Show Notes
As we reach the end of the deer hunting season here in the North East, we are SUPER EXCITED to start diving into some uncharted territory for us…TURKEY HUNTING! In this episode of The Wing and Tail Boys, Angelo and Chris are joined by Turkey Enthusiast Kevin Creeley to discuss the beginnings of turkey hunting for the ABSOLUTE BEGINNER. The speakers discuss the importance of understanding turkey behavior, common mistakes beginners make, and the significance of pre-season preparation. They emphasize the need for diverse habitats to support turkey populations and provide practical tips for locating and hunting turkeys effectively. In this conversation, Kevin Creeley shares his insights on turkey hunting, focusing on effective scouting techniques, the importance of roosting, and the use of locator calls. He discusses the maturity of turkeys and the ethics of hunting, emphasizing the thrill of the hunt and the strategies involved, including the run and gun versus sit and wait methods. In this conversation, Chris and Kevin discuss various strategies for turkey hunting, focusing on how to find turkey signs, set up hunting spots, and the differences between running and gunning versus sitting and waiting. They explore the importance of understanding turkey behavior, the significance of noise while scouting, and the tactics for calling turkeys effectively. The discussion also touches on hunting regulations and the benefits of having a structured hunting schedule.
Show Transcript
Chris (00:02.21)
Sounds of the podcast. What is going on guys? Thanks for joining us here for another episode of the Wing and Tail Boys. As we record today, it is January 23rd. We are pretty much at the end of deer season just about everywhere except down south if I'm not mistaken. So like we said in our last episode, it's time to start talking about some stuff that don't really involve deer. And today we're gonna dabble in something that Angelo has a little bit of experience in. I have literally zero experience in.
Kevin Creeley (00:03.822)
You
Chris (00:30.148)
and we're gonna be talking with Kevin Creely today about turkey hunting for the beginner. Someone who's never done it before, I wanna get into it, where do I get started? Like I said, we're joined here by Kevin Creely. How you doing today,
Kevin Creeley (00:43.089)
Dude, I'm freaking pumped to not be talking about deer hunting. I'm not gonna lie. I'm deer hunted out and I, on my podcast, have not started putting turkey content out yet, but since I started the show, which I've been at it, I guess, for about six months now or so, about the same as you guys, that's been like the thing I've been looking forward to more than anything is turkey content and I haven't had the...
Chris (00:46.808)
You
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:10.576)
pleasure of producing any turkey content yet because it's just not timely, you know? And I've been like trying to control my want, I guess, to produce turkey content because I don't want to start too early. Because I don't want like, if my listeners are still juiced up on deer hunting, I don't want to start talking about turkey hunting. But when you texted and asked if I'd come on and talk about turkey hunting, I was like, done, please, yes, you know?
Chris (01:15.33)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:27.096)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:37.432)
He said yes, yes, absolutely. Let's do that
Kevin Creeley (01:40.56)
Yeah
Angelo (01:40.718)
Well, you know, it's funny you say that because it's almost like, you like you said, you're dying to not be talking about deer hunting stuff. And, you know, it might not be timely, but it's refreshing to have something different be out there besides deer stuff. So even though they might be still out there in the deer woods, still figuring some stuff out, it's nice to throw in a curve ball here and, you know, happy to have you come on and talk while you're all excited and stuff because
Kevin Creeley (01:48.73)
Mm-hmm.
Angelo (02:08.514)
It won't be too long that we'll be sick and tired of talking about turkey hunting and we'll be talking about something else. You know what mean? So it goes quick. It goes quick. These days go by fast.
Kevin Creeley (02:11.93)
That never happens.
Kevin Creeley (02:18.308)
Nah, I hear you man, for sure, for sure.
Chris (00:01.063)
So one of the things that I think is really cool about podcasting, which is different from listening to a news station or watching something on TV, is it seems like when you watch the outdoor channel, everything seems to be date specific. So if it's deer season, there's deer hunting on the outdoor show. If it's turkey season, there's turkey hunting. If it's fishing season, it's fishing. The beautiful thing about podcasting...
is people can bookmark stuff, save episodes, download stuff, you know? So if you're listening to this and you're not quite in turkey mode yet, just bookmark the episode, download it, save it, whatever you gotta do, and just know that it's there when it's time for you to start getting ready for turkey season. One of the things I'm, just man up and listen, exactly. So one of the things I wish I would have done is like,
Angelo (00:41.345)
or just man up and listen. That's it.
Kevin Creeley (00:41.422)
for sure.
Yeah.
Chris (00:49.711)
I feel like sometimes I get into, whether it's turkey mode, deer mode, fishing mode, whatever, a little too late where I start to look for the content way, way too late. Like I should be implementing what's in those podcasts by the time I'm listening to them kind of thing. You know what I mean? So hope, you know, it seems like a decent segue for the, you know, the time it is. Like I said, it's January 23rd. I'm seeing a shit ton of Turkey walking around in groups. Now I don't know about you guys, but, you know, if I'm driving around this time of year,
If I'm driving around and I'm seeing pockets of or groups of Turkey walking together, is that something worth taking note of now? Like putting a mark on on X or a GPS pin or something? Is it worth paying attention to where they are at this time of year?
Kevin Creeley (01:33.228)
Well, mostly it's just, it's it's good to know that there is turkeys in the area. You know, there's turkeys on that property. It doesn't necessarily mean that you show up, you see 70 hens in a field and you show up spring morning to hunt those turkeys and the same 70 turkeys are going to be there. Kind of similar to how deer and bachelor groups in the summertime all throughout the rest of the year, with the, with the exception of the spring time, turkeys will flock up like that, especially this time of year when it's real cold and they'll flock up together like that and get in big.
big social groups, but that will break up. So, is it really something to note? Like, I saw turkeys in that field. Maybe not. Cause there could just be like a, type of food source that they favor in that field right now. That's not going to be there in April, you know, but it's just good to know that there's turkeys on the property. That's a huge thing right there. I mean, that's actually like, like I said, I wrote some notes down for this podcast and step one is have a place to hunt turkeys that has turkeys. So
Chris (02:29.617)
Right, okay. Yeah, and that goes hand in hand with what we talked about the other day where it's like, you if you want to shoot 150 inch deer, there's gotta be 150 inch deer there to hunt. You know what I mean? So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Angelo (02:31.576)
Ahem.
Angelo (02:41.315)
And we should always be looking for areas where we can hunt, right? So no matter what it is, whether we're shed hunting right now, whether we're snow tracking deer right now, you're still gonna see turkey prints in the snow. You're still gonna see whatever other animal you're trying to track and get an inventory on. If you have a certain amount of woods, a lot of people are just hunting tracks of public land. You should always be looking to inventory. should always be looking to gain knowledge whenever you can. So even though it's not turkey season,
If I go through and I'm seeing a bunch of turkey scratching, if I'm seeing some turkey tracks, if I'm seeing flocks of turkey in areas that are just outside of where I can hunt, they're probably going to be spending time on the property that I'm hunting. Can I start to figure out where they're accessing, where they're coming from? You know, are there certain roosting patterns that they have where, you know, once the spring comes around, they start to move over to a certain patch of woods or are they only roosting in some
evergreens right now since they're the only things with cover. Those are all things that I like to take inventory of.
