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If you’ve been following along this March, you just learned how to select the best turkey loads for springtime. Hopefully, now that you’ve had the chance to dial in your turkey gun, it’s time to put it to work. The next brick to build a successful spring is proper scouting. It is time to dedicate some hours and trekking miles to locate birds. Simply put, you can’t be a successful turkey hunter if you place yourself in an area with no birds. You must learn how to find turkeys. Like any form of hunting, the key to continuous success is how you prepare. With the average turkey season spanning a month, you have a short time to harvest a bird. Combine this with commitments outside the woods, and you realize you must maximize your time spent hunting. I believe scouting is single-handedly the most critical aspect of turkey hunting. It is easy to do, and there are many ways to do it.
Scouting for turkeys puts you ahead of the game. Scouting helps you stay on the birds throughout the season. Turkey activity varies with great length 1 week before the season, 1 week into the season, and the closing week of the season. However, if you know the area well, placing yourself in the thick of them is easier. Even though the season is just a short window, the habits and behavior of turkeys change rapidly in correlation to breeding activities, weather, and hunting pressure. Preseason scouting turns over the stone on where the flocks reside, gives you an idea of how many Toms are in the area, and when flocks split into smaller groups. In-season scouting helps you determine where the current mid-morning strut zones are, how Toms interact with hens, and how they react to hunting pressure.
If I’m in the woods, I’m looking for turkeys. I spend ample time in the woods when I’m shed hunting. I’ve learned that many states have concentrated pockets of birds, but you’ll never see a turkey a mile away from that area. My point is that you shouldn’t wait until springtime to confirm there are turkeys on your huntable piece. Leaving preparation to the last moment can leave you without a spot. Always be on the lookout on your piece, but don’t read too much into the sign until the season opener gets closer.
I prefer evening scouting. Evenings are great because you can pinpoint roost locations. Every night, within the last hour of light, turkeys fly up to mature trees to sleep for the night. That tree is called the roost. Fly-up is a great time to get an exact bead on where the birds are. Why? They make a bunch of racket getting situated in the tree, turkeys aren’t graceful in the air. Get to a spot where your ears do the work for you and where you can cover a large amount of acreage. I like sitting on the point of a ridge to hear what’s going on with multiple ridges at once. If you know your timber well, find areas with mature oak, maple, pine, or sycamore trees. Turkeys need timber with big, flat branches to support their weight and stay comfortable. Listen for wing beats, fly-up cackles from hens, and hopefully a Toms gobble. A Tom will gobble frequently once he’s in the tree to let other birds know his location. If you hear wing beats but not a gobble, try using an owl locator call. Toms will shock gobble in response to a barred owl’s roaring hoot. I begin evening scouting two weeks before opener up to the night before, the most important evening of them all. Not everyone roosts birds; not doing so is foolish. If you can do it, absolutely do it. Roosting provides insight into where birds will be the following morning and gives you a roost spot to pay attention to moving forward.
As for mornings, I’ll focus on them within the last week. I like a good mid-morning scout. I use this trip to listen for birds and to locate hot sign. Chances are, if you hear a Tom screamin’ his face off anytime past 8:30am – 9am, he’s most likely by himself. A lonely Tom is more susceptible to a hen call. Keep this in mind. Toms will frequent the same zone if they feel safe and if they are pulling in hens. I love morning scouting because it gives me an idea of hot birds in the area and how they might act during hunting hours.
