SECRETS FOR LAST-MINUTE GOBBLERS WITH MARK DRURY
Tough Last-Minute Gobblers
EDITOR'S
NOTE: This week Mark Drury, award-winning turkey caller,
the creator of MAD Calls, avid hunter and outdoorsman
and co-owner and developer of Drury Outdoor Videos,
will teach you the secrets for hunting last-minute gobblers.
Hopefully this season you won't lose your job, your
wife or your sanity when you hunt turkeys.
Last season I was hunting with an outdoor writer from
Alabama, John Phillips. We'd hunted for four days and
hadn't gotten
close enough to a turkey for John to take a shot. We'd
had wind, rain and every kind of bad weather that a
turkey hunter can experience during that time. As we
were driving back to camp for John to pack up his gear
and leave, we stopped to make one final call on a ridgetop.
To our surprise, two turkeys gobbled. We ran and looked
over the ridge and spotted three longbeards. We were
lucky in that we saw the turkeys before the turkeys
spotted us. They were moving down a valley. So, we backed-up,
ran across the mountaintop so the birds couldn't see
us and got out in front of the turkeys in the direction
they were walking. We were using the excited hen yelp
as well as cutting.
Our
guide Chis Comstock and myself were both calling. I
was in front of Chris with John, and Chris was behind
us with the TV camera. So, there was separation between
the two callers, which was very important for us to
sound like two excited hens. We were using two different
calls with different tones. Because we had separation
between the two of us, we easily sounded like two different
hens. We wanted to sound like two hens walking through
the woods, calling back and forth to each other, to
not only pull the gobblers down the valley, but up the
ridge where we'd set up to take the shot. John and I
were sitting in a fencerow and had cut some brush to
put around us to make us look like part of the fencerow.
We were wearing Mossy Oak camouflage, which made us
invisible. The fence row was brushy,
so we felt certain that when the turkeys reached the
fencerow, they would turn and come up the hill toward
us. Just behind us was an open gap in the fence row
which would allow the turkeys to cross over into the
next field. We looked at our watches, realizing that
time was getting away from us and that more than likely
as soon as John squeezed the trigger and took one of
those turkeys, we'd have to grab the bird, run for the
truck, get John back to camp, hurriedly pack his gear
and rush to the airport. As luck would have it, the
three gobblers pushed the time to the limit. Just as
the birds were within 30 yards, John squeezed the trigger,
and we grabbed the downed bird and ran to the truck.
Turkeys have a way of pushing you to the limits.
You can log on to www.druryvideos.com or call 1-800-990-9351
to order videos from Drury Outdoor Productions that
feature the latest in hunting adventures and information
and feature Mark and Terry Drury.
TOMORROW: WHY I'LL BET ON CALLS THAT HAVEN'T HELPED
ME WIN TURKEY-CALLING CONTESTS
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