Turkey Hunting with Bo Pitman of White Oak Plantation
The Cussing Gobbler
Editor’s
Note: Bo Pitman can’t remember when he hasn’t
hunted turkeys. For more than 20 years, he’s guided
and hunted turkeys at White Oak Plantation near Tuskegee,
Alabama, a 30,000-acre-plus hunting lodge that has some
of the best turkey hunting in the nation. From March
14th to the end of April, Pitman’s in the woods
of White Oak hunting turkeys every day. With stands
of hardwood timber, pine plantations and fields dispersed
throughout the property, White Oak’s ideal habitat
for the Eastern wild turkey. Each season, 30 to 50 hunters
bag from 35 to 55 turkeys off this property. I don’t
know any other place in the nation with more gobbling
Eastern turkeys than White Oak. This week, we’ll
ask Pittman what’s required to take a longbeard,
and what we need to know to increase our odds for taking
gobblers this spring.
One of the biggest problems turkey hunters face is
being still and patient enough to take a turkey. Our
whole society’s motivated by “Get it done
quickly, get it done now, and those who wait, lose.”
But when you’re hunting turkeys, just the opposite
is true, because you have to wait for that turkey to
come to you, if you hope to get a shot at him. If you
don’t get a shot at him today, you have to go
back tomorrow and wait for him again. I’ve spent
from daylight to dark not moving more than 100 yards
because to be where a gobbler wants to go, you have
to know where the gobbler wants to go before he knows
it. This is especially true of really old turkeys. Turkeys
learn more than people think they do, especially old
gobblers. A gobbler that’s survived until he’s
4- or 5-years old knows every hen’s call in the
area where he lives. He also can tell the difference
between a turkey call and a hen call. He knows each
trick and tactic played by
turkey hunters, and although he may have his core area,
he rarely ever does the same thing every day. The Cussing
Gobbler is a classic example. This ole turkey got his
name, the cussing gobbler, because he’d beaten
me and the other guides so many times. There was no
way to describe this bird without invoking some kind
of hatred and frustration resulting in derogatory and
profane names for the gobbler. Normal words generally
used to describe turkeys just didn’t fit this
old gobbler. I met very few people who hunted this turkey
and didn’t curse him because he’d beaten
them so badly. Without question, he was one of the finest
and the smartest gobblers we ever had at White Oak.
I believe this turkey was 10-years old or older, because
he was a mature gobbler when I first started hunting
him, and I hunted him for five years. Although we’d
get close from time to time, we never could take him.
I learned a lot about how to hunt mature, smart turkeys
from this gobbler. This bird would fly down out in the
middle of a field and gobble his brains out. He was
one of the best gobbling turkeys we had in the region.
Many mornings, I watched him call in his hens, breed
his hens and then leave the field. If I called to him,
he’d take off running. He was one of those big-headed
toms that had a head like a bulldog and a big heavy
frame. There were two fields where he usually always
hung out. I’d spend 5 to 10 days each season trying
to take that turkey in those fields. Finally, I realized
that the only way I’d get that old bird was to
set up an ambush for him and not call, because he definitely
wouldn’t come to a call. There was a small woods
road cut between the two fields. This little road offered
the easiest way for the gobbler to travel from one field
to the other. Usually, I’d hunt this road one
or two times
a season by simply creating a blind on the side of the
road and putting my hunter in the blind with me to see
if the Cussing Gobbler would walk that road that day.
Finally, one day I was hunting with Steve Harper of
Sanford, Florida, and I told him about the Cussing Gobbler.
Steve made the decision that whatever it took, he wanted
to try to bag that turkey. The next morning, Steve and
I woke up before daylight and went to sit in that little
blind beside the road. I told Steve before we went out
hunting, “We may sit here all day and see nothing,
because I’m sure this turkey doesn’t walk
this road every day. If we don’t see him today,
we’ll go back tomorrow, and we may have to sit
in that blind all day in that same spot again. But if
you’ll be patient and sit still, we’ll be
able to kill the cussing gobbler.” Steve agreed
to the plan.
On the morning Steve and I went to hunt him, we got
in our blind before daylight, heard the bird fly down
out in the field and listened to him gobble like a politician
trying to drum up votes. Every time that bird gobbled,
I’d have to mentally fight the urge to pick up
my slate call and give him just one or two yelps. As
I started reaching for the call, a voice deep down in
my soul would say, “Don’t do it, Bo. If
you call to him, you won’t take him.” So,
from daylight until 4:30 pm, we sat still in that blind
and listened to that turkey gobble, breed hens, strut
and drum. Finally, at 4:30 pm, I saw the Cussing Gobbler
coming down the road. I told Steve to get ready. I knew
that today
was the day this old bird that had been tormenting me
for so long was about to go to that great roost tree
in the sky. Steve had his gun up and was ready to make
the shot, but I wanted the turkey to get really close
so that there was no way Steve could miss. When the
bird was at 35 yards, I told Steve he was almost within
killing range, but we let him come a little closer.
Finally, when the old gobbler was at 25 steps, I told
Steve to take him. For the rest of my life, I’ll
always see and remember what happened.
At the report of the shotgun, the Cussing Gobbler turned
quickly and started running back down the road the way
he’d come. He gathered himself up, got his wings
out and went airborne. The bird flew about 300 yards,
landed in a big tree and stood there looking back toward
where the shot had come. I still can see that gobbler
now standing in that tree with his neck bobbing back
and forth, looking for us. I turned to Steve and said,
“That’s good. You didn’t hurt him.
You missed him clean, and it looks like he’ll
survive another season. That @#!?&*@ ole turkey
just out-turkeyed us again today.” Just as we
were getting up to leave, I looked back at the @#!?&*@
Cussing Gobbler and he began to rock back and forth.
Then all of a sudden, like someone had hit him right
between the eyes with a baseball bat, he fell backwards
out of that tree. The bird didn’t flutter or flop.
He just fell stone-cold dead off that limb. We went
over and recovered him. He had some of the longest spurs
of any tom ever taken at White Oak Plantation. Over
the years, that @#$%*&@ ole turkey taught me that
an old turkey can learn. He learned the voices of the
other turkeys there, all the calls of the hunters in
his area and all the tricks that turkey hunters tried
to play on gobblers. From that turkey, I learned that
if you’re willing to wait, and if you learn to
hunt on turkey time rather than your own time, you can
take old gobblers.
For more information on hunting at White Oak Plantation,
call (334) 727-9258, or visit www.whiteoakplantation.com,
or email hunt@whiteoakplantation.com
Tomorrow: Understanding Turkey
Time
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