The Best Times in Spring to Turkey Hunt

I’m often asked what my favorite days are to hunt spring turkeys. After 39 years of turkey hunting, I still have a lot to learn, but during that time I’ve acquired some solid working knowledge.

THE OPENER

If I had just one day to try and tag a spring turkey it would be opening day. I scout for turkeys year-round, both physically and with the aid of trail cameras. Three weeks before the season, I’m scouting nearly every day so that come the season opener, I know exactly where I want to be.

In your preseason scouting, don’t just look for toms—count and identify them. Look for unique, identifying features like the size and shape of a beard, waddle and caruncle makeup, offset tail feathers or overall plumage coloration. These are just some of the physical features that will help you identify individual toms so you know what birds are in your hunting area. Not only is this valuable information for hunting the opener, but for the entire season.

Look for toms with trail cameras, too. The more trail cameras you can set out, the more information you’ll accrue. Set all cameras on video mode. A 15-second video reveals much more than a still photo. Not only will trail cameras help you identify individual toms, they’ll show how far some are traveling. While some toms might stay put on their strutting grounds, others might follow hens to their annual nesting location. It’s nothing for a hen to travel 15 miles to nest. Sometimes more than one tom might tag along.

Opening day is hard to beat for the simple reason that turkeys have not been hunted for nearly a year. If you have multiple tags to fill and can only shoot one tom a day in your state, drop the first one that comes in, grab the decoy and get out of there. Turkeys grow wise fast, so the quicker you can close the deal, the fewer birds you’ll educate and the sooner you can return to hunt.

A few seasons back, one place I hunt was loaded with 11 toms before the season. I’d watched and patterned the birds for weeks. On opening morning two toms came in. My first tag was filled in the first 10 minutes. I left my blind set up and was back in there early the next morning. A different group of toms came in, three in all. Only two walked away. Trail cameras showed five toms working the ridge that same afternoon. On day three I got in the blind at 2 o’clock p.m. Later that afternoon all five toms came in, strutting and gobbling to every sound I made before attacking the hen decoy. I filled my third and final tag of the season. All were taken from the same blind, over the same decoy, on three consecutive days. Getting in and out fast the first two days was the ticket, along with a high tom-to-hen ratio.

MID-SEASON FACTORS

Filling a tag in the middle of turkey season is largely dependent upon three factors: the hens, the toms and the weather. Keep track of hens when scouting throughout the year. While hens are typically in large flocks at the start of the spring season, they’ll soon break up to tend nests. Once hens start splitting up, toms will too. More toms might also show up in the area—ones you’ve never seen or haven’t laid eyes on since the previous spring.

Generally speaking, hens in river bottoms and farmland habitat nest fairly close to where they spend the summer, fall and winter months. This means many of the same toms will live in the same vicinity their entire lives. But 2-year-old toms will also move in with the hopes of breeding, and they usually arrive in small bachelor flocks. Some might stay for years; others might move on or get run off by dominant toms.

Hens in the foothills and mountains can travel great distances to nest. When toms follow these hens, they may not return to the early-spring sites until late summer, fall or even late winter. Turkey populations and flock dynamics are in continuous change at higher elevations.

Since toms will be sticking with hens, looking for a chance to breed between egg-laying sessions and when hens feed while sitting on the nest, they can be hard to hunt. It’s difficult to call in a tom when it’s sticking with a hen no matter what habitat or elevation you’re hunting.

When toms are henned up, look for changes in weather to hunt them. If it’s cold, windy or raining, wait for that one day with intermittent breaks in the forecast. A burst of sunshine, a slight rise in temperature or a lull in the rain can all raise the hopes of toms. Over the decades I’ve had better luck hunting in bad weather during the middle of the season, capitalizing on breaks in rain and storms, than chasing toms on hot, sunny days when they often won’t budge from the shade.

If predators kill a hen’s clutch, she’ll become more active while building a new nest and laying eggs. A hen will lay one egg every 24 to 32 hours. It takes about two weeks to lay a full clutch of nine to 13 eggs. Incubation doesn’t begin until the final egg is laid. Such a spike in hen activity can influence tom behavior. Two springs ago, seven hens I tracked on trail cameras all lost their clutches to predators. This made calling in toms tough. But waiting for a rainy day, I grabbed a preening hen decoy, headed into the timber, got a break in the weather and filled my tag with a monster tom.

CLOSING DAYS

My second-favorite time of the season to hunt for a big tom is in the final five days of the season. By this time most hens are tending broods and toms have started a feeding routine, meaning they can be patterned. Over the years, the biggest toms I’ve taken have come in the closing days of the season.

Late-season toms can be hard to fool. They’ve been called to, seen decoys and busted hunters, and they know what to do to survive. Often, they hang out in the middle of tallgrass fields all day, eating, bedding in the shade and getting what water they need from morning dew. But even these toms can be effectively hunted. After all, they must enter and leave the field sometime, and they usually do so in the same spots each day. This is where scouting to pattern toms will pay off. Think fall turkey hunting strategies.

If you know where toms roost and fly down, and what trail they use to enter a field or meadow, you can set up ahead of them. The same goes for an evening hunt (in states that allow it), when you can intercept a tom traveling from feeding to roosting sites.

In the middle of the day, moving and calling can be productive. Anticipate where toms are going and get ahead of them. Are they moving to water to drink? Are they seeking shade to cool off? Or are they heading to trees to delouse themselves by taking a dust bath beneath the boughs? Whatever the reason, setting up and calling in their path of travel can be very productive. I don’t call as aggressively this late in the season, and I often go without a decoy in order to keep an approaching tom on the move, searching for the hen.

New toms often show up late in the season. This can be due to several factors, but over the years I’ve taken just as many new toms as resident toms. When a new tom pops up on a trail camera, get on it.

By paying attention to turkey numbers, capitalizing on their seasonal behavioral shifts and hunting at key times during weather changes, filling multiple tags a season will become routine. The key is to never stop searching, learning all you can along the way and making the right moves at the right time.

TRAIL CAMS FOR TURKEYS

Trail cameras have become one of my most important turkey hunting tools. I currently have 134 trail cameras set in three states, more than half of which are targeting turkeys. Set trail cameras low to the ground when possible, pointing up and down trails. Positioning cameras on trails in the timber, in brushy river bottoms and amid grassy edges of fields will capture turkeys traveling these narrow pathways. Set them on the edges of openings and fields to capture feeding and strutting activity.

Set cameras on video mode, as this conveys far more information than a still photo. The longer the clip, the more you’ll learn. I can’t count the number of times I’ve caught a single turkey on camera, only to crank the volume and hear multiple toms gobbling off camera. Spread cameras throughout these areas to cover ground, and you’ll capture more turkey action and come away with valued insight that will lead to more hunting opportunities.

Last year I replaced most of my trail cameras with cellular cams, opting for Moultrie Mobile units. Getting instant information has been a game changer, and I’ve learned so much about turkey populations, breeding activity, bird movement, the arrival of new toms and even predation. Trail cameras are our eyes in the woods and work all day, every day, all year long.