Turkey Hunting with Bo Pitman of White Oak Plantation
Stuff You’ve Gotta Have
 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.
The most-important element to consistently taking turkeys
is a good cushion. I don’t care how tough you
are, or how much you know about turkeys and turkey hunting,
if you can’t sit still for long periods, you won’t
take a turkey. I’ll sit for hours in the same
place waiting for a turkey to show up. From time to
time, I’ll even take a nap sitting up, knowing
that the turkey may not show up for awhile. If you suffer
from fanny fatigue, you can’t sit in one spot
long enough to take a turkey. In my opinion, a good
cu shion
is the most-important piece of gear a turkey hunter
must have to take a tom. A good cushion is more important
than a really-good gun and really-good shells. Because
if you don’t have a good cushion, and you have
to move around to keep your fanny from going to sleep,
or to get comfortable, you’ll spook the turkey
before you ever have a chance to shoot him. When you
start considering the gear to buy, the first piece you
need to consider is a good cushion to sit on, because
if you get on turkey time and hunt a turkey in a way
that will give you the best chance to take that turkey,
you’ll spend more time using that cushion than
you’ll use your gun, shells, turkey vest, GPS
receiver, compass or even your boots.
Many times I’m asked, “What kind of gun
should I use for turkey hunting?” The simplest
gun you can use is the best gun. But various people
have different reasons for using different guns. Some
people have complications that dictate the type of gun
and sighting device they need to kill a turkey. Personally,
I like a single-barrelled gun with a bead on the end
for sighting. That’s the simplest gun you can
use for turkey hunting, and for me, it’s the best
gun. But I’ve got one hunter who wears tri-focal
eyeglasses. That poor fellow barely can see, and there’s
no way he can see the bead on the end of the shotgun
and the turkey at the same time. So, he uses a red-dot
sighting device. But a sighting device like this creates
complications. This hunter will come in from a morning
of turkey hunting, put his gun in the case and place
it in the trunk. Then he goes out golfing, comes home
and puts away his golf clubs a nd
the shotgun. Two days later, he’s in turkey woods
before daylight, takes his shotgun out of the case,
gets ready to go hunting, turns that red-dot aiming
device on and maybe finds the batteries are dead. Now,
he has a shotgun and no way to aim it. I have quite
a few hunters who use riflescopes on their shotguns.
With the riflescope, you don’t have to get your
cheek down on the stock to aim, and getting your cheek
on the stock is a major problem for many people who’ve
deer hunted often before turkey hunting. So, the scope
solves this problem for them.
I hunt with another fellow, Mr. John E. Phillips, the
owner of this website, who has a major problem canting
his gun. He may be aiming at the turkey and looking
at the bead, but he’s got the gun turned to the
right or the left just slightly and just enough to miss
a turkey. So, he uses a scope on his shotgun to keep
him from canting the gun and to help him to shoot more
accurately. But scopes and red-dot aiming devices have
some complications. When a day’s rainy, the scope
gets wet and your vision’s blurred when you look
through the scope and try to put the crosshairs on the
turkeys. If a piece of cane or broom sage is in front
of the scope, between you and the turkey, it can obscure
your vision and cause you not to be able to aim properly.
If the turkey breaks to run, you have a really--difficult
time swinging your gun and seeing the crosshairs in
the riflesc ope.
There are more complications with scopes and other aiming
devices than you’ll have with a bead on the end
of a shotgun. However, some hunters are better off using
some type of aiming device than the bead on the shotgun.
When you hunt with a bead on the end of the shotgun
as your aiming device, you have to get your cheek down
on the stock. You must be able to see that bead and
superimpose that bead on the turkey’s neck to
shoot accurately. If you have a problem that keeps you
from performing that maneuver correctly, you need some
type of gun or aiming device that solves this problem.
There are pluses and minuses with every shotgun and
each aiming device. You have to decide what suits your
needs the best and allows you to be the most accurate
when you have a turkey in range.
The bottom line on guns and aiming devices –
choose the gun and the aiming device that lets you shoot
the most-accurately from 35 yards to where you’re
sitting. Even though I like a gun with as few complications
as possible, every turkey hunter should have a sling
on his shotgun, especially those who hunt with me. As
a guide, I prefer knowing that the person who’s
walking behind me in the turkey woods has the muzzle
of his gun pointing straight up in the air as he’s
carrying it with his sling rather than having the loaded
gun pointed straight at my fanny as we’re going
through the woods. I’ve learned over the years
that the guns and the turkey shells manufactured today,
in most cases, shoot better than the hunters who carry
them.
For more information on hunting at White Oak Plantation,
call (334) 727-9258, or visit www.whiteoakplantation.com,
or email hunt@whiteoakplantation.com
Tomorrow: Why Your
Gun Doesn’t Shoot Straight
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