handling this?

[hawglips]

Ronnie's discussion about pecking order brought to mind a situation I encountered a while back. Since there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, I was wondering how others might have handled it.

I located a gobbling bird at daylight my first morning of a 3 day hunt in TX. I was way off, and by the time I homed in and got to the slough he was roosted by, it was really getting too late to move without staying in good cover. As I got to that point, I heard a hen yelp in his vicinity, and then in the next minute or so, I heard at least 4 different hens around him, all sounding like they were on the same side of the slough as he was. It sounded like at least one of the hens could have been as close as 60 or 70 yds from me at that point, and was directly between me and the gobbler. He was gobbling regularly, still in the tree, and the hens were very vocal, also sounding like they were still roosted.

He was about 150 yds to the north on the edge of a slough where a rough row of cottonwoods and larger mesquite grew. The slough ran north and south, and was on my right as I faced the gobbling bird. The slough was sparsely wooded, about 50 yds across, and mostly bone dry due to the dry weather they had recently. There were hens that sounded too close for me to risk crossing the slough to close the distance on that other side. To my left was thick growth that would take a while and much effort to traverse if I were to try to flank him on that side.

Put yourself in my shoes, but assume you were carrying the same calls, gun, ammo, decoys, blind, camo, or whatever else you might normally be carrying on opening day. How would you have handled this situation?

If you answer, try to resist the urge to read what the others have written till after you post, to keep it fresh!

[Stinky J Picklestein]

Since it's Texas, I would have ignored those hens. If fact, I would've busted those hens up. The farms I hunted down there have the most aggressive hens I've ever seen. It's like they'd sprint a half mile to break up the party if they thought a stranger was luring their man.

[guesswho]

I run into situations like that pretty often, I won't hardly waste my time trying to compete with a live hen, much less several hens. The way I see it is I have two options.

1. I'll stay put and let them fly down, then fall in behind them and try to keep up with their posistion by his occasional gobble or some hen talk. If all goes as planned in a couple hours or so his gobbling will increase for a short time telling me it's about time to start the game.

2. I'll leave him and his hens alone for a couple hours and try to find a better situation with another gobbler. If no luck I'll come back to the original gobbler and try to figure out when the time is right. He'll usually let you know.

[hawglips]

Both of those responses are very interesting, and to be honest, I never even considered any of the things mentioned so far in the first two responses. Thanks for putting those out there. I think it's natural to get in a comfort zone, and it's good to hear other ways of approaching the same situation. I reckon the more tricks one has in his bag, the better his chances are.

You know, it really goes against my grain to intentionally bust turkeys out of the trees. I almost feel like I'm violating them or something. I've intentionally done it only one time (in the spring). And that was not hens that were roosted in the tom's "orbit" so to speak, but two jakes that were blocking my approach to a gobbling tom I wanted to move to. So, I never considered something like that at all. But I've done it in the fall, and I guess other than my mental block, there's really no reason that I can see, that it shouldn't be employed in spring situations too. I'll have to work on my mental block....

I also never considered not trying to work this particular roosted tom, regardless of the hens. For me, it was just a matter of how to work him. I usually like my chances with a tom who has multiple hens early in the season (this was one week into the TX season), so it never occurred to me that my efforts might be better spent elsewhere for a while. I am intrigued by Ronnie's #1 option. I'll have to give that some thought for future reference. But, again, I actually enjoy working toms with hens from the roost and typically do pretty good with them, percentage wise. (I am NOT batting .941 with them Ronnie, but for example, counting back as far as I can recall specifically the last 4 seasons, of the 19 birds I've watched die down the gun barrel, 13 of them had at least one hen with them. And during this same stretch, the henned-up toms that got away - that I know of - I can count on one hand. There are probably more, but that's all I can say with certainty had hens with them.)

I'd love to hear a couple more perspectives before I relate what I actually ended up trying to do with this particular bird.

[GobbleNut]

