Early Season Turkey Tactics

It's not unusual for gobblers to be less than totally hot in the early part of the season. The breeding season is just getting underway and the hens are not usually receptive early on.

If you are lucky enough to hear aggressive gobbling, jump on it and return it in kind with aggressive calling. The early, hot bird may be your easiest gobbler of the season.

More commonly, you will hear one or two gobbles in the tree and then nothing after fly-down. This usually indicates that the gobbler has hens with him or that the gobbler isn't really into breeding yet.

The bold play is to move right in with aggressive calling and try to call the hens or to fire up the gobbler. The cautious move is to wait until mid-morning, move in carefully and call softly at first, getting more aggressive as you go along.

Both tactics can work sometimes, but no one can really tell you, which one will work best on any given day.

Camo Tune Up

The camouflage clothing you wear after ol' tom turkey also is important. Old, faded, dull and dirty camouflage is less effective than bright, sharp patterns and colors. The sharp, contrasting pattern of new camo breaks up your overall shape, creating visual confusion, which is the purpose of camouflage.

For color-seeing animals, such as turkeys, correctly contrasting natural colors enhance this effect. Both of these basic camouflaging dynamics lessen as the pattern fades.

For the turkey hunter, camo also must match the habitat in both shape and color. The varying degrees of brown found in leaf litter and the grays of tree trunks are the predominant colors in mature hardwoods. Many turkey hunters, most of whom sit on the ground at the base of trees, wear brown leaf-pattern pants and gray bark/limb-patterned tops.

During the spring turkey season the woods change color from the gray/brown of early spring to deeper, brighter shades of green by the end of the season. Some hunters have a second half camo clothing set, featuring more green, for late-season hunting.