Category: Turkey Hunting
Turkey Hunting: Pops Tags Out (Again!) – Episode #389
New Video
Watch as Pops Woods tags out during the second week of Missouri’s turkey season! Plus, tips to protect the soil for maximum food plot success! Don’t miss the rare video of a coyote nabbing a fawn!
Short Clip:
Watch toms strut their stuff in this awesome strutting video!
New Weekly Blog:
Find out how cover crops saved our food plots during recent massive flooding!
Tip of the Week:
Turkey hunting can rack up a lot of miles on boots. Drying and deodorizing boots after each hunt is a great way to help protect your feet for the next hunt.
Turkey, Turkey, Turkey! – Episode #388
New Video
Watch Pops and Raleigh Woods get on the board opening week of Missouri’s turkey season. Then see father son duo, Chase and Rylan White, show us how to chase turkeys in Missouri and Kansas!
Short Clip:
Easily share the hunting experience and capture memories that will last a lifetime: now you can film your entire turkey hunt with just your phone and iSCOPE! Watch this recent turkey hunt filmed with only the iSCOPE.
New Weekly Blog:
Find out how we use prescribed fire to increase quality habitat and enjoy great turkey hunting!
Tip of the Week:
Planting season is almost here and that means it’s time to get your equipment ready for the hard work! Make sure tractors, planters, and everything in between are in working order and ready to go!
Burning Is For The Birds!
Burn, burn, burn! As most followers of GrowingDeer know, burning is not only a major tool we use to improve habitat but it could easily be one of most beneficial ways to improve the habitat quality on any property. Prescription burning is inexpensive, controls unwanted plant species, provides highly desirable forage, and includes a countless number of other benefits to wildlife. And did I mention turkeys?!
One result from years of prescribed burning is the flourishing population of turkeys we have on The Proving Grounds. Turkeys were few and far between when Grant purchased this property 15 years ago. However, after many years of improving the habitat through burning and increasing food sources there is now a thriving, huntable population of turkeys that call The Proving Grounds home.
Fire eliminates old growth and stimulates the growth of new, beneficial forbs and grasses. By reducing the amount of fuel on the ground, the soil surface becomes exposed and allows turkey poults to easily move across the land while foraging for insects. Bugging habitat is crucial for young turkeys and the insect populations that prosper on these burned areas provide the nutritional requirements poults need to grow.
The exposed seeds, insects, and newly growing forbs on burn sites provide a smorgasbord of food for turkeys. These areas become turkey magnets during the spring and summer! Our Reconyx trail cameras show high turkey activity in the burned glades on the property as proof. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly for hunters, these burned areas often produce excellent spring turkey hunting. The crops of the turkeys we harvested this spring were full of new vegetation that is growing prolifically in our prescription burn units. This is just further evidence of the benefits burning provides for turkeys.
If you are not burning on your property and love to chase gobblers, maybe this information will convince the land manager in you to burn next year! Take a fire class, gain some in-field experience, and witness the benefits of prescription burning yourself.
Enjoy Creation,
Tyler
Warning: This blog contains information about prescribed fire which is a management tool for trained professionals using the appropriate tools for the situation.
Punchin’ Turkey Tags – Episode #387
New Video
Watch as multiple Kansas turkeys are tagged with both bow and shotgun! Plus, see an exciting Kentucky youth hunt as six-year-old Griffin Gandee harvests his first long beard!
Short Clip:
See how the Fourth Arrow Rex Arm makes filming turkey hunts out of a blind quiet and easy!
New Weekly Blog:
Find out how turkey decoy set-ups should change throughout the spring to reflect the current breeding phase!
Tip of the Week:
Storing turkey gear in Scent Crusher Gear Bags helps remove odor without having to wash clothes after every hunt!
Gobbler Getting Decoy Strategies
Turkey season is in full swing and many hunters are experiencing success. I recently tagged a couple of nice toms in Kansas using two common decoy strategies. I found the first bird strutting in a pasture accompanied by three hens and he quickly fell prey to a tactic known as reaping or fanning. I struck up a gobble soon after bagging my first tom and within a few minutes there was a pair of big longbeards in front of me. The end result was me wrapping my last Kansas tag around the leg of an old Rio Grande gobbler. There are countless ways to use decoys for turkey hunting so I will break some of those methods down into easy to understand steps.
I bagged a couple of nice toms in Kansas using two common decoy strategies.