Chris (03:44.765)
I got you. are there any, because obviously we're gonna talk a lot about the things that we wanna do as beginners in the turkey woods. But before we do that, what are some common mistakes that you know guys start to make in their early years of turkey hunting? Maybe we can fast track that for our listeners. Like what are some things like absolutely avoid or to keep in mind as you're going into this?
Kevin Creeley (04:06.529)
Okay. So first, before I jump into that, I want to segue off of what Angelo said. that's, when this time of year, when you have these big flocks of turkeys where you can, and they're visible, they're out in the field. So you can see them and stuff. You can get a pretty easy idea of where these turkeys are roosting and stuff. If you have some free time this time of year, the best way to get better at running any type of turkey call, whether you run a mouth call or a pot call or a box call or a tube call or whatever it is that you favor.
Angelo (04:19.107)
Ahem.
Kevin Creeley (04:35.33)
Go sit in and amongst those turkeys around those roost sites when they're in these big flocks, because their confidence is way up. When they're in these big flocks, they feel safe because they've got safety in numbers. And as a result of that, they are extremely vocal and you can go sit and listen to them. I don't know if you've ever had a flock of turkeys come scratching underneath you in the deer woods, but they're quite vocal. They're kiki and they're purring, they're clucking, they're scratching, they're purring. They're making all kinds of noises. And that is just like...
They are just writing the book for how to sound like a hen. You just stand there and listen, sit there and listen to them with your back against a tree. Listen to them fly out, listen to them fly down. Man, it's, it's awesome too. It's just like, they'll put on a whole show this time of year. If you've got the, the grit to just go out there and sit and hang with them in the cold, you know.
Chris (05:21.127)
So they'll call the same way now as they would during, the mating season?
Kevin Creeley (05:26.635)
So yes and no, there's some calls that are kind of more specific to the mating season during the spring. But a lot of the just social calls, like the hens talking back and forth to one another, are calls that they make all year long. And with that being said too, a lot of the calls, like for example, the Kiki run, and we can get into this stuff in more detail later, but the Kiki run call is a common call that you'll hear this time of year when they're in these big flocks. Another name for the Kiki run call is the assembly call.
Angelo (05:37.711)
you
Kevin Creeley (05:56.13)
And it's a sound that a Turkey will make when they're trying to locate the rest of the flock of turkeys. If that flock gets dispersed, then they'll do like a, and they'll do that. And you can use that call in the spring to locate a gobbler 125%. I've done it several times. So you can take calls that they only make in the fall and you can go make those sounds in the spring and locate a gobbler with it because that gobbler is not thinking like, what does it sound like?
Like a spring call. They're just like, a hen. You know what I mean? That's just it. That's like the extent of their thought process, you know, that time of year.
Chris (06:26.61)
Yeah.
Chris (06:30.313)
So there is.
Angelo (06:30.509)
I mean, if they're chasing Volvo's down the road, think they'll chase a fall hen call.
Chris (06:33.309)
Yeah, dude, I mean, I've seen those videos, the guy would just be standing like, come here, Turkey, come here. Next thing you know, it's like three freaking, the three of them coming up to him like gobbling all over the place. Some of are pissed off, some of are excited. Like that's just, that's just hilarious. Yeah, city turkeys, everything from the city is something else. Yeah. Yes.
Kevin Creeley (06:35.351)
Yeah, yeah.
Angelo (06:40.623)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (06:48.174)
Yeah, this city turkeys are something else, man. Something else. Anyway, back to your, uh, back to your point. Um, you said mistakes like early on mistakes. So probably two big ones. Number one is like, let's say you have 150 acres and it's slam loaded with turkeys. Turkeys are very intolerant to hunting pressure. When you start pressuring a Turkey, they are going to shut down. They're not going to necessarily leave the property entirely, but they're just going to become.
extremely difficult to hunt real similar to a mature buck. You know, you get busted once by a big buck, get busted twice. You might as well throw your hat. You know what I mean? It's it's rat like very similar with long beards. They are not tolerant to hunting pressure whatsoever. So if you go out there like one common mistake that people make in the preseason, for example, they want to go listening for turkeys and that's great. I do the same thing, but they go out there and they call out the turkey and I don't know why people do that.
Chris (07:24.253)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Kevin Creeley (07:43.192)
But that's something that a lot of folks do. They'll go, they hear Turkey Goblin and then they're like, well, I've been practicing my calls. I want to try it out. You know, pop the mouth call in and start, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's just, pow, pow, just eating it up. And in your head, you're like, I'm going to, I'm going to freaking smoke him open in day. When in reality, you're just educating that Turkey. He doesn't like to just stand there and be called at. And then he's going to probably end up where you were calling from once you leave and be like, well, I showed up and she wasn't there. You know what I mean? So.
That's a number one, calling to turkeys out of season. don't recommend doing that, especially on a hunting, on a property that you have access to hunt. You know, I wouldn't recommend doing that. another more situational type, and I'm going to get into this more in depth later. I've got some notes on it once we get towards calling to turkeys, but when you're hunting a turkey, one of the most biggest, most common mistakes, and I made it for several years in a row until I got with some good turkey hunting mentors.
that talked me out of it is when you're conversing with the Turkey. let's say I walked up a logging road and I did a locator call. Turkey gobbled down on the Creek bottom. I went and got uphill of them on a ridge side and I started calling at him. He gobbled back at my Turkey calling. Once he gobbles back at your Turkey call, you're in the game. Like he's interested. Right. And then I call, he gobbles. I call, he gobbles. I call, he gobbles. Okay. The connection's been made. Maybe he's closed some distance. He was, he was 250 yards. Now he's only
150 yards he's coming in and then that turkey just completely stops gobbling maybe for 20 minutes, you know I used to think well daggum He must have lost interest and then I would just pack my stuff and leave to go try to find a different turkey That's not the answer. The answer is he's probably on his way But I always like to say that turkeys got they got nothing to do and they got all day to do it They're not in a rush to come to your call. You know what I mean?
So when you call to the turkey, might be like a lot of nine times out of 10 in my experience when they stop answering you is when they're on the way and you don't and what you want to do so bad is called to him again. Just let me just check and see if he's there and then you'll yep, yep. And he goes pow and he's 80 yards. Well, you may have just hung him up for another 30 minutes because now in his head he's like, oh, she's still over there. She's vocal. She's still in the same spot. I'll just stand over here and stretch. She'll come over here.
Kevin Creeley (10:05.869)
Cause she can hear me drumming from 200 yards away because they've got insane ears, you know? So they'll just stand there and drum. I don't know you've ever heard a turkey drum. It's about one of the coolest sounds in the world. Angela.
