Take a step outside conventional turkey bowhunting wisdom to bag more birds with a crossbow.

By Al Raychard

My mother, Lord bless her, always said I was an unruly child. I never understood exactly what she meant by that. I suppose she fretted over the various mischiefs I might get into. I like to think I was a normal kid, but who argues with their mother? Looking back on my youth, I have to admit that I was bestowed with a wide streak of independence. I preferred doing things my way, or at least different from the accepted norm, just to see if they worked.

Things haven’t changed much throughout the years. As a hunter, I came to realize long ago that some conventional and widely accepted methods are rarely absolute, and that there are aspects not necessarily requiring improvement, but there are ways to do things differently and still achieve the same level of success. That includes hunting spring gobblers with a crossbow.

HUNTING HIGH

Have you ever been sitting in a treestand during deer season and had a flock of turkeys walk by or watched them off in the distance? If you live around decent or even marginal whitetail and turkey territory, I’d be surprised if the answer is no.

Several years ago during archery deer season I was sitting in a stand along an oak ridge. I had been hunting all morning without success and was about to call it a morning when I heard some rustling in the leaves just out of sight. I thought it might be a deer working my way, but instead a flock of toms came into view and walked my way, stopping periodically to scratch for acorns. Eventually the group came within 25 yards of my stand, did more scratching, offering some perfect shot opportunities in the process before wandering off. They never knew I was there.

Why didn’t I pull the trigger, you might ask? At the time crossbows were prohibited in my home state during the fall turkey season. But, it put a seed in my brain that proved fruitful the following spring, and on numerous occasions since then.

It is widely accepted that portable ground blinds and crossbows are a great combination for hunting turkeys. It’s true, they are. But many hunts from elevated positions has also proven just as productive. And why not? Deer and turkeys reside and frequent many of the same habitats. It just never dawned on me until I saw that flock of toms that fall day.

There are other reasons why hunting from stands can be productive. The primary predator threats that mature turkeys have to be concerned about are land-based. Like deer, they have little real reason to look upward unless some sudden noise or movement draws their attention. If that happens they are quick to take notice. This makes full camo covering — including all exposed skin — and keeping movement to a minimum, a priority. That’s another advantage of hunting above ground level.

Before the spring foliage appears and until full bloom, treestands provide much greater visibility and allow plenty of time to prepare for a crossbow shot before a gobbler or flock walks into range. Our turkey calling sounds also travel greater distances from treestand heights, so they don’t have to be as loud or intense to do their jobs.

CLOSE IS DEADLY, TOO

There’s no doubt about it, the quickest way to drop a gobbler is an arrow to the vitals. It usually drops them on the spot or within sight. Many archers claim that hitting the vitals is crucial to a kill. While I will agree that hitting the vitals is crucial to a quick kill, based on personal experience, I will debate all day long that a near miss in the heart/lung area can be just as deadly.

A turkey’s vitals are about the size of a baseball, and are slightly higher than many might think. When a gobbler is strutting, the vitals also rest farther back. The vitals are not only a rather small and challenging strike zone — even for the most proficient shooter with today’s super-accurate crossbows — but can be confusing or difficult to ascertain in some hunting situations and when birds are in certain positions. That small target zone gets even smaller and more challenging as the distance increases. As much as I try, I’ll be the first to admit that my crossbow shots are not always a direct hit to the vitals. But I still kill birds.

Even if a crossbow shot strikes within an inch or two of the wing butt, or in the chest area below the neck, there is the probability of severing any one of or several of the major arteries around the heart/lung area. Death may not come as quickly as a direct hit to the vitals, but it is a dead bird.

We also have to keep in mind that the average crossbow delivers between 80 to 100 pounds of kinetic energy. Depending on the draw weight and arrow and broadhead weights, it could be even more. That’s a lot of shock, more than enough to get the job done.

