SPACE-AGE GOBBLERS
GPS Your Hunt Plan
EDITOR'S
NOTE: In preparing for turkey season, you can't know
where you'll hunt. The tom himself will dictate the
place you'll hunt, the type of terrain you’ll
have to cross, and how wet you'll get before you return
to your truck. During the spring while turkey hunting,
I'll usually get lost and need some type of navigational
device. The hand-held GPS (global positioning system)
will aid your scouting and your hunting turkeys this
season.
Just like a good quarterback has several
game plans, depending on what happens during the game,
a turkey hunter needs a game plan that will enable him
to hunt a bird during the entire time he has to hunt.
Often a hunter only plans to go to a spot where he can
hear turkeys gobble from the roost and then try to call
a bird to him. But if that turkey doesn't come in, another
hunter or a predator spooks him, the tom gets with his
hens, or any one of a hundred things happens that prevents
the bird from coming to the hunter,
then the hunt's over. However, by scouting, you can
locate hunt sites you can go to at various times of
the day and have a chance to call a gobbler. To maximize
your hunt time, you must move quickly and quietly from
one location to another by the shortest route, which
a GPS receiver helps you do. If
you've discovered an area while scouting that you want
to hunt, perhaps a spot near a field where turkeys bug,
a loafing site, a strut zone or a feeding site, save
them in your GPS receiver as waypoints. You also can
mark a location where turkeys like to move and breed
before they fly up to their roosts. You can hunt this
plan all day with your GPS
receiver, if you live in a state that allows all-day
turkey
hunting.
For example, if you don't get your
turkey in the morning and you have to move several times
to position yourself to call him, instead of continuing
to fight that bird, you may want to go to a strut zone,
feeding site or loafing area later in the morning where
you may meet that gobbler or another one. You can
pull up the waypoint and punch the NAVIGATE button to
go there. The hunt I made for the Slue-Foot Gobbler
illustrates how a GPS receiver can help you get your
bird. My hunting companions and I had named one bird
that had whipped us repeatedly Slue-Foot because of
his funny gait. This turkey gobbled well from the roost.
Then he would fly down within 60 or 70 yards of a calling
position and strut and drum to get a hen to come to
him. If she didn't show herself, he wouldn't move any
closer to where he'd heard the call. One day I decided
to chase Slue Foot. As he gobbled walking away from
me, I tried to stay close enough to hear him when he
gobbled yet far enough away so he couldn't see me. I
followed him across the top of a ridge and down the
side of the ridge to a little bench where he had set
up a strutting zone.
Slue
Foot could see everything coming up the side of the
mountain from this vantage point. When he gobbled, he
could
spot a hen coming from 150 yards away. I had absolutely
no way of moving close to the gobbler without his seeing
me from the bench. Through my binoculars, I watched
the gobbler until he left the bench and went back up
the mountain. I moved down to the bench, cut brush,
made a natural blind, took a GPS reading on the blind
and then left the area. Before daylight the next morning,
I used my GPS receiver to navigate in to the bench and
the blind from a different direction than the turkey
would come from and waited on him. When I heard Slue
Foot gobble, I gave a few purrs to make him think a
hen had reached his bench before he had. At about 10:00
a.m., I saw Slue Foot coming at about 100 yards. I never
called again as the bird moved down to the bench to
gobble, strut and call up his hens. My hand-held GPS
receiver had allowed me to find the bench and the blind
in the dark and bag Slue Foot.
TOMORROW: GIVE A TURKEY TO A FRIEND
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