Turkeys and Barriers

© By Othmar Vohringer

Here is a question I received in the email from a hunter who visited my recent turkey hunting seminar. I would like to share the question and my answer with you because it’s a frequently asked question. The hunter described the following situation.

“I have permission to hunt turkeys on a farm which borders onto a river bottom. On the other side of the 20 to 30 foot wide river is a rocky hillside populated with lots of tall pine trees with open spaces in between, ideal turkey roosting area with easy access to the river bottom. However, there seems to be little food on that side of the river, whereas the farmland has many crop fields. To access the farm fields the turkeys would have to fly across the river. My question is would the turkeys do that provided they roost on the hill side?”

The short answer to this question is; although turkeys can fly quite long distances they do not like to across rivers, canyons and other barriers if they can help it. Unfortunately the hunter did not tell me if he has seen turkeys on the farm or on the rocky hillside. Without knowing this vital fact I was left no choice but to answer the obvious.

Scout both sides of the river, the farm and the rocky hillside, for turkey sign and turkeys present. While turkeys prefer to roost in tall trees on a hill or ridge top they have no hesitation to roost is a river bottom if there are suitable trees available. I suggested to the hunter to check out the river bottom on the farm side of the river and if there are tall trees it is quite likely that the turkeys will use the farm as roosting, strutting and feeding area.

The hunter also should check out the rocky hillside. If that area provides the turkeys with everything they need there is no need for them to fly across the river to access the farm. With the rocky hillside also bordering onto the river bottom it is very likely that the birds find enough food there.

As I said earlier, turkeys do not like to cross any sort of barrier. This is something to consider when you set up on turkeys and call them. Make sure that there are no barriers that prevent the birds from coming to your calling. I had this happen a few years ago. I called a tom and when he came in he just paced back and forth below a little dip in the landscape. After about an hour of calling the tom finally gave up and walked away. When I checked the area where the gobbler paced I found that that little dip was a small and shallow creek not much wider then a couple of feet. The tom could have easily hopped over it but he didn’t.

Barriers come in many forms and we need to be aware of it before we set up. At another occasion a tom refused to cross a cattle fence although all he had to do is tuck his noggin in a bit and walk right under the wire to cross the fence. Downed trees are another barrier that turkeys don’t like and so are roads, thickets, the above mentioned creeks but also sloughs and many other features.

This brings to mind how important it is to scout and get familiar not only with the resident turkey population but also with the lay of the land and how the birds navigate that area.

Related Articles:
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For more information about my turkey hunting seminars and courses visit:
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Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Founding Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit

HS Strut ® Ring Zone™ Turkey Calls

© By Othmar Vohringer

There is no question about it that good calling is an essential part of turkey hunting success. The emphasis in the former sentence is on “good calling” as in getting the right sound and perfect pitch. Turkeys have been called to a great deal by hunters. They have learned to distinguish between a real turkey sound and almost real turkey sounds. This ability has saved many a toms life.

Game call companies go to great length to provide hunters with calls that that sound perfect and are easy to use. One such company is Hunter Specialties ® and I recently ha d a chance to field-test tow of their new friction pot-calls. The package information of the new HS Strut Ring Zone™ Starfire Crystal™ and the Ring Zone™ Ceramic reads, “Scientific testing shows that the Ring Zone™ produces remarkably consistent sounds, more so than other commercial calls. With more accurate and authentic yelps, hunters can call in more turkeys. You can ‘get in their head’ because you can make the same sounds they hear and produce.”

For comparison HS Strut ® provides two oscilloscope frequency charts, one of a real live turkey yelp and the other of the Ring Zone™ call. The similarity of the two charts is remarkable which leads the company to the conclusion. “Turkeys will hear the difference with the Ring Zone™ and you’ll be convinced that all turkey calls are not created equal.”

Am I convinced that the HS Strut ® Ring Zone™ Starfire Crystal™ and the Ring Zone™ Ceramic can make the difference the manufacturer promises? Lets find out.

The moment I looked at the call I noticed that the new calls had a new feature that will greatly enhance the sound of the call. The outer ring on the call is separated with spacers from the mainframe that holds the play surface. This invention serves in my opinion two important purposes. First it will keep your fingers of the calling surface, a mistake many novice turkey hunters make. Second, even if you hold the call wrong by cupping the hand around the bottom of the call you still will be able to get the volume needed. Both, touching the play surface and cupping the hand around the bottom of the call will muffle the sound.

