SECRETS FOR BAGGING BOW GOBBLERS WITH DAVID HALE AND MARK DRURY

Mark Drury's Secrets To Bowhunting Toms

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.

"Most often when you attempt to take a deer with a bow, you usually stand when you draw to shoot," Mark Drury, founder of MAD calls, says. "However, when you hunt turkeys with a bow, most of the time you'll either sit or kneel. For this reason, a short axle-to-axle bow works much better than a long axle-to-axle bow."

Choose A Large Broadhead:

"I've found that a big, expandable broadhead with at least 1 1/2-inches cutting diameter works much better for putting a turkey down quickly than a conventional broadhead does," Drury explains. "When you shoot turkeys with a bow, use a large cutting-diameter type broadhead." The broadhead not only has to penetrate the vitals, it needs to have a tremendous amount of knockdown power to break the bird down and prevent it from flying off.

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TOMORROW: HUNT IN A BLIND