Know the current breeding phase of the flock you are hunting. In some states, turkey season opens during late March. Often birds are still flocked up and large decoy set-ups with multiple hens and a jake or tom work very well. As the season progresses, flocks break up, males assert dominance, and hens prepare for breeding. The peak breeding phase occurs around the middle of April and this is a great time to use a standing or lay-down hen accompanied by a jake decoy. Most gobblers cannot resist the urge to breed a hen and the presence of an inferior jake will get them fired up. After most hens are bred, they go to nest. Toms and jakes will then be searching hard for any remaining unbred hens. This phase usually occurs during late April or May and one of the best decoy tactics for this time is a single hen looking for love. Montana Decoy offers a full line of turkey decoys to cover any of the situations I mentioned.
Another popular decoy strategy is reaping (a.k.a. fanning). This method uses a real turkey fan or full strut decoy like the Montana Decoy Fanatic XL to approach a tom. It is most effective in open terrain where the hunter can see a gobbler from a ways off. The hunter then crawls behind the decoy until they are within shooting range of the turkey. Be very cautious when fanning a turkey. Safety is important. Have a buddy watching from a distance and be certain no other hunters are in the area.
Another benefit of using decoys is one that many hunters do not consider. They give the eyes of an approaching gobbler something to focus on rather than you, the hunter. Turkeys have excellent vision and will search for the source of the call. Without the presence of a decoy, they may pick out your movement.
Use these tips next time you are in pursuit of a gobbler. One of my favorite sights in the turkey woods is two big toms strutting in tandem, rushing towards the decoys!
Enjoy Creation,
Tyler
Two Hunts, Two Gobblers! – Episode #386
New Video
Watch Rae Woods tag a great gobbler only a few minutes after sunrise! Adam Andrews also punches his tag at The Proving Grounds during opening day of Missouri’s youth season!
Short Clip:
Watch as we recap the hunts of the 2016 hunting season!
New Weekly Blog:
Past intern Jessica Wheatley shares a reflection of her internship experience at The Proving Grounds.
Tip of the Week:
The Fourth Arrow Rex Arm makes filming turkey hunts out of a blind easy and quiet!
How To Get Great Turkey Pictures
We receive lots of questions about how we get quality pictures of turkeys.
We scout and look for turkeys or turkey sign. Once we determine an area turkeys are using we place a Reconyx camera in that area and attempt to have it facing north. The sun is never in the north (in the USA) so the camera is never pointed into the sun. Images from cameras pointed into the sun are often so blurry they are low quality.
An additional step we take is to place the camera low on the tree – about the height of a turkey. Turkeys seem to look best when viewed from their level.
Trail cameras can be a great tool for scouting for turkeys. For M.R.I. (most recent information) I keep a BoneView in my turkey vest. BoneView is a card reader designed specifically for smart phones. When I walk by a trail camera while turkey hunting I simply pull the card and view the pictures on my phone.
Enjoy Creation,
Grant
Last Minute Turkey Calling! – Episode #384
New Video
Watch world champion callers, James and Cody Harrison teach us how to use a diaphragm turkey call! They make running a mouth call easy and it gets a tom fired up! Plus, an update from the field as we visit a recent burn unit and clover plot.
Short Clip:
Watch Grant, James and Cody Harrison sit down and answer questions that many turkey hunters have about the upcoming season!
New Weekly Blog:
Find out how we use trail cameras to prepare for opening day of turkey season!
Tip of the Week:
Blinds can be a great way to hunt with kids and older adults! We are moving our Redneck Hay Bale Blinds to turkey hot spots in preparation for youth season!
Scouting and Early Season Success
March is almost over, and for most of us, it’s time to start scouting for those early season gobblers. We’re all getting excited for turkey season here at The Proving Grounds. One of the ways we’re prepping for it involves the same tools we use to scout deer in the fall.
We’ve moved many of our Reconyx game cameras to spots where they can capture time-lapse pictures of an entire food plot. By doing this, we should be able to see where turkeys are spending their mornings after leaving the roost. Hens tend to seek out openings during the morning while it’s still cool, and where the hens are, toms will follow. Even though their roosts will change over the next month, most of the turkeys will revisit the areas where they have been eating and mating throughout the season.
Setting the camera on time lapse mode and placing it high enough to capture the entire field is a great way to monitor large fields for turkey movements!
Scouting turkeys is an important pre-season strategy, and it can lead to exciting turkey hunts. Find that early morning spot where turkeys are flying down to, and enjoy creation as you hunt the early season.
Enjoy Creation,
Jessica
Patterning Guns and Toms! – Episode #383
New Video
Watch Grant break in the new Winchester 20 gauge! The Long Beard XR holds a killer pattern! The only thing left to do is find toms to chase opening morning!
Short Clip:
There’s still time to practice! Find out what James Harrison has to say about practicing turkey calls!
New Weekly Blog:
If you film turkey hunts, check out these great tips for capturing an awesome turkey hunt this spring!
Tip of the Week:
Make sure you know and understand all baiting and feeding regulations during turkey season in the states you hunt.