Chris (10:14.939)
Not in person.
Angelo (10:16.819)
yeah, yeah, they have like that, that low tone to it. You can, know, they can hear it, but.
Kevin Creeley (10:23.757)
Yeah. Yeah. We can hear it, but we have to be real close to the Turkey. And some people have a better ear for it than others. Like some can hear it really, really well from like a hundred plus yards. Me personally, I can't really hear it too good till the Turkey's basically in my lap. Um, usually by the time I, I hear a Turkey drum and I've got my red dot on their head, but, um, but those hens can hear that drumming from a long ways away. So you might not think that you and the Turkey are conversing, but he might be standing 200 yards over there, just drumming and drumming.
Chris (10:41.671)
Okay, nice.
Kevin Creeley (10:53.006)
drowning, drowning for 20 minutes straight. And he's wondering why you're not responding. And then you get up and leave. And then he's going to end up right there where you were. And you're at the truck, riding around looking for another Turkey. You know what I mean? So that's a pretty common mistake.
Chris (11:04.581)
Yeah, so I had listened to, I wanna say it's a Southern outdoorsman. I listen to them all the time, I really do. And they were doing, they really do. And especially down by you, I'm sure it's a lot of what they do applies a little bit more to you with the same type of terrain, of somewhat similar weather and all that stuff. anyway, they were talking on an episode, they had someone talking about calling turkeys at one point.
Kevin Creeley (11:13.037)
Yeah, they're a great podcast.
Angelo (11:17.967)
Thank
Kevin Creeley (11:27.211)
Yeah, 100%.
Chris (11:32.955)
And one of things the guy said was his father told him the second you hear a turkey call back, you shut up and you just sit there and you wait. And he was basically saying the same thing you were saying. They know where you are. They know where that sound came from. And if they're going to come, they're going to come. There's no reason to sit there and let them know.
Kevin Creeley (11:38.711)
Hmm.
Kevin Creeley (11:47.47)
Man, they can pinpoint a sound to like a stick on the ground. Like it's insane when you call, because I've called from a location and had a turkey answer. And then I crawled over and shifted locations to get a better view or shooting lanes or whatever. And it's incredible how they will come to that spot that you called from. And they're standing there like, where's she at?
I heard a call from right here an hour and 45 minutes ago. I know it was right here at GPS 6927. You know what I mean? Like it's crazy, dude. It's crazy.
Chris (12:16.827)
Yeah, Yeah. That's also I experienced the only time I've ever experienced anything like that was this year. And I think we talked about it recently about the day I had calling in the woods and every single deer I called literally came within 10 yards of my tree and just stood there looking around like where what happened. But what was so interesting, interesting to me was that where I was was pretty much at the tip of a finger.
Kevin Creeley (12:28.749)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (12:43.003)
and all the deer were coming up either from behind me from the thicket or up from the bottom into the finger. And I couldn't believe how incredibly accurate they were at coming straight to where that call was.
Kevin Creeley (12:55.182)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny, man. It always amazes me because you'll see like, I mean, well, you haven't had the experience, but maybe Angelo has, you'll go out with a group of guys and let's say it's one of the guys owl hoots to try to locate a turkey. like I said, we're going to get into that stuff. One of the guys rips a locator call and a turkey gobbles and you've got three guys standing on a ridge top together. All three of those guys might point in a different direction of where they think the turkey sound came from. That's really common. Happens to me and my wife all the time. We'll stand like
15 to 20 feet apart, facing opposite directions so that we can get different advantages while I call now call on a Turkey or gobble and she'll point East and I'll point West because it's just the way the sound travels, whether it, it travels off of a bank or it hits water or there's trees or whatever. And then at that point, you just got to take a gamble. Like, one of us is right. we'll go, you know what I mean? Yeah, that could happen too, but turkeys, they don't get it wrong. It seems like they know where the heck that crap's coming from. It's crazy.
Chris (13:45.181)
Or you could both be wrong, you know?
Angelo (13:54.403)
Yeah, I mean, think it has to do a lot of with what you said, like they're just so familiar with the terrain. They know what it sounds like if they're inside of a gully or inside of a blow down and as opposed to being up on top of a ridge topper on the edge of a finger. I mean, you talked about communicating with your wife. mean, if she's in the laundry room and you're in the kitchen and she yells to you and it's really muffled, you know, she's in the laundry room. But if she's right in the bedroom, right around the corner and she yells out to you, you know, she's a lot closer, you know, you know, you, you've had so much interaction.
Chris (13:54.461)
it's-
Kevin Creeley (14:05.517)
Mm-hmm.
Angelo (14:22.479)
and you've called to each other from so many different areas in the home that you know, okay, she's upstairs, she's downstairs, she's down with the kids or whatever. I feel like that's a lot of what these animals do. mean, like you said, they've got all day to do nothing. You know what I mean? So they've interacted with all different types of animals and all different types of scenarios, all different weather conditions and seasonal conditions. And they're able to, think, obviously they have better senses than us, but I think that also plays a lot into it. like,
They're so familiar with the terrain. It's like, okay, well, I know it came from that direction. It's close and it's really clear. So they've got to be up on top of that ridge. They can't be down in the gully because I wouldn't have heard it as clear.
Kevin Creeley (15:04.213)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah Well, chris angela you guys you want me to like break into this like I said, i've kind of got some notes laid out You want me like me? need the
Chris (15:12.571)
Yeah, just, wherever you want it to start. mean, if we really want it to start from the beginning, I mean, we could talk guns, but I mean, I think everyone knows, you know, you're going turkey hunting with a 12 gauge or a 20 gauge and then, you know, a turkey choke. So.
Kevin Creeley (15:21.228)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we could probably do...
Angelo (15:24.589)
I mean, so I'll tell you a little bit of something that I've kind of, and it's very limited amount of knowledge that I have, but just tell me quickly if you agree. I would say that for me, if you're at this part of the season, right? Cause we're obviously talking about beginners, but we're also talking to them at a time where they might want to start kind of getting into it. I would say the first thing is really understand your pattern. Whatever pattern you're going to be shooting, make sure that you're dialed in on that because
The beginning hunter, the beginner hunter, whether they are using chokes, full chokes, no chokes, whatever, maybe they're just using a hand-me-down gun that doesn't even have a choke on it. I mean, if you're gonna be starting to get into it as a beginner, would you agree that maybe kind of understanding what your tool you're gonna be using before you even get out there would be a good place to start?