As bowhunters, we know from successful deer hunts that broadheads, whether fixed or expandable, also cause massive internal tissue damage and hemorrhaging so that the bird bleeds out quickly, even from a near miss of the vitals. I’ve had several near vital misses when the birds simply died on the spot after leaping into the air as if stung by a hornet and fluttering around a bit. Some others managed to flee the area, although they didn’t go far and were easily retrieved.

This doesn’t mean that we should take just any crossbow shot at turkeys. We shouldn’t. Heart/lung shots are always best and we should strive for them every time. But as long as a crossbow is properly sighted in and if the hit is a solid one — even if slightly off the mark — that bird will be going home with you.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT PASS-THROUGHS

The conventional wisdom is that complete pass-through shots are best on turkeys. For several years I strived to achieve that goal, but even when successful not every shot resulted in a fast, on-the-spot kill. So I don’t worry about pass-through shots much anymore. If my aim results in a solid hit and the arrow passes clean through, fine, but I actually prefer it when the arrow and broadhead remain embedded in the bird. The very first bird that I shot when the arrow didn’t pass through did the typical fluttering on the ground upon impact, but dropped within sight only 10 yards from where it was shot. Since then, nearly every bird I have hit this way did the same thing.

Mature gobblers are covered with thousands of feathers that help to prevent blood loss when they’re shot in the body. Those same feathers also help to sop up, slow down and disperse blood as it exits the wound. But when an arrow remains inside the bird and is slammed on the ground and against brush, that arrow is tearing and creating a large wound channel for blood loss, while the broadhead is slicing and dicing causing even more internal damage. In my experience, death comes much more quickly.

This doesn’t mean that complete pass-through shots are not a good thing. They definitely are, depending upon placement. All things being equal, shots where the arrow and broadhead remain intact can be just as deadly, if not more so, and should be of little concern.

LARGE BROADHEADS NOT NEEDED

Every crossbow hunter has his or her favorite broadhead for the task at hand and they swear by it because it works for them. When I first started hunting, an old-timer once told me, “Shoot what you shoot best, hit ‘em right and you’ll kill ‘em.” I have always followed that simple premise, including when hunting turkeys.

Nearly all of the birds that I have killed with a crossbow have been with the same arrow and broadhead combination used for deer, bear and other big game. That means a head with a cutting diameter from 1⅝ inches to around 2 inches or so. I experimented with heads with much larger cutting diameters, including the so-called guillotine types, long ago.

Since heart/lung shots are preferred more than head and neck shots, I quickly discovered that the large cutting heads just weren’t necessary, and my standard setup was sufficient. Big holes, lots of internal damage and blood loss are needed to kill turkeys. You can accomplish that with standard-size broadheads.

Another key point is that broadheads of this cutting size are probably what most hunters normally already use, and are most accurate shooting with. As it is with any game, an accurate arrow is a deadly arrow. As that old-timer told me so many years ago, shoot what you shoot best, make it count and you’ll kill them.

USED BROADHEADS

Hunting with used broadheads goes against any number of cardinal rules, but providing that broadhead is not damaged in some way and still holds somewhat of a sharp cutting edge, it can work rather well on turkeys. I have killed multiple birds using the same head, including the two taken last spring. They fell quite nicely to the same broadhead that I killed a deer with the previous fall.

Despite being heavily covered with feathers that are supported by stiff quills, at typical crossbow range under 30 yards or so, and with today’s fast crossbow speeds, used broadheads have little trouble penetrating to the vitals or causing sufficient internal damage and hemorrhaging. This is particularly true with so-called “bone-crushing” tips designed to bully and smash their way in rather than cut-on-contact heads. Broadheads are expensive. Save some money. When it comes to hunting turkeys, there is no need to discard or replace blades if previously used.

When it’s all said and done, killing turkeys with a crossbow is not terribly difficult and it makes little sense to make it more so. I have discovered over the years that much of the conventional wisdom and cardinal rules of bowhunting turkeys don’t necessarily hold true when hunting with horizontal bows — because they are a completely different animal.

Learn the Best Shot Placement for Bowhunting Turkeys