Seeing this new invention was very pleasing, especially knowing from my turkey hunting seminars and working with novice hunters that this is a very common problem with many turkey hunters and HS Strut™ has solved it is great.

Inspecting the calls carefully for manufacturing faults convinced me that the Ring Zone™ is manufactured with great care to detail and the components fitted perfectly together, which is no small feat by mass production standards.

Satisfied that I held a quality turkey call in my hands I was eager to hear how the Ring Zone™ calls sounded. Having hunted turkeys for many years and having specialized in turkey vocalization I pride myself on knowing the difference between a real turkey sound and something that almost sounds like a turkey. Time to find out.

Since I have never used a ceramic call I tried the Ring Zone™ Ceramic first. By the first yelp I produced with the supplied rosewood striker peg I was surprised about the clarity of the sound, the perfect pitch with just the right amount of raspy undertone common to older turkey hens. Yelping is one thing but clucks, cackle and purrs are quite a different story. In the past I have found that most calls can produce a passable yelp but are often fail a bit when producing a purr. Not the so the Ring Zone™ Ceramic, I was able with little effort to produce the perfect purr sound that experienced turkey hunter look for in every quality call.

After I was satisfied that the Ring Zone™ is everything it promised to be I focused my attention on the Ring Zone ™ Starfire Crystal (Image on the left). As expected form a class call, the sound was not as raspy and bit brighter but still at the perfect pitch needed to convince a gobbler to come closer. For me the glass call is the favourite to call a tom form a long distance and the Ring Zone™ Starfire has the power and volume needed to reach that extra distance without sacrificing tone quality.

Conclusion:
With the Ring Zone™ calls Hunter Specialties definitely has given turkey hunters a welcome and in some cases a much needed addition the their bag of tricks to call in even the weariest of toms. I can say with confidence that from now on the HS Strut ® Ring Zone™ calls will have a permanent place in my turkey hunting vest when I am heading out in pursuit of big mature toms.

Images courtesy of: HS Strut ®

For more information on Hunter Specialties game calls and other products visit their website.

Related articles:
Music to a tom’s ears
Turkey calls


Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Founding Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit

Tags: Turkey Calls, H.S. Strut, Hunter Specialties, Ring Zone Turkey Calls

Scouting –Turkey Sign

© By Othmar Vohringer

This weekend I start of my turkey seminar season and to make sure I haven’t left anything important out I went though everything I wrote down again. Sure enough I forgot something that is very important to turkey hunting success and that every hunter should know about. Knowing what sign turkeys leave behind and how to read it.

Hunting is like a stew. To cook a good stew several ingredients are important. Leave one or two out and stew will not taste right. It’s the same with hunting. Several key ingredients are necessary to become a successful hunter. Miss one or several of this ingredients and hunting success becomes a matter of luck. In any hunting endeavor luck is a important ingredient too but it should not be the main ingredient upon which the outcome depends.

One important ingredient in the hunting success stew is learning to find and correctly interpret sign turkeys leave behind. This is an aspect that for some reason gets very little coverage in hunting articles and turkey hunting books.

Turkeys, just like deer, leave tracks and valuable sign that let the observant hunter conclude what route the turkeys take from their roosting tree to the feeding area and back to the roosting trees. From the sign you find you can learn about the birds daily routine, where they eat, where they strut and what they are eating.

In this post I will explain some of the turkey sign we can expect to find and how it can be useful to scouting for the upcoming spring season.

Feathers
Feathers by themselves don’t tell much but they can provide information that in combination with other sign can give the hunter a pretty good understanding of what is going on. Finding a single turkey feather is always a thrill, finding several feathers in an area will tell the hunter that turkeys are present. If a you find several feathers littering the ground in an open area you likely discovered a favorite strutting zone where jake turkeys fight a lot and the big mature toms strut to attract hens.

A large amount of feathers in one small place and some of them bloody means that a predator killed a turkey. This in its self is no big deal, turkeys regularly fall prey to a predator. However, if you find several places in a given area where turkeys have been plucked by predators, you may want to reconsider hunting that area. A few years ago I discovered such predator sign on several locations within a quarter mile and found that the few turkeys that still inhabited the area were extremely skittish and highly paranoid. We hunted for four days and never got a tom close enough for a shot. The only animals that came close, uncomfortably close, where the predators. That area was home to a strong cougar and wolf population. Never again will I hunt an area where I discover more then one spot littered with bloody turkey feathers strewn about within a mile radius.

