SECRETS FOR BAGGING BOW GOBBLERS WITH DAVID HALE AND MARK DRURY

Hunt With A Team

EDITOR'S NOTE: A bowhunter truly challenges himself when he tries to take a longbeard with a bow. Instead of bagging a gobbler at 40 yards with the slight movement of a shotgun, a hunter who wants to take a bird with a bow usually must hunt the wary gobbler at 20 yards or less. Then once he gets the bird close, he has to draw, aim the bow and release the arrow at a very small target. To learn the best way to bag your gobbler with a bow, two of the nation's leading turkey hunters, Mark Drury, the founder of M.A.D. Calls, now a division of Outland Sports, and David Hale, one of the founders of Knight & Hale Game Calls, reveal their bow-gobbler secrets.

Sometimes David Hale employs a unique strategy for bagging toms that matches the skill and expertise of the hunter to the turkey-hunting situation.

"When I hunt with a good bowman who hasn't hunted or called turkeys very much, I like to use a three-man team to get the novice turkey hunter a shot," Hale says. "We'll set a turkey decoy in front of the blind to get the bird's attention. Then the archer can concentrate on his equipment and making the shot. The second man in the blind describes the turkey's movement and tells the bowman when he should take the shot at the turkey without spooking the bird. The third hunter, the caller, sits 10 to 20 yards behind the blind, calling to the turkey and trying to work the bird in front of the archer. With this technique, an archer without much hunting experience can go into the woods and have a fairly good chance at success in taking a tom with a bow."

To learn more about John E. Phillips' turkey-hunting books, click here.

TOMORROW: THE TWO-MAN TEAM