Here's my thoughts (have not read others):
1) In all but the most desperate of situations, it is never good to try an approach where the possibility of being spotted is high. I would not move towards the birds unless I was certain I could do so without being seen. However, in assessing this specific situation, if I thought that I could achieve a better calling set-up by moving closer, and I was certain I could do so without being spotted, I would consider it....
2) Before moving, though, if I don't know the habits of the birds being hunted, I want to find out what they are going to do when they come out of the trees. It could be that they habitually come right towards where I am at, and I need to find that out first. Therefore, I would wait until they flew down and try to get an idea of what they plan on doing. Rios are generally pretty vocal, so I wouldn't hesitate to call a bit, either right before I expected them to fly down, or right after they started flying down. After all, turkey hunting is all about turkey calling,...that is what I am there for, and I want to kill gobblers by having them respond to my calling.
3) Assuming they did not show interest and were obviously moving in another direction, I would then assess how I could move on them, without being seen, and close the distance. Preferrably, that would hopefully include using an approach that would put me in front of their line of travel.
4) I would continue calling at intervals, hoping to rouse interest from a gobbler, but I would fully expect things to go quite after a bit if I have not managed to stir something up. At some point, I would go back to the roost area, determine what the birds did to the best of my feeble abilities, and make a plan for either that evening, or the next morning. ...Then I would explore my entire hunt area carefully, looking for birds, calling a bit, and evaluating all of my options for the next two days of hunting.

[redarrow]

Sit tight.Wait til flydown ,and play it from there.

[guesswho]

I am NOT batting .941 with them Ronnie

You need to remove the batteries from your calculator or I need to watch how I word things in the future

My approach to almost all turkey hunting situations is slow. I hear him, I'm within 100 yards of him and his hens if he has any, the sun's just coming up so I figure I have about 10 hours of daylight to get him about 65 yards closer.

[hawglips]

Well, here's what I decided to do. And humor me a bit here...

Like I said before, I never considered leaving him or waiting or busting the hens. The hens didn't bother me at all, except to keep me from going where I wanted to. I felt penned down with very few options as far as setting up was concerned. I wasn't as close as I would have normally tried to get, because of his hens between us. It was getting too light, so I picked a good tree right there, and sat down. I called a bit to the hens to let them know where I was, and that I was looking for some company, and I got some good response. I didn't do a one or two yelp-and-shut-up-till-they-fly-down thing. I had no idea about their habits (since I just drove in the afternoon before and had only set foot on the property once a year earlier), and wanted the ladies to already be thinking about heading my way before they flew down. So I did my typical, fairly consistent, soft yelping and high clucks and such. This gets back to the dominant/subordinate thing, but my approach is to try to appeal to the lowest ranking bird in the pecking order. I don't want to intimidate the meekest and timidest and most subordinate bird in the woods. At least not in the beginning. That comes later if I think I need to. But at the outset, I try to sound subordinate and sweet, and like I want some womanly company. I'm not convinced I really know what "young" sounds like, because I've heard some awfully old sounding juvenile hens before -- but I use calls that are what my imaginations conjurs up as "young" sounding. I think when working henned up birds, you catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar -- on average. And I'm not really working the tom at all, but the hens. Sometimes the tom will come over anyway, but the hens are the target. So, that's my mindset going in, particularly early in the season when hens are still sociable and before they get cranky and start wanting to stay away from other females so they can nest in peace. (I have a pretty good imagination sometimes. )

Before long I caught glimpses of birds on the ground back through the trees, and I saw the fan of the tom. So, I picked up the pace slightly, still soft and mild in tone. In just a few moments, I could see a hen coming my way, and soon there was a single file steadily walking towards me. And the tom was in the rear.

I then counted the hens as they came down the row of trees to about 40 yds from me, turned to cross the slough left to right in front of me, paused to look my way, then continued on. There were 8 of them. They all did the same thing, like follow the leader. And then the tom was about 20 yds behind the last one trying to keep up while strutting. He turned to cross, stopped and gobbled, I yelped, and then he stuck his head up to look for me.

He turned out to be the biggest all around gobbler I ever shot. (22lbs, 10+ beard, 1-7/16" spurs) And I'm pretty certain he was the big guy that kicked my butt the previous spring there. At least, I imagined that he had to be. So it was sweet revenge.

[guesswho]

Dead bird = right decision.

[Turkey Talker]

you say the area is DRY. where is the water source for these birds? you know they will go there. in that situation i would sit tight and wait until they fly down. when they are in the trees they can see your ass with ease. I would try to call nicely to the other hens focusing in on them as my target. if they come to me great, but if not i am on the move. texas birds are more vocal comparative to these florida birds. so i would keep up with them from behind as they are on their daily walkabout. you got to hold your ground until birds start dusting or breeding, then start calling. At first i would play the "Catching Up to the Flock call" (lost yelps, feeding purrs along the way) then i would go in for the kill after i become noticed by the gobbler (gobbling at me)..hens seem to become irritated with dominant cuts and assembly calls when they are trying to relax/dust bath/or breed. the hens will come and bring that long bearded fellow along the trail of death.

If this doesn't go as planned i would try to stay in tow with the group until the hens leave him. stay out of sight, but let him hear that p*ssy talk.

-Turkey Talker