Kevin Creeley (16:13.899)
a hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, definitely understand what your equipment is capable of. Same as like in deer season, you know, okay, my rifle is dead on at a hundred. It's an inch high or an inch low, 150 or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be. Really just understand how far your pattern is effective. It's all you really need to know. And with most common turkey loads, it's going to be to 40 yards. now there's some crazy TSS rounds being produced now that you can absolutely shoot a turkey at a hundred yards. I'm not.
really a proponent for that. don't, really agree with that. I don't, I don't know. I don't have any problem with it. If you want to go kill a turkey, kill them any way that's legal. Me personally, I like getting them in my lap. I turkey hunt mostly for fun. You know, I deer hunt my primary motivation when I deer hunt is meat. And my primary motivation when I turkey hunt is having a good time. And for me, having a good time is them drumming at seven yards, you know? So I like them in my lap. but yeah, like Angelo said, man, just understand your equipment and we could probably do a
whole podcast on on gear in my notes here. didn't really put much about gear. We can brush on it briefly towards the end if you want, but I just figured that would be probably a whole nother time consuming topic.
Chris (17:23.279)
Yeah, well was also thinking down the road to talk about like, even if we don't want to get into like specific call types, because I feel like that would be its own episode in itself. So when we do that, we could talk gear in the first half and then calls in the second half type of thing. You know what I mean? All right, so then you tell us, where would, if you sit down, you meet somebody in a hunting store, you start getting into a conversation, you find out they've never hunted before, they ask for your advice. Where do they start?
Kevin Creeley (17:32.001)
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (17:38.135)
Perfect. Perfect.
Kevin Creeley (17:45.997)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (17:51.285)
Okay, so step one is have a place to hunt turkeys, right? Like you talked about in the beginning of the podcast, you're seeing turkeys on your property. That's awesome. That means you already have a place to hunt turkeys. You know, that's step one, whether it's public land, private land, lease ground, family ground, whatever, make sure there's turkeys on the property before you go turkey hunting. Obviously. Okay. That's step one. Step two is kind of like your pre-season stuff. Okay. So let's say you're a first time turkey hunter.
Chris (18:09.735)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (18:17.473)
Let's say your opener is April 1, just to make it simple. March 20th or so, really you can go earlier than that, but March 20th would be plenty early, even just a week before the season. As a good pre-season, not also just really fun activity, but informational activity for you to do is to just go listen to turkeys. And what you're going to want to do is first get a general idea of where turkeys want to be in and amongst your property. Now, the best time that you're going to listen to turkeys when they're on the roost.
First thing in the morning, they gobble their heads off on the LaRouche. And they actually gobble in most states more in the pre-season than they do during the active hunting season. And it's set up that way by most states conservation programs because the breeding peak is about one week before the season, and then it starts to slowly drop. And then by the tail end of the season, it's almost done. And it'll carry on for another couple of weeks post-season. And that gives the turkeys an opportunity to breed. Now with that said,
You can go out there that week before season when they're in their peak breeding and go listen to all these vocalizations that they're making. Primarily the gobbling is what you want to listen to and you can locate some turkeys. Now you're to go locate them on roost sites that they may not be using a week later during the hunting season. In my experience, if you hear a gobbler roosted, let's say in a creek bottom, 200 yards off the road.
There's a good chance he's going to be roosted still within that creek bottom if he's not pressured within the week leading up to the season, right? Some youth hunters go in there and shoot at him or something that could change things, but otherwise he's going to be within the same vicinity. He might be 200 yards East, 200 yards West, up or down that creek bottom, but he's probably going to be in the same area because he's there for numerous reasons. Whether there's hens there, there's food there, there's security there, whatever it is. That's why he's there. So just go listening. That's a good pre-season activity.
Typically, in my experience, turkeys like to roost near water. So if you can get above a creek bottom, whether it's from the road standing on the roof of your truck or stand in middle of a logging road on public ground, 200 yards above a creek bottom or whatever, go get near a creek bottom and listen. If it's a creek bottom with hardwoods, even better turkeys love roosting in hardwood trees, specifically white oak trees. In my experience in the Southeast, they love white oak trees for roosting, but they will, they'll absolutely roost in a pine tree or any other tree that's
Kevin Creeley (20:37.262)
available to them in the habitat that they have to work with, right? So just go listen, man, and don't overthink it. Just ride around. Go get out there before light, park in an area you think there's turkeys and listen. If he gobbles and he sounds like he's 900 yards away and there's a spot you can drive around and get closer to him to listen better, do that. If you have to get out of your truck and walk through the woods at him to go listen better, I wouldn't recommend it. That goes back to what we were saying in the beginning of the episode of unnecessarily pressuring the turkey pre-season.
Angelo (21:01.039)
you
Kevin Creeley (21:06.285)
just go listen man. And then the other thing that you can do is once they fly down and you're going to hear an audible difference when the turkeys gobbling in the tree versus when the turkeys on the ground. When he's up in the tree, number one, his gobble is going to have a different type of cadence. It's going to be the almost the same cadence. Every gobble is just going to be pow, pow, pow. And sometimes they'll gobble 70, 80 times in the tree before they fly down. If you're close enough,
You'll 100 % hear them fly down. It's loud, man. They're built like a bowling ball and they're not really that gracious. So when they fly out of the tree, it's, you know, it's loud. So if you're within 200 yards, 150 yards, you'll probably hear them fly down. But even if you don't, you'll hear them stop gobbling on the limb. And then if they gobble on the ground, you're going to be able to tell the difference. Now that's important information to have leading into the season. You want to know the difference of the sound of a turkey that's in the tree.
Chris (21:38.918)
Yeah.
Angelo (21:50.287)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (22:02.625)
versus sound of the turkey that's on the ground. So you know when to call to him, right? So when that turkey flies down, now what you can do is listen to the direction that he goes. Okay. So we've gone out, we've parked near a creek bottom. We're listening to a turkey gobble. We stand there and listen to them. We're not calling at him. We're just listening. And then he flies down and he starts walking out towards your back 40 field, right? And he's gobbling the whole way he's going there. Now we know that he flew down and went towards that field. Awesome information for opening day.
Now we know go get in between back 40 field and where Turkey was roosted. And that's probably a good place to start. You know what I mean? Okay. And then another thing you can do pre-season, if you're in an area that permits it, like if you're in an open area, specifically agricultural land is the best place to do it out west. There's tons of room to do it, but I've yet to have been able to experience that. Where I hunt, there's a ton of agriculture. Turkeys love strutting in fields during the springtime. Turkeys want to be visible because they're mating, right? So they want to strut and display for their hens.
Chris (22:38.301)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (23:02.925)
With that being said, go glass for turkeys. Glassing for turkeys is an awesome preseason activity and one of my favorite ways to locate turkeys to hunt during the spring season. And it's as simple as right around the pair of binoculars, man. Any time of the day, it does not matter. Turkeys want to strut all day if they can. And you ride around and you just find these turkeys strutting in fields. And that'll give you A, there's a turkey on this property. B, he likes to strut right there. That's important information. And we're going to touch on that more later.
And it's just an awesome way to take inventory. Sometimes you'll see two or three gobblers together strutting in a field with a flock of hens. So that's another thing you can do. Go listen for turkeys, go glass for turkeys.
