So I resigned myself to sit in silence just above the creek bottom on a line that the gobbler had taken a few times before with his hens, not wanting to give them a reason to go the other direction. It was an ambush, and I was just fine with that. I had played fair all season.

With no sound from the bird to boost my morale, my thoughts turned dark. Someone else had probably killed him … no doubt in the afternoon. Or maybe I had spooked him without knowing it when I walked in. Perhaps I had pressured him and his hens to the point that they had left the area.

But then, a gobble.

Loud and clear, just below me, in the exact same spot the bird had been all season. I badly wanted to call, but instead I ground the diaphragm between my teeth. He gobbled a second time then I heard his hens.

Ten minutes later, they were in the same spot, still calling occasionally, not moving any closer but not moving away, either. They were out of sight, but I dared not reposition. I had to do something, and so with much hesitation, I made a few soft clucks.