I’m always looking for good hints and things to help me in the pursuit of whatever it is I’m after.  This time of year it’s turkeys.  I recall a wonderful spring day last year when Dry Dog was on his first ever turkey hunt.  You can read the whole story on this site.  Search Dry Dog and the story will come up.  Any way, I remember at first light a gobbler that was roosted very high up on the mountain, nearly a half a mile away, came sailing down.  An awesome site for me to witness.  Well, the following bit of information I found lends itself very well to what I have learned about turkeys the past few years.

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Usually you won’t find a turkey roosted very far from a water supply and if they can find a tree situated over running water, that is ideal. In any area, look first at the large trees with good horizontal branches near water. In my neck of the woods, that means large oaks and sycamores and further west, cottonwoods. If the terrain is hilly, try and find trees right below the ridge tops that are on the leeward side of the prevailing winds for that time of year. If they can, turkeys like to climb up above the roost on the ridge top and fly down to their roosting tree. They then will usually glide down below when they fly down in the morning. Many times the turkeys in my area will utilize large cedars or occasionally pines when available to further escape cold winter winds.

It is also possible to locate roosts by doing lots of walking through an area and looking for the large wing and tail feathers which often fall out when the turkey is flying up or down from the roost. You can also look for piles of droppings which can be quite large when a turkey uses a roost tree consistently. Droppings usually last until they are rained on which will also help you determine how long ago turkeys were in the area.

Perhaps the easiest and surest way to find roost trees is to get there either first thing in the morning or at sunset and listen for the birds flying up to roost or calling on the roost. Most people have heard of the term “roosting a bird” and this means you have been out that evening and found out, by owl calling or just listening, the tree a gobbler has roosted in.

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How much truth is in what this author has said has yet to be determined, but I for one have got to believe most of it.  We will find ourselves at or very near the same spot Dry Dog was in last year.  Hopefully that well educated bird will come winging down into the same place only this time a “heavy load” of gobbler getter will take him down!

Bears Butt

April 29, 2012