Chris (23:42.885)
See that that that's real interesting because actually I had it on one of our original intros to our YouTube videos. I had taken as I was driving out to, you know, to the woods, it's gone a couple of different hunts or, know, to go and do field work, food plotting, whatever. I'd always have my GoPro set up and then, you know, just take videos and stuff. Well, there's one day I'm driving down the road and there's literally I think I might have even sent it to you at some point. There was a flock of like 14 turkeys. There were like five gobblers.
and three of them were sitting there strutting in the middle of the woods. Because where we are is literally all woods and the only fields per se are, you know, if someone has a food plot, which there aren't that many around us or people's lawns. And I've seen the same flock of turkey in the same backyard right across the street from our property so many times. And I had that on video. I, you know, that was, that was pretty cool to see. But when,
Kevin Creeley (24:31.873)
you
Chris (24:38.159)
If I'm gonna go pre-season, I'm gonna try to find a place to listen for Turkey. Let's say my situation, I just moved out here, but I haven't seen Turkey driving around. So it's really like, I don't even know where to start. Obviously there's a bunch of different combinations, but if you were to say your ideal terrain on a map, if someone were to look at OnX or whatever, Topo map and say, okay, I need to pinpoint where to start scouting for Turkey.
Kevin Creeley (25:06.061)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (25:06.075)
What are some things on the map that people should look for? know you said water, but what are the compounding features to go with that to maybe increase your odds of locating?
Kevin Creeley (25:14.849)
So water's number one. If I go to the water, when in doubt, go to the water. That's where turkeys are going to roost nine times out of 10. If you've got one creek that runs through your property and you know there's turkeys using that property during the spring and you want to find them, get near that water, anywhere near that water. but other than them, otherwise turkeys need ultimately every type of habitat. They're pretty picky, not like a deer, deer pretty opportunistic. They can live in New York city if they needed to, you know what I mean? Or a wild turkey is a lot pickier. They need
Chris (25:40.474)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (25:42.966)
a plethora of different types of habitat to survive. So they need hard mass to eat. They need open areas to strut. They need water. They need trees to roost in. They need areas to escape for security. They need tons of stuff. So I would just say, identify like a, I don't know, I'm tired to put a size on it, but just identify an area on your property that has the most diverse habitat. It has water, it's near a field or some kind of open area. Even if it's just a big hardwood ridge, that could be
treated as like a strut zone or an open area. And there's also, there's lots of hardwood mass so they can scratch and eat at the acorns and stuff like that. Just the most diverse habitat that you can find. And again, just can't say enough, get near the water.
Chris (26:25.853)
Gotcha. And is there any like, if we wanted to make a radius, let's say, of how far away from the water, like how far away from the water is too far? Is there a number?
Kevin Creeley (26:37.408)
for you to position yourself to listen? Is that what you're asking?
Chris (26:40.561)
Well, I guess I could listen from 200 yards away. I guess that's more of like a location for hunting, I guess.
Kevin Creeley (26:46.958)
Man, so I run and gun turkey hunt. That's how I'm moving all day. I'll cover five, six miles a day. So where I start is sometimes pretty daggum far from where I finished that day. You know what I mean? So it really doesn't matter in the sense of locating turkeys. You just want to get near the habitat that you think's most advantageous, which is just going to be A, getting near the water and then B, finding the most diverse habitat that's near that water. You know what I'm saying?
Chris (26:57.693)
Okay, I got you.
Chris (27:11.773)
Okay, I gotcha. It's good place to start. And you got anything?
Kevin Creeley (27:13.773)
Mm-hmm.
Angelo (27:15.363)
Nope.
Chris (27:16.637)
Nope. All right. Moving on. Actually, fun fact real quick. I'm sure you know this, Kev, but I thought this was fascinating. So I listen a lot also to the Land and Legacy podcast. I don't know if any of you guys ever heard of them, but they're two guys who own a company, Land and Legacy, they're, you know, property managers. They also sell hunting land. They kind of have their hands in a couple of different pots, but they really hone in on property management, food plotting, and all that good stuff.
Kevin Creeley (27:16.973)
Cool.
Chris (27:45.125)
And one of the things they were saying is, and like you're saying, is you do need that diverse cover for turkey, but it's not just because it's like where they like to hang out. It's also because they need different type of habitat at different stages of the life cycle. Like an older turkey likes like the underbrush, they want those places to hide if they need to. But a young turkey, especially a female who's having a, what is it, a brood, they call them, in their first two or three days of life, their bodies physically cannot regulate body temperature.
Kevin Creeley (27:58.306)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (28:03.821)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (28:15.409)
So they need like a clear forest ground, otherwise they end up getting dew all over their feathers and stuff and they can't regulate their heat and they end up freezing overnight. I thought that was fascinating.
Kevin Creeley (28:24.141)
Yep. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big reason why burns, fresh burns on public ground are so freaking popular to turkey hunt. And if you can identify a fresh burn on some public ground, for example, cause it's just more common on public ground to come across big tracks of burnt pines or something. And there's certainly going to be turkeys there. I'll bet my next paycheck and the two after that, there's going to be turkeys on that piece of burnt ground. Now.
Everybody and their brother who turkey hunts or knows a thing or two about it is also going to want to turkeys there. So keep that in mind when you go to scout it pre-season and you find seven gobblers on it and you think you're in the chips. Well, when you show up opening day, there might be 12 other trucks fixing to hunt those same seven gobblers. So keep that in mind. uh, moving on from there, I'm just going to keep touching up on, uh, finding turkeys. Cause I feel like that's one of the, that's one of the things that
Chris (29:04.591)
I gotcha.
Chris (29:11.015)
Yeah, good.
Kevin Creeley (29:14.157)
Most people struggle a little bit with it's just like, how do I freaking go find a Turkey? You know, cause it's as cut and dry deer hunting is, know, kind of climb a spot in the woods and the deer come to you. You're going to kind of go to the Turkey. So we need to be able to find turkeys. And there's a couple of ways you can do that. Um, we've already touched on listening to them, listening to them gobble in the morning from the trees. That's one of the best things about the spring, man, the turkeys gobble.
If the deer made a big loud noise 75 times in a tree every morning when we were hunting them, it'd be a lot easier to find them, you know? But, unfortunately they don't do that, but turkeys do. Now, right. Roost in turkeys. Roost in turkeys is going to be the next thing we talk about. Roost in turkeys in the evening time specifically. Now that's a way to set yourself up for success for a hunt. Right? So now let's say in the pre-season we identified.
Chris (29:44.775)
Yeah.
Chris (29:49.287)
But can't make it easy, Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (30:06.593)
this creek bottom that's near a field or near an open hardwood ridge or whatever. And we went and we listened to turkeys gobble in that creek bottom. Now it's the night before opening day and we're riding around. We're going to try to roost a turkey. So you want to get to the position of where you want to listen from, where you think you're going to be near a roosted turkey about 30 minutes before it starts getting dark, right? The turkeys going to want to fly up before sunset.