There are a few tried and true things to pay attention to when trying to find huntable turkeys. First and most obvious, if you hear gobbles in your area, that is 100% proof there are huntable Toms in your area. Additionally, if you’re seeing turkey tracks or finding feathers, those are significant indicators. When you’re doing boots-on-ground scouting, look for turkey scratching. Turkeys use their feet to find food, especially in the timber. They find their food by scratching the ground. By displacing debris, turkeys uncover the ground where seeds, insects, acorns, or any other edible material hide. Turkey scratching displaces the leaves, leaving small bald spots scattered around a general area. Small mounds of leaves in conjunction with bald dirt spots are a dead giveaway. These leaf mounds will not be much taller than a coffee cup. This type of disruption confirms that birds were feeding in that area. You can look for turkey scratching anytime you’re in the woods. Begin to observe where scratching resides more closely as the season nears; that’s when it matters. The last thing I like to do is locate strut zones. Strut zones are specific areas where Toms hang out, strut, gobble, and make their presence known throughout the woods. These zones are often areas where they are easily seen or heard by hens. Common strut zones include logging roads, open ridges, creek bottoms, and, most commonly, open fields. As tempting as it is, many times, that lone strutter in the field is the most challenging bird to pursue. The best way to locate these strut zones is to listen for Toms mid-morning. By that time of the day, Toms usually split from hens and seek the next hen or post up somewhere to try to pull hens to them. Posting up in a strut zone to ambush a mid-morning Tom before he gets there is very effective. Combine this with some soft blind calling, and things can happen in a hurry; don’t fall asleep; that happens in a hurry, too.
I spent many years hunting public land during college and still do to this day. Public land is a double-edged sword. Running into other hunters, finding hung-up birds on private, experiencing large amounts of hunting pressure, and failing to get a wary bird to commit are common. On the other edge, there are areas with 1000+ huntable acres off a single pull-off, you can find other birds if one isn’t cooperating, you can hunt new types of environments, and a successful harvest comes with immense joy. The best way to put yourself ahead of the game is to scout regularly and early. The average public land hunter does not scout regularly. You can easily separate yourself from the average Joe by being frequent. Spend lots of time looking at maps. Find secluded creek bottoms, areas with many ridges you can bounce to quickly, and potential roost areas. When you go on scouting missions, go deep and plan on being gone for a few hours. Don’t leave anything unturned. Additionally, just sitting in a pull-off with your windows down during fly-up time can help you find birds. The worst thing you can do is stay stagnant. Always be on the move. Always be listening for a hot bird or looking for a sign.
When scouting, equip yourself with a small set of binoculars, locator calls, and a GPS application. Binoculars help you determine if that mystery object in the middle of a field is a turkey, saving you time. Locator calls are great to use at all times of the day and can invoke a vocal response from a Tom, confirming his location. A GPS application such as OnX helps you keep track of hot locations you find so you can navigate back with ease. If you are going deep into a new spot, ensuring your GPS device is fully charged is a good idea. Getting turned around in a new area can be easy, especially after the sun goes down. Each tool serves a purpose. If I am hiking into the woods, I’ll have my turkey vest and all my camouflage on too. You never know when you’ll collide with a flock of birds and need to hide. I am always prepared. Additionally, if you want to get better confirmation of birds in the area, hang a few SD card trail cameras. Put these in areas that you believe to be strut zones, feeding areas, or high-traffic areas. Start running these cameras at the beginning of March and pull them every two weeks until the season if you can. Fine-tune your “tools” based on what you’re doing. I won’t necessarily bring all my gear if I’m just cruising roads or checking fields.
Avoid using turkey calls when preseason scouting. What is the purpose of trying to call in a Tom if you can’t harvest him? You only educate them, making them harder to fool when the season comes. Another common mistake is focusing on spots that appear as if they should have birds. It may be the perfect creek bottom or strut zone on paper, but if you’re not finding sign and getting stumped on multiple occasions, you need to move on!
Now that you have a better understanding of how to find birds before spring, you will need to learn how to select the most effective shotshells to get the job done. Selecting the most effective turkey load depends on where you are and what your gun likes. Remington offers an assortment of different turkey loads. Remington’s turkey loads include traditional lead loads, copper plated lead loads, and tungsten loads. Be sure to browse our site as these loads are chambered in 10ga, 12ga, 20ga, and 410 Bore. If you haven’t already, read over our last blog. We discuss the details of selecting the most effective turkey load for you. Read more about choosing the appropriate turkey loads here. Good luck this spring season!
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