How to Sit

[Morgan]

When I am hunting the big swamp...I carry one of those little stools...to keep me dry...it's has welded legs instead of the fold out ones....I wish it had a net seat instead of the straps....everywhere else I just sit on my little innertube....

[trkyklr]

i have one of the self supporting vests & it works fine, the best thing i like about it is when your against the tree you can slip out of the shoulder straps & its like you are sitting in a chair (on the ground of course)  the worst thing is you cant deploy the seat without unbuckeling the bottom clasp

[shaman]

I've got a few spots on my 200 acre farm which are good spots for hunting turkeys.  You can be fairly sure that if you're there and you wait long enough, eventually a flock will come through.  A lot of what you learn from bass fishing and deer hunting applies to turkeys:  Find the roost. Find the food.  Hunt the likely path between the two.  I have had expert turkey hunters, men I respect, tell me that there is no such thing as a "Honey Hole" for turkeys.  I have to disagree.

There are only going to be a few structures on the land that afford this opportunty.There are only going to be a few good spots which will afford you a chance to get a shot, and these are the spots I use.  In some spots, I put up a camo blind in March.  Some spots also get a boat cushion or two. I also have the factor of raising two sons into the sport.  When they were young, having a blind where they could sit and fidget made it a lot easier.  Both my sons had shooting opportunities on their first turkey hunts. 

I have noticed something here on this forum that I had not sensed earlier. It is a regional difference between turkey hunters and turkey hunting.  I did not pick up on it at first. I think I understand it better now. Most turkey hunters are raised up into the sport the way I was, learning to hunt flydown and then moving to make contact with a gobbler and then calling him in.  I tried that the first few seasons when I moved all my turkey hunting to our farm in Kentucky.  It wasn't successful-- not the way I had expected.

Kentucky positions its season at a time when turkeys are coming out of the Lull. In the northern extremity of the state, on the Ohio River, that puts it a tad early.  We have also had a few really cold Aprils  and May snowstorms in recent years-- that just heightens the effect.  What started me thinking about this all was finding a poacher's blind made out of freshly cut cedar boughs on my property the first weekend I scouted the farm.  I had never seen such an elaborate bower; it seemed like an extravagance for such a temporary set up.  By the end of that first week, I bagged the nicest turkey of my career from that blind.

I'm not all THAT bad of a caller, but it's been years since I actually had a gobbler plop down off a limb and run over to my call. Last year, the gobblers never really warmed up until the afternoons.  Instead, they get henned up in April and can seem to stay that way until nearly the end of season.

A few years ago, I changed my tactics.  I now have places I know are good spots for seeing flocks on the move, loafing, dusting, feeding, etc.    I get there ahead of time and wait. At the really good spots, I will put out a few amenities.   Each spot has a limited life.  The turkeys get wise pretty fast, but I have half a dozen or so of these places, and by rotating them around I can generate opportunities on a lot of days when there is nary a shot being heard at sun-up.

[tracebusta32]

Shaman, I believe you hit the nail on the head. Regional hunting patterns are just like regional weather patterns.
Here in NC the season opens early April but the birds stay pretty well henned up until right at the end of the season. Sometimes the weather is like spring should be, and sometimes its more like winter for the first few weeks especially here in the mountains. North Carolina has Mountains and beaches so no doubt different weather but we have the same turkey season.
 It has been 4 years since we had the "right" weather to have the birds cooperative to the call early in the season.

[shaman]

ORIGINAL: TurkeyComander

"Wait long enough" in a predetermined spot....then turkey hunting just becomes stand hunting like deer hunting.

Everyday I hunt is a new day. I turkey hunt with this rule....

A turkeys brain is no bigger than a pe'cAn....I never leave the house thinking I know what he will do.....Heck they don't even know what they are going to do.

Keep this in mind and it will add to your game bag.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I don't disagree with you.  It is just that over the  7 seasons I have hunted my farm, I found myself sitting against the same trees and decided to make something of it.   On 200 acres there is only just so many ways you can cross between pastures and only so many high spots, shady field edges etc.    JPH was talking on another thread about how intensively scouting small plots is not such a great idea.  He's right.  If the turkeys come to loaf under a certain big tree this Spring, they've probably been doing it for the past 20 generations of birds.  I've talked to a bunch of hunters who've hunted my place over the years.  In some cases, their daddies took them to these spots. I learned about them on my own.

I can tell you for a fact that I can stand in one fence line, dead center on my property and tell from the gobbling how my day is going to be.  There is a similar spot near a barn about 300 yards from the house. If I go to that spot and don't hear gobbles, I know it is going to be a tough morning.  On the other hand, on those same mornings, I can go hang out at the picnic table at the campground on the back of the property, read my book and be fairly certain of at least seeing a flock of hens come through sometime between 11 and 2.  I'll still hunt hard in a normal sort of way and probably not get there until 1030.  However, you can bet my travels will be taking me towards the campground before I call it quits and go in.  Even if the hens don't show up, I may still go over, set up a decoy in the middle of the clearing  and go hide in the bushes to eat my lunch.  Yes, I've been known to stash an extra cushion at the campground before season.

Now some of y'all have undoubtedly turned up your noses to this concept. This just ain't proper turkey hunting to you.  You have to understand:

1)  We're hunting in the northern extremity of the state. The seasons are probably set to best service the middle or south of the state. 10 miles north, across the river in Ohio the season is starting a week or two later.
2)  We're hunting private parcels of at most a few hundred acres, not vast public areas
3)  In some cases, the structures hunted have been there for 150 years without major changes.