They're going to want to fly up 20 to 30 minutes before it starts getting dark because they cannot see well in the dark at all unlike a deer, right? So they want to get up in that tree. They're going to start working their way towards that roost site like an hour before dark, and then they're going to get close to it. They're going to hang out. Oftentimes they'll gobble a couple of times to corral their hens before they roost and then they'll fly up again. If you're close enough, you'll can hear them fly up and that's huge. Even if you just hear hens fly up, that's, that's great. You just want to be near turkeys, right?
Once that turkey gets in the tree, you want to give them five, 10 minutes and you can just, you'll just get better at this over time of knowing like the times when turkeys are roosted after hearing them a lot. Give them five, 10 minutes, let them get comfortable up there on the limb, tuck his wings and stuff and get all right in the tree. And then you can call to that turkey on the limb and make him gobble. Once you can do that, that turkey is likely, I'm not going to say it's a hundred percent of the time because they will jump roost trees.
And they'll get bumped out of a tree by a predator or whatever, but likely going to be in that tree in the morning. I've gone in before and literally not intentionally, but miss roosted a Turkey by a little bit by 70 or 80 yards of where I thought I heard him roost versus where he did roost. And I've crawled to the base of the tree that a Turkey was in and then sat there in the dark.
and the light came up and he gobbled and it about blew my spirit out of my butt. Like, you know what saying? It's so loud right over top of your head. So my point is, it gives you a huge advantage because you can go get really, really close to that turkey before he hits the ground. If it's legal in your... Go ahead.
Chris (31:59.165)
Yeah.
Chris (32:09.415)
Okay, sorry, I was gonna say, so when you're scouting for turkeys early season or trying to just figure out where they are, we recommend finding them in the morning, getting out there in the morning, calling to them, figuring out where they are. But if you're in hunting mode, so you're in season, you're trying to figure out where you wanna hunt the next morning, better off going out there the night before, figuring out where they are so you know where to start the next day. Okay.
Kevin Creeley (32:31.169)
Yeah, if I roost a turkey, if I roost a turkey in a tree, like I sure enough roost the turkey. That's the turkey I'm hunting first thing in the morning. I've got one roosted. Why would I go try to find a different one that I don't know? I don't know where he's at. You know what I mean? I'm just guessing. If I've got one roosted, that's the one I'm going to go hunt. the next thing I want to talk, go ahead. No, no, you're good.
Angelo (32:38.575)
Ahem.
Chris (32:44.327)
Good? Yeah.
Chris (32:48.573)
Do you have a... I'm sorry, I keep cutting you off. Do you have... When you're turkey hunting, like when we go deer hunting, we've talked about this, depending on where I am, I have a certain caliber that I'm looking for, right? If it gets my blood going and it's within the caliber that I'm looking for, that deer is fair game. Do you have the same when you go turkey hunting? Like if you know a tree is rusted and if you know a turkey is rusted in the tree in the morning and then you get there, you call to them and stuff and then...
He comes on, like, it's not as big as I wanted it to be. Like, is that something that goes through your head when you're turkey hunting also? Or is that just more a deer thing? Okay. Okay.
Kevin Creeley (33:24.555)
No, if he's a mature turkey, I'm shooting him. And that's the beauty of it, man. That's the beauty of turkey hunting. One of the things that I absolutely love about it is that there's a lot less ego in turkey hunting. Cause there's not this, this one only scored 145, but he's a non-typical and blah, blah, blah. No, dude. It's like, man, he's got a freaking beard on him and his fans full shoot them. You know what I mean? Like a turkey reaches maturity at two years old.
Chris (33:45.605)
Okay, cool. All right. Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (33:49.186)
They become, they get that full fan and they get a long beard. And then once after that, we start calling them long beards, know, young Turkey, we call it Jake. So any long beard I'm shooting. And if you talk to a biologist about it, I've got a buddy in Alabama. He's a great guy for you to reach out to. If you ever want to have him on, he's a wildlife biologist down in Alabama. name's Jared Knight. Fantastic guy. I actually met him, Turkey hunting public ground in Alabama. And he studied, he does some Turkey studies and stuff.
Chris (33:55.141)
Yeah. And that's what, yeah. that's,
Angelo (34:10.881)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (34:16.173)
If talk to him or really any biologist that has any idea about turkeys, what they'll tell you is, looking at a turkey based on their fan and their spurs and their beard and stuff, you can't age them based off of that. A lot of that stuff is purely genetics. You can't say, it's got an 11 inch beard, must be a three year old because the two year old usually has a nine inch beard. Like that may not be the case at all. So if you're like out hunting turkeys for age or whatever, like, good luck. You're just not going to be able to age them on the, on the spur like that, you know.
Chris (34:42.941)
Yeah, so I got something that might make you chuckle a little bit, being like a seasoned turkey hunter. So when we first got the property, I was like dead set in management mode, thinking five, 10 years ahead of time, trying to protect the deer wherever I can, whatever the case is, right? And in the first year, we knew we had turkey on the property. We knew it. But in my head, I'm like, okay, we have a good stock to start with with the turkey. I'm let them grow, I'm gonna let them mature. They're gonna get big.
Kevin Creeley (34:55.03)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (35:08.427)
Yeah.
Chris (35:08.733)
And then finally I started talking to someone about it last year, our third year on the property. And they're like, bro, what the fuck are you doing? I was like, what do you mean? They're like, it's a Tom in two years, man. He's like, get out there and hunt. I'm like, I had no freaking clue. So I've been like sitting on a, I'm gonna, dude, exactly. know, when I tell you I've been sitting on a gold mine, man, like I'm not trying to like, know, toot the horn or anything like on our property. But when I tell you it's a beautiful flock, at least 20 turkeys.
Kevin Creeley (35:18.943)
Thank
Yeah, because I'm gonna have me a Boone and Crockett gobbler. I'd wait a couple more years.
Angelo (35:23.215)
Thank
Chris (35:38.013)
at least, and at least a third of them are shootable Toms. They're not, you know, they're not Jakes. They got long beers. They're strutting, they're strutting all over the place. It's incredible. So that's why I've been like, now I'm like, okay, now I have to go off.
Kevin Creeley (35:51.436)
Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about locating turkeys midday on the finding turkey subject. But before I jump into that, I want to brush on locator calls real quick because that is kind of going to play into roosting turkeys and locating turkeys midday. So you kind of got to understand, like when I was talking about roosting turkeys and I say call to the turkey and get them to gobble in the tree so you can roost them. You kind of have to have an idea of what kind of call to make to make them gobble, right? So we'll touch on that.
Chris (35:56.605)
Cool. Okay.
