Reflecting On My 2019 Turkey Season

My 2019 spring turkey season included a series of firsts for me.

• Saw my first bearded hen
• First time I tagged two toms
• First time hunting public land
• First time hunting 3 different zones

The First Tom

I did a lot of hunting with my friend and hunting mentor, Doug. The day before the opener, he scouted a spot for us to set up. He had seen some activity in this spot earlier in the week so we made sure to show up extra early on opening day. Under the cover of dark we sneaked in and sat underneath a tree. As the sun started to shine, we began to lose hope as we heard a lot of activity far off in the distance. All of a sudden there was a loud scratching noise followed by the unquestionable sound of a turkey flying down out of the roost. A hen had been sitting 25 feet directly above our heads in the same tree we were sitting against. The heart rate immediately went up! The feeling of despair quickly turned to hope. We both thought, what better decoy to have than a live hen 15 yards in front of us. We waited and waited but a tom never came for the hen. We continued to hear quite a bit of activity all around us and eventually went searching for it. And so began the next 3-4 days of hunting. Hearing sounds in the distance but never able to close the gap. We saw a few hens, even a few jakes, but never a tom.

I spent the last few days of the first week hunting the same woods alone. One morning, I finally pinpointed a tom that was fired up. I couldn’t get him to come closer so I figured, I would close the gap. I jogged about half a mile, shotgun in one hand, decoy in the other. As I got closer to where I thought he was, he belted out a loud gobble, the kind you can feel reverberate through your body. I immediately dropped where I was and here he came out strutting and gobbling 30 yards away. And there he stayed, 30 yards away through thick cover - circling me and, in my mind, mocking me. An opportunity at a shot never presented but the one thing I learned was where this tom was looking for a mate, right in the thick of a red pine stand. The next morning, which happened to be the last day of Season A, I approached that red pine stand from another direction. One that didn’t put thick cover between me and the pines. As I got out of my truck, I heard him gobble a number of times before I even closed my door. I knew this was the day it was going to happen. I quietly sneaked in, set up a decoy, and within 15 minutes here comes the same tom, all fired up, drumming and spitting. Sure enough a few minutes and one 3-inch #5 shell later, my first tom on public land and of 2019 was on the ground.

The Bearded Hen

I didn’t have a tag for Season B so I had to anxiously wait for Season C. I spent Season C hunting two different zones with Doug. We saw plenty of toms but never in a situation that presented a shot. During this season, I saw two things I had never seen before. First, I saw a bearded hen. As Doug and I sat in a blind we saw this turkey come out into the field in front of us. It was immediately identified as a hen. If you hunt turkeys long enough, you can quickly identify a hen by some certain telltale signs. The size of the body, the color of the head, and even the color of its feathers all indicated we were looking at a hen. So we went back to relaxing. As it started to circle away from the blind, Doug and I kind of looked at each other because we weren’t sure of what we were seeing. Doug scoped the bird to double check and sure enough, it was a bearded hen.

Another First

Later in the season, we started hunting some public land that neither one of us had hunted before. We spent a lot of time looking at maps and found a spot that we thought would present a great opportunity. As we were driving up, there was a tom in the middle of the road actively mating with a hen as two other hens scrambled around. We drove straight at them to break it up. The tom took off, flying ahead of us and to the left. The hens ran into the woods to the right. Doug and I thought this couldn’t have worked out any better. We’d get out, set up directly between the tom with a hen decoy. Using some hen yelps, the tom would come right to us. That day was just not our day. We heard some gobbling but nothing ever came back to that area. We spent the next few days running around the same area. We always heard turkeys close by but never got eyes on one. We both learned a lot during Season C, and I saw two things I had never seen before (a bearded hen and a tom actively mating a hen), but filling a tag just wasn’t in the cards.

The Second Tom

Season D came around and I was back to solo hunting in the same woods that I got my previous tom. I scouted out some spots and immediately knew I was on the right path to a successful season. One of my days was spent having two hens circle my decoy for 45 minutes just 10 yards in front of me. The next day, I asked Doug to come along and call for me. I got to the spot first and once again, before I even closed the door to my truck, I heard the turkey I wanted to pursue. As Doug pulled up and opened the door I said “Be quiet! I just heard the bird I’m going to kill.” From my truck he sounded about 200 yards away. We sneaked in and I sat up about 15 yards in front of Doug and had my decoy another 20 yards ahead on a logging trail halfway between the peak of the hill and the base. Doug began calling and the tom just seemed to be hung up on something 100 yards away. Doug mimicked a fly down followed by some hen calls and all of a sudden boom! The tom had come running over, closing the distance in the matter of seconds, and began strutting at the peak of the trail. Ten seconds later, only 10 minutes into the hunt, my second tom was on the ground.

It was still so early in the day that we packed up the decoy, I gave my gun to Doug, and we went to another spot looking for another tom. After getting set up and doing some calls, we heard a tom about half a mile away. I suggested we pack everything up, hop back in the truck, and get closer to the tom. I was sure I knew exactly where he was gobbling from. Unfortunately I was a little too accurate. We parked the truck, got out and started walking down a trail when once again, the unquestionable noise of a bird that should be too big to fly took off crashing through all the branches above, flying off never to be seen by us again. Although it wasn’t meant to be that day for Doug, he ended up tagging a really nice tom on his property later in the season.

Tagging two toms during the spring season is something I’m incredibly proud of. In both cases, I knew it was going to happen. My scouting efforts and lessons from each and every day stacked up to tagging two toms. If you look at the total harvest numbers, only 18% of turkey hunters fill their tags in Wisconsin. I was lucky enough to fill two.

I also learned that I prefer running after and closing the distance on toms a lot more than setting up and trying to call the tom to me.

Let me know how your 2019 season went or what you’re most looking forward to for your 2020 season in the comments below.