Get to know your gear
TURKEY HUNT (cont.)
safety in the turkey woods. “Turkey hunting, in particular, requires people to really pay attention to their target and follow all the safety rules taught in Hunter Education,” Young said. “Hunters are camouflaged and sitting on the ground at the same level as the game you’re pursuing.
Some are putting out decoys that can look pretty realistic. At the end of the day, we all want to go home with good hunting stories and hopefully a bird, so I always have to start with safety.”Brad Young says the practice of “fanning” has become more common, which makes it even more imperative to see every bit of that gobbler before you pull the trigger. Hunters will take a fan of a bird and hold it directly in front of them while lying on the ground, inching up to a bird. “It works well, but puts the hunter directly behind the fan.”
Preparing for the season isn’t just about practicing on your calls. Take some time to really get to know the equipment you’ll be using, so it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice. When that bird fires off back at your soft yelps isn’t the time to figure out how to flip down the seat on your new turkey vest or discover your facemask never got put in your pocket.
“You also want to know exactly how your shotgun is going to pattern and what your effective range with it really is,” Young said. “With all the work you put into getting into range of a bird, you don’t want to shoot and end up with a cripple. You owe it to yourself and the bird to make a quick, efficient shot that anchors him on the spot.”
Google Earth, OnX and a host of other online scouting tools are available to really get to know the area where you plan to hunt; use them. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s website even has interactive maps that show WMA boundaries as well as wildlife openings that may be worth looking into as possible strutting areas.
“When you go out to an area to listen for birds, you want to know where things are around you,” Young said. “If you hear a bird, but know there’s a creek, road or some other obstacle that will cause him to hang up, you want to know where it is and how you could get around it and set up without spooking the bird on the day of the hunt.”
Don’t just rely on the aerial images and topo maps to tell you the lay of the land, either. Take a few mornings to quietly walk the woods and learn a little about where the birds want to be.
You can’t do all the scouting from the couch if you want to see success.
One of the worst things hunters can do when preparing for turkey season is to let the cat out of the bag before the season even starts. Ideally, you should have already been looking for promising spots before the season is only a week or two away, but if you are still in scouting mode, it’s time to keep it quiet. The sooner turkeys figure out that people are in the woods, the sooner they shut up and get hard to
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