Angelo (36:12.875)
Thank
Kevin Creeley (36:20.609)
So locator calls. I'm a huge, huge fan of locator calls. a turkey will do something called a shock gobble. I'm a huge fan of it. I'm so much a fan of it that my license plate on my truck is shot gobble. And, you can use several different types of locator calls. You can locate turkeys with owl calls, crow calls, goose calls, hawk calls, coyote calls. You can use turkey calls to locate turkeys. I'd be careful with that, but you can do that too. One of my favorite ones is an owl.
Chris (36:32.999)
You
Angelo (36:47.137)
Ahem.
Kevin Creeley (36:50.83)
I'll use an owl call 40 plus times a day and a day of turkey hunting. And they're really, really easy to learn. You can buy an owl hooter tube and just watch a couple of YouTube videos for like a $30 tube and then watch some YouTube videos and figure out how to run that thing. Pretty good. 90 % of people, especially in the Southeast, just I'll call with their mouth. It's really, really easy. You've I'm sure you've heard like a barred owl do the eight count in the woods before. Right. So
Chris (37:17.297)
Yeah, that was pretty good.
Kevin Creeley (37:19.987)
Like that, that one right there will make a turkey rip a gobble quick. so that's an easy one and you can do that on a tube and it sounds really good. And you can also just go stand there and just, and they'll gobble at that. So you can do simple stuff like that. in the fall, the barred owls make this noise. It's called a screech. You may have heard it before while deer hunting. It's like a, it's like that noise.
That will rip some gobbles out of some turkeys, dude. They hate that noise or love it. I don't know, but it makes them gobble anyway.
Angelo (37:49.903)
you
Chris (37:52.251)
Right. What is it about the predator? Because I've heard you talk about this before. I've heard other people talk about that before. Why is it that the turkeys respond to the predator? Because like thinking of fight or flight, know, if you if somebody breaks into my house and you know, they're they're they're predator. Yeah, right. Like I'm not going to stop. I'm sitting in a corner and I'm hoping that they leave and I'm prepared if they're exactly so like.
Kevin Creeley (38:05.037)
I'm over here!
Angelo (38:14.657)
I think it's more like I think it's more like the robber comes in your house and you're screaming, I dare you. I think that's more like they're so jacked up. They're like, let's go. Like, here I am. Let's settle this. Let's settle this once and for all. I got a I got an audience here. I'm ready to throw some spurs. That's it.
Chris (38:20.061)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (38:22.529)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even care. I want all the smoke. Yeah, maybe so, man.
Chris (38:30.545)
Yeah, that was awesome.
That's right. My lady's watching. I'm not about to lose.
Kevin Creeley (38:38.894)
Yeah, maybe so, man. I'll be honest. I'm the wrong person to ask that question. That's a question for a biologist that knows better than I do. Um, all I know is Turkey's testosterone levels are at an 11 out of 10 during the springtime, right? They are fired up. I've been hunting a Turkey before I can recall a specific hunting situation where I glassed a Turkey in a field knew that I, we, uh, we leased the patch of woods that was behind this field. So I was like, I'm going to go get in those woods and call this Turkey into the timber. And I was in the timber and I was creeping up and in my head, I'm like,
Okay. There's the barn. He was strutting like a hundred yards left of that barn. So we should be over here, but I don't want to go too far, you know? And I'm standing there thinking, do I call? Do I call? I'm not sure. And in that moment, an 18 wheeler hit the highway. That was about 400 yards past me. And when he slowed down for the curve, his Jake brake and that Turkey said, pow, and gobbled up the Jake brake. So I think they're just so fired up that time of year that they'll gobble it just about any dang sound if they're in the right mood. You know what I mean?
Now, a really easy one for beginners is a crow call. You can go get a Primos crow call on Amazon for like $11. It's a little plastic thing with reeds in it and a little tube. You just bite on the end of it slightly and just, just huff air out from your diaphragm like you want a duck call, you know? And it's just, ah, ah, you know, it's just crow noises. And turkeys will gobble at that. That's a pretty easy one to do. Um, my favorite is the owl call, crow call. A lot of my buddies have a lot of luck with a goose call. I don't carry a goose call, but
Angelo (40:02.479)
you
Kevin Creeley (40:07.073)
I've seen it work and I've seen wild turkeys gobble at Canada geese when they fly over and honk. The coyote call is a good one. If you ever want to like get a master class on coyote calling at turkeys, get on YouTube and type in Shane Simpson hunting coyote calls. That guy is the man. Shane Simpson's got an awesome, awesome YouTube channel of him traveling the nation hunting turkeys and he uses a turkey call and makes coyote sounds on it. And it is unreal.
how realistic it is and he ripped some gobbles out of turkeys and roost a lot of turkeys like that. So all that said to say this, now that you've got a couple locator calls in your pocket, whether you physically have the calls or you're using your mouth, we can go roost a turkey, right? So we'll go get near that water. We'll wait till fly up time, which like I said, is about that prime time about any, like let me put it to you this way. If you're a deer hunter, about the time that you expect to see deer, you know, when you're in the stand and you're like, oh, it's prime time, they're going to
Chris (40:37.693)
That's cool. All right.
Kevin Creeley (41:02.665)
any second now. That's when a turkey's about to roost, right then. Okay, that's when they're flying up. So in that moment, you give it about five more minutes, and then you start your, you start your alcoals, right? And then they'll gobble at it. Once you lay gobble in the tree, you've got that turkey roosted. Now you got to figure out how to set up on them. That's a different conversation. But we'll move on to locating turkeys midday. We'll stick on the subject of finding turkeys.
Chris (41:24.797)
Kevin Creeley (41:30.797)
So now let's talk about locating turkeys midday. Let's say you didn't find any turkeys on the roost that morning in your hunt, or you did and it didn't work out or whatever. So now you're going to go try to locate a different turkey. It's 10 o'clock in the morning. Maybe you've got a couple properties in the area that you lease. You struck out on property A, so you're going to jet over to property B. Do you just wander into the woods and sit against a tree and wait for a turkey to come strolling through? You can, I wouldn't, but that's a way to hunt, you know? So that goes back to your locator calls.
So when you're doing a locator call into a property, if you have an idea of where turkeys like to hang out during the day, because of your pre-season scouting and listening, then go get near that area and do a locator call. Right? If that, if you don't have any, any idea in mind, just get up high, get up where you think your sound is going to travel the absolute furthest. It could be like a ridge spine where there's a logging road or whatever, you know, just an advantageous area where you can hear and pitch a sound a really long way.
Angelo (42:01.192)
Good luck, guys.
Kevin Creeley (42:30.465)
You want to be able to hear really well. So go get up there. Walk. Stop. Well, listen, just listen for a minute. Sometimes they'll just gobble on their own in middle of the day. You wait five, 10 minutes. You don't hear anything gobble. Rip out that eight count owl hoot. That doesn't work. Wait five minutes. Try the crow call. That doesn't work. Move a hundred yards. Start your sequence over. And again, you can also use turkey calling to locate a turkey. You can cut aggressively. You can yell.