Droppings

Roosting trees are easily identified because the base of the tree and immediate surrounding are littered with turkey dropping. But the is much more to turkey scat then just identifying a roosting tree. Experienced turkey hunters can tell what sex the turkey is and what the favorite food source is just by looking at turkey droppings.

Tom scat resembles cigarette butts with one end darker and the one lighter colored, often with a hook shaped like the letter “J” at the lighter colored end. Hen droppings usually have no definable shape. By looking closer and breaking the scat apart with a little twig you can see seeds and other hard or indigestible matter that can give you clues to the birds favorite food source. Also the color in combination with undigested food matter can give you clues. Reddish colored scat containing tiny seeds may be an indicator that the turkeys predominantly feed on rosehips.

Tracks

Just like any other animal turkey leave tracks in soft ground or snow covered areas. Just like the feathers, a track by itself doesn’t tell much other then at some time or other turkeys walked here. If you follow the tracks they might lead you to a roosting tree, a strutting or feeding area and that in turn will give you clues how the resident turkey population navigates the terrain. Knowing the travel routs of the turkeys lets you pre establish the exact location to set up the perfect ambush, provided the birds still use the same roosting tree and feeding area when you hunt that given area.

Turkey tracks also can give you clues to the sex of the birds. A mature tom’s middle toe is generally longer than 2½ inch. Jake and hen and hen middle toes are less than 2½ inch long.

Dusting Areas

If you see a shallow depression in dried out sandy streambeds, along old logging roads and field edges in the dry dirt you probably discovered a turkeys dusting area. As I said dusting areas are shallow depressions in dry sandy or dirt ground but often you also can see feathers in them and scratch marks from the turkeys claws. By mid- to late morning turkeys often treat themselves to a dust bath, it helps them to get rid of fleas and other creepy crawlies that pester the birds.

For that the turkey seeks a dry spot as described in the paragraph above. The bird lays down and with his feet scratches the sand or dirt loose and then proceeds to throw the loosed dirt or sand with the help of the wings allover its body.

Drag Marks

When toms leave the roosting tree they strut and gobble as they make there way to the open fields in search of hens. A strutting tom often leaves distinct wing drag marks to the left and right of his tracks on the soft ground or in the snow. Remember where you have seen this drag marks and note them on your map or in the GPS as a waypoint. The drag marks can provide you information of a toms favorite strut zone or route he walks.

Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Founding Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit

Tags: Turkey Hunting, Turkey Seminar, Turkey Hunting Spring Season, Turkey Scouting Sign, Turkey Tom, Turkey Hunting Strategies

The pros and cons of diaphragm turkey calls

© Othmar Vohringer

The diaphragm turkey call has been around for many years but became really popular about ten years ago. The first type of these calls were made by hunters looking for a different call that didn’t involve movement to coax a tom closer for the last few steps needed to get a good killing shot.

The first crude diaphragms date back to the late 40’s and early 50’s and were fashioned from condoms (true) and plumber lead. Boy, have times changed since then! While modern diaphragms are still made predominantly of latex material, the variety of calls available is overwhelming.

Today many turkey hunters will carry up to a dozen calls in their pockets. Diaphragm calls are available in single, double, triple, quadruple and stacked layers producing raspy, loud, soft, low and high pitched sounds and everything in between. But are diaphragms as good as the advertising and articles written about them claim they are?

Let’s look at the pros and cons of diaphragms and at the end of this article you will be able to decide for yourself if the diaphragm is suitable for you or not.

The biggest advantage is that diaphragms are very affordable. For the price of a quality box call a hunter can purchase a dozen or more diaphragm calls. These calls are practically weightless. This lets the avid turkey hunter carry a great variety of calls with ease and without the bulk of box and slate calls. Diaphragms let you make every turkey sound in a variety of pitches and volumes imaginable. Best of all, there is no movement involved whatsoever when calling. This can make all the difference when that big tom is within sight but still needs to take a few more steps, or when you need to “say” something to him to make him raise his head for a clear shot.

Another advantage of a diaphragm call is that you can use it in conjunction with a hand-operated call such as a slate or box, simultaneously. This opens up a new opportunity to add variety and realism to your calling tactics. Sounding like several birds all at once might be just the ticket you need to bring that call-shy mature tom in. Now that I have told you about the advantages of diaphragms it is only fair that I tell you about the disadvantages too.