We're adapting what guys like Ben Lee taught us about turkey hunting to the conditions we find. I know for a fact that some of my neighbors have pre-positioned blinds.  Some of them hunt one blind every day for a week, and don't do much more than that for the whole season. It does not sound fun to me, but then again they're on less than 20 acres and I'm on 200.

It took me years to figure out that I wasn't a deficient turkey hunter, because I did not have good success at flydown, and I ambush more turkeys than otherwise.  I'm no longer apologizing for it. Spring Gobbler season can be and IS a lot like deer season for some of us, and I'm not afraid to say it.

[silvestris]

Our turkeys down here don't know property lines.  Now, they do understand that danger lurks in certain places with a degree of regularity and they will avoid those places.  Our turkeys will frequently refuse to cross a fence in response to calling.  Our turkeys will have favored locations for spending the day.

As for myself, I usually refrain from hunting on days when the gobblers don't advertise.  I figure that on those days, they are busy with other things.  Yeah, I might miss the opportunity to kill a few non-gobbling turkeys, but I don't queer them when they are not really interested either.

[Cut N Run]

At my lease, we have a limited number of open spaces, so in many of those places we have built brushpile blinds out of the trees we cut to keep the roads & trails open.  They are along frequently used Turkey travel routes, but one never knows if, when, or which direction a Gobbler may show up from. Plus, if it sounds like the birds are going a different direction, you can beat feet to another one of our "blinds" in hopes of being in the right location.  Calling skill takes over from there.
 
There are some tall woods across the property boundary (which also gets hunted by someone else), thankfully, those guys don't sit very long & we seldom hear shots from that direction. Since much of our lease is re-growing cutover, there is no good way to observe the birds movement except along a powerlines right of way and one long roadbed (on opposite sides of the property).
 
Because the cover is so thick, we are generally lucky that there are few feathered witnesses to Gobblers being shot. The other Turkeys in the area don't know to be afraid of our brushpile blinds. A couple of our "blinds" are just live cedars that were growing along the ground rather than straight up. They make good cover as the Turkeys are used to them. We just don't have many trees big enough to sit up against without sticking out like a sore thumb. Setting up a chair ahead of time at a blind where we have found a lot of sign, or heard birds roost near, saves banging around in the dark & risking stirring up the woods in a critical location.
 
Jim

[Gobblerman]

"I have noticed something here on this forum that I had not sensed earlier. It is a regional difference between turkey hunters and turkey hunting." ---Shaman quote
 
Shaman, not long after getting into the turkey foruming circuit, I was struck by the very same notion.  It is interesting how attitudes about turkey hunting and the perceived approach to this obsession we have vary based on one's history and introduction to it. 
 
My introduction to spring gobbler hunting, and the forty-odd subsequent years that have followed, was centered on finding gobbling turkeys in large tracts of public lands with relatively few turkeys on it.  The idea of sitting in one place and waiting on a bird to come by was not, is not, and will likely never be, part of my plan when hunting my home turf.  When you have spent your entire turkey hunting life roaming hundreds of thousands of acres in search of gobblers that may be miles between, it is quite a shock when you go somewhere to hunt that you are confined to a few hundred acres or less. 
 
I clearly remember the feeling of helplessness when I first ventured east to the mountains of West Virginia on my first out-of-state spring gobbler excursion, and found myself "restricted" to a mere half-section of land to hunt.  I felt like a caged wild animal.  It was not long before I realized that the differences in hunting styles needed to be successful were like day and night from my regular stomping grounds. 
 
And by the same token, I have had many friends come to NM from other parts of the country that I have had to coerce into abandoning the idea that they were going to sit and wait for a gobbler at the first sighting of turkey sign somewhere.  That's not to say that their approach was not an effective way to kill turkeys, it was just not the best one to use here. 
 
I have learned the hard way that when you go to a new region to hunt, and an experienced turkey hunter from that area tells you how you should be going about the task of killing a gobbler, it is wise to listen to what they have to say.  To do otherwise is often very humbling to ones turkey hunting ego!
 
Jim

[paboxcall]

ORIGINAL: mark hay

I also have back and neck problems. I also like to be light on my feet . Haven't found anything yet for myself that eliminates the pain COMPLETELY . Though I did pick up something this last season. There is usually tree branches lying eveywhere . When I am setting up I'll grab a limb of 2-3 inches in diameter and get it to my tree of choice, drop my cushion down and sit. Once I have found the sweet spot, I will lift the front edge of the cushion with one hand and slide the limb up under the cushion, running it from left to right . get the picture? It allows my leg muscles to be more relaxed and I don;t slide away from the tree.  GOOD LUCK                     ''oldschoolturkeytactics''

 
Mark -- that is exactly what I do; seems having a limb under the front of your seat cushion rolls your hips back, taking some of the pressure off your lower back.
 
Excellent tip buddy.  I do that often and never thought to share it with anyone.
 
John

[jimpenny1778]

I also use the EveRest recliner. I have had lower back surgery and won't go turkey hunting without it. If I need too, I can sit for 2 or 3 hours without pain. I bought mine 2 years ago and love it. Mine is a camo version. If you look around on the internet you can find the camo model. You might also call GCI to see if they still have the camo model available.