My and a Buddy are just getting into Turkey hunting and I’m looking for input on what we did and should have done differently.

We scouted a couple of weekends ago and found 2 areas of hardwoods that were tore up from Turkey scratching. First area is across a creek that we have consistently seen turkeys for years while deer hunting. The second area is behind the house with a food plot a few hundred yards away. Cell cam pics have shown the using the plot at varying times from 10am to 5pm.

We showed up Friday afternoon late at about 6:15pm and went and split up to listen at both areas for a Turkey roosting or anything at all that would help us the next morning. Didn’t hear anything. We have not had any luck getting the turkeys to gobble in response to owl hoots and crow calls. Still we walked out the house at 5:20am and over near the second spot and sounded off the owl hoot a few times. Heard nothing. We decided to just head over to the other spot in hopes of getting a response. Walked in to our creek crossing spot and hit the hoot and heard nothing. At this point, it’s starting to lighten up slightly so we decided to just set up in the feeding sign. My Buddy and his son were in a pop up blind and set up near some cover behind a blind.

We had decided that with our inexperience we should probably not call a ton and keep the calls simple. I did most of the calling, sticking to clucks, yelps, a some cuts with yelps. Around 10 minutes between calls mostly on a pot call. Around 6:45 I yelped on the box call and several hens went crazy about 75 yards away cutting or cackling or somethings. Two flew down within 50 yards and feed all around us for an hour or so. They were being very vocal so I kept my calling to a minimum. No gobblers. They moved on and we sat cold calling until about 9:15am and decided we needed to move on.

Since it was near mid morning, we decided we would try the plot where we had seen cell cam pics recently. Rather than walking straight we cut through some thick pines for cover knowing they could be in the plot. Sure enough we got with 20 yards of the plot and there was a hen feeding. We sat down right there knowing that we were lucky to have gotten that close. We had a couple of narrow windows to shoot but not much. Started calling a little hoping there others around that would present themselves. Trying to keep an eye on the hen, we ended up blowing our cover and she flew out. We were good for 20 minutes or better but couldn’t hold it together long enough for other turkeys to come on in. Check the camera and there were 2 hens there. Decided to pack it up and head in for lunch.

That afternoon was slow. We started back at about 2-230 not knowing exactly when to start back. Based on last year we didn’t have a lot action in the afternoons. We split up between the 2 tore up hardwood areas. Tried to get a response to a crow call, nothing. Decided to just sit and cold call and neither of us saw any turkeys. We ended up calling it off at 5:45-6pm.

Sorry for the long post. Based on all that, pointers on anything’s did would be much appreciated.