The diaphragm call is not easy to learn and most hunters never get really good at using them proficiently. I know of hunters that have been using these calls for many years and still don’t manage to get a few realistic sounds from them.

It takes thousands of hours and real dedication to become proficient at calling with diaphragms. The professional championship callers have spent untold hours of practice over years to reach the level of perfection they have achieved. But many every-day hunters just don’t have the time, drive and dedication that is needed to become really good at calling turkeys with a diaphragm. Yet, due to the popularity of these calls, every turkey hunter owns and uses them and turkeys have heard them all, especially the heavily hunted birds.

The diaphragm call, or shall I say the lack of proficiency of the callers, is largely to blame for turkeys having become call-shy and thus hard to hunt. Oh sure, many gobblers have been called in and shot by average callers but these are the young and dumb jakes. That reminds me of a time when I called in a jake simply by pulling a rusty wire on a cattle fence through the equally rusty wire clamp that attached it to the fencepost. It made a screechy noise that faintly resembled a yelp and it worked. Another time I was running a pocket knife blade along the rim of an opened old tin can and that worked too. But if you’re after a mature tom, one who has survived a few hunting seasons, then it is not that easy to fool the bird with an “almost like a turkey” sound.

With everything being equal, a successful turkey hunter is one who knows a turkey’s vocabulary and is able to reproduce each sound perfectly. I have often said it is not nearly as important how many calls you can make, as it is how well you can call. There is a huge difference between sounding exactly like a turkey or just almost like one. This simple fact comes nowhere more to bear then on places where turkeys are under pressure or if you’re after a boss gobbler. Never underestimate a turkey’s intelligence or be mislead into thinking that an older and wiser turkey does not know exactly what he sounds like. He knows.

It is by no means necessary to become a Grand National Champion to be a good turkey caller with a diaphragm, but the closer you can get to that perfect sound the higher your chances are to become a successful hunter. The bottom line is that it needs time and dedication plus lots of practice. Do that and you will be head and shoulders above the rest. With lots of practice and time you will be able to get the entire turkey vocalization repertoire with a diaphragm. Not only that but you will also learn to control the airflow and tongue pressure to change the pitch and volume. This will enable you to sound like a whole flock of turkey hens without having to change calls.

Despite the content of this article and the fact that I believe that the diaphragm is the best all-around call for those that truly master it, in my opinion, the diaphragm call is the last on my list of favorites. My preferred calls of choice are the box and slate calls. I simply like the physical part of holding something in my hands and the reality of the sound from a well-tuned quality box or slate call simply cannot be beat. Besides that, box and slate calls are easy to learn and that makes these calls, in my opinion, the perfect tom getter for every hunter. Even veteran turkey hunters would never make the mistake of leaving home without a collection of trusted box and slate type friction calls to supplement his calling arsenal.

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Tips for using and maintaining diaphragm calls

• Diaphragm calls need to be fitted to your mouth to be comfortable. To size the diaphragm correctly, trim the skirt with a pair of small scissors to fit comfortably against the roof of your mouth. Start by trimming a little and then more if needed. Remember, you can always cut off more but you can’t add it back once it’s cut.
• If you suffer from gagging reflexes purchase diaphragm calls with a “palate plate” or “bridge” that prevents the call from sitting flat or sticking against the roof of your mouth. This style has somewhat proven to help people who suffer from gagging reflexes.
• Some people have minor allergic reactions to the latex and others do not like the sour taste of the diaphragm call in the mouth for long periods of time. By pouring a few drops of diluted mouthwash in the call’s storage container the sour taste and the allergic reaction may be reduced.
• Carry the calls in a small case or pouch with compartments that lets you store each diaphragm individually. When the calls are not in use for a period of time slip a flat toothpick between the reeds to prevent them from sticking together.
• A good way of identifying one diaphragm out a collection without looking at them is by cutting notches in the frame. A single notch for a single reed call, two notches for a double reed and so on. This allows you to select the call you want in the dark without having to use the flashlight and alert the birds to your presence.

Related article: Music to a tom’s ears (A guide to better turkey calling)

Find more articles about turkey hunting and information about my turkey hunting seminars and courses on Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Founding Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit

Tags: Turkey Calling Tips, Diaphragm Turkey Calls, Turkey Hunting