What's Your Strategy?

[NiteRunner]

How will you be trying to take down a gobbler this year? Any Particular way you favor?
Run & Gun?
Sit & Call?
Pattern Them?
Etc,

Mostly Run & Gun, and Sit & Call for me.

[Strut10]

Whatver the situation calls for. I could type all day and not list all the ways I've used to seal the deal. Just whatever it takes. I guess you could call my strategy the "Git 'er Done" method.

[M00N]

The way our group hunts in the spring season is we scout pre-season and try to learn their habits a bit. Then we come up a day before the season and single out a particular bird to watch where he roosts that night or where his current strutting zone is. If where he roosts is out of a legal hunting zone we'll setup a blind by his strutting zone or somewhere we think he'll travel instead for the next day. We'll either be blind still hunting the birds based on patterns or if the bird we're after gets harvested or disappears we may walk and use a locator to find another. Once we find another we try to estimate where the bird will be heading and we position ourselves to where we think it is headed and try to call it in to us hoping we guessed correctly. We never stalk turkey sounds nor turkeys, since it's illegal during our Spring season in this state to stalk turkeys.

Edit: I edited this to reword it since it caused issues because people have different definitions for each method of turkey hunting and not everyone has the exact same definition. I didn't want to mislead or start an argument on what the correct definition of any of the hunting methods listed.

[huntn4bucks]

Just like Strut said...whatever it takes. I do a lot of turkey hunting before work so most of the time I locate the turkeys prior to the hunt and sit and call the next morning. If I don't seal the deal within the first little bit after fly-down, I slip out the leave them alone. If it's the weekend and they get by me after fly-down, I'm on the move. I also pattern them during the early season too. Their feeding habits and traveling patterns are somewhat more predictable before the mating season kicks in. Best of luck with whatever strategy you use this spring.

[Strut10]

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Run and gun hunting isn't legal to do in spring gobbler season in this state. Stalking any turkey during that season will get you in serious trouble.

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Sure it's legal. I think you have the wrong idea of what the "run & gun" method is.

"Run & gun" is when you cover large amounts of distance in a msall period of time, stopping to call or locate at some interval. When you "strike" a gobbling bird (get him to respond to your calling) you set up and kill him. It does not involve stalking (which is illegal in PA). Only thing you have to remember in PA when on the "run & gun" is to wear your wonderful blaze orange hat.

[huntn4bucks]

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Only thing you have to remember in PA when on the "run & gun" is to wear your wonderful blaze orange hat.

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Really???

[Strut10]

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Only thing you have to remember in PA when on the "run & gun" is to wear your wonderful blaze orange hat.

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Really???

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Yep. Really.

A couple idiots each year seem to have a hard time differentiating between a 20 lb. featherd critter and a 6 foot tall dude in camo. So rather than hang a guy up by his toenails for mistaking a man for a turkey.......they make 500,000 hunters wear a blaze orange hat while moving.

What more would you expect from a state that won't allow #2 shot for fall turkeys but a .460 Weatherby is legal??????

[redbeard]

Hunt and Hope

[wtnhunt]

My turkey hunting because I have a limited area to hunt them in will be most likely somewhat similar to deer hunting and patterning the birds and then sitting and calling or sitting and waiting with minimal calling.

[Strut10]

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Hunt and Hope

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I like it!!

[Rut-Nut]

Pray, then hunt (while praying)!

[huntn4bucks]

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Hunt and Hope

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I like it!!

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Me too. I guess I use that strategy more than any.

[PAstringking]

roost em...call em...shoot em....eat em!!

seems to work every year

[Rhino]

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Hunt and Hope

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I like it!!

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Me too. I guess I use that strategy more than any.

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Same here and hunt to me means do whatever feels like the right thing to do at the time.

Like Strut, I could write forever on different things I've done hunting turkeys.

BTW...Patterning is just part of scouting turkeys to me. Even though patterning starts before the season, it never ends until the season closes or you're limited out...whatever occurs first.

[Squirrelhunter91]

Mostly what we do is run and gun. It's proved successful for the past three years. Fall and spring.