If you've got a box call or a slight call, something you can get loud on, you can just start like, just cutting on it really loud. And that'll travel way through the woods. And you can locate a turkey with that. Now I caution that if you're going to use a turkey call to locate turkeys, to be careful with it for a couple of reasons. Number one, once you make the turkey call, you've shown your hand to the turkey. said there's a turkey over here, right? When I make that owl call, he gobbles. He's not going to move or change his daily routine because of my owl call.
He's just going to pow, rip off a gobble and then go back to what he was doing. Now, if you make a turkey call and he gobbles, he might be on his way. So let's say you've got your gun leaning against the tree behind you. got your vest halfway off. You're standing there. You got a PB and J in your hand. And then you yelp on a box call and he gobbles and he's 90 yards away. You need to be sitting down with a shotgun in your lap because he might be here in 30 seconds. You know what I mean? So if you're going to use a turkey call, already be in a spot where you think you can kill him.
already have shooting lanes picked out already be in a spot where you can see a long ways where you've got good cover and all those things right and then do your turkey call you don't have to be as careful with your other locator calls but with the turkey call you absolutely do okay does that make sense
Chris (44:14.664)
Yeah, no that makes complete sense. I mean it's the same thing like with a deer. You know what mean? When you hit a deer call, you better be ready to take that shot. Because it's been plenty of times. Yeah, geez. Dude, you know what though? I had the same thing happen to me when I was hunting up in New Hampshire. Which is actually the one place where I probably had the most experience with turkey. I had this one patch of woods. It was like a finger that came out from private property.
Kevin Creeley (44:23.509)
Right. Yeah. Don't end up like me in New York.
Chris (44:39.837)
And then, you the, could wrap around the bottom of it or you could walk over the top and they just always were anywhere from the point or around the backside. And, um, anyway, I was hunting there the one time I was hunting at the bottom of the, of the, like the horseback, whatever you want to call it. And I'm, I'm hitting the rattle. I'm hitting the rattle. I'm hitting the rattle. Next thing I know, I turn around to go check behind me as I'm rattling. And it's like, there's eight pointers just staring at me. I'm like, well, well that sucks. You know,
Kevin Creeley (45:05.709)
100%. Yeah. Yeah. I had my buddy Kale. He was, uh, he's a pretty new Turkey hunter or it was at the time anyway. And, um, this is a couple of years ago and he was asking me like, Hey man, um, I got this property. know there's turkeys on it. They don't really gobble a whole lot. Where do think I should start? And we kind of looked at the map and I was like, well, go to this area, the specific area on the map and go sit down and just, he's got a little.
one of those clock boxes, if you're not familiar, it's just a little wooden box and it's got a slide through pole and it's got a piece of reed on the top of it. And when you clock on that pole, goes, and it just clocks, right? I was like, if you, if you, that's another tip, man, if you can't call too good, just call conservatively, right? So he can't call too good. So he's calling conservatively, conservatively with his clock box. I said, just go sit in that Creek bottom and hit that clock box, scratch the leaves and just hang out. And he was doing that.
Every 30 minutes or so, and then he'd play on his phone and sit there. And then a gobbler just popped up in his lap at one point, you know, he had one just walk up on him and completely bust him. So they will come in quietly without gobbling on high pressure areas like his hunt clubs in this specific example.
Angelo (46:06.113)
Uh-uh-uh-uh.
Chris (46:15.869)
Okay. So now when, since we're on the topic of calling, two questions. First is, I think I have to double check for Turkey specifically, but I was so shocked to find that New York state allows you to use electronic calls for deer hunting. I had no, I've never seen that before. What have you ever used an electronic call for Turkey hunting? Would you recommend it? Would you not be like,
Kevin Creeley (46:37.005)
Okay.
Chris (46:44.775)
What do you think about those? If we're even allowed to. Like I said, I have to check the regulations, but.
Kevin Creeley (46:49.896)
I have zero experience with that. I've never tried it. I don't have any interest in trying it. I love calling it turkeys with a mouth call. I love calling it turkeys with a slate call in my mouth. I don't have any interest in doing that. That would just rip the fun out of it for me.
Chris (47:02.845)
Okay. Now, if you're going to call a turkey in, obviously you're expecting him to strut in or whatnot. Will they strut through cover? do you need to... Okay, I expect the turkey to come in, there needs to be either a logging road or a trail that they can walk. Will they strut through cover? Or... Okay.
Kevin Creeley (47:23.487)
Absolutely. Yeah. I've seen a Turkey walk through a cut over strutting man when they're fired up and they're in the mood, they'll, they'll come through just about anything to get to you. Now, sometimes you can't get them to cross a dang logging road. You know what I mean? Like sometimes they're stubborn. They've gotten hung up because of creeks because of a bend or whatever, silly stuff, but sometimes they will climb through anything to get to you. just kind of depends on the mood that they're in. but yeah. So if you want to kind of
Chris (47:27.857)
Chris (47:36.423)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (47:46.928)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (47:52.674)
segue into like situational types of hunting i guess we can go from from here to there does that is that okay
Chris (47:59.933)
Yeah, we could, mean, listen, we're going off your lead with this. You know, like I said, I wouldn't even know the next progression of where to go with that. I do want to be, I do want to be cautious of your time. I know you said that you're kind of on a time limit tonight. So whatever you think we can get in, in your time, we'll go, you know, we'll follow your lead. Or if you think the next one's going to take us over too far, we could cap it here and, you know, decide to pick up. All right, cool. Let's do it. He said we're talking turkeys, baby. Okay, let's go.
Kevin Creeley (48:20.971)
I'm good, man. I'm having fun. Let's keep you going. right. Yeah, that's right. So several ways to approach turkey hunting. And there's, there's probably about a dozen, but we're just going to cover two of them to keep it simple for tonight. run and gun and sit and wait. Those are the two we're going to talk about. Right. So going back to when we were talking about locating turkeys, we talked about roosting turkeys. We talked about finding turkeys midday and we talked about glassing turkeys, right?
Chris (48:38.663)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (48:51.01)
When you glass a turkey, let's say you identify a strut zone, right? And what a strut zone is going to be is an area where that turkey wants to strut pretty plain and simple, right? So a lot of times it's a field. Sometimes it's a hardwood ridge. Sometimes it's a logging road. Sometimes it's a power line. I've seen all these examples. but with that being said, that turkey, that that's an area that the turkey goes where he wants to be seen by hens and he'll go there and he'll strut and he'll display.
and do all these types of things, gobble, court his hands, breed, et cetera. If you can identify one of these strut zones, that is a place where you want to spend some time and attention, right? So let's say you're going to go with the sit and wait tactic. You're a bit of a newer turkey hunter. You're not really comfortable running and gunning and calling and making all these moves and stuff because you don't really know how to move through the turkey woods yet.
then the best thing you can do is identify a strut zone, especially if it's a field, that's the easiest one, but any of the options I just listed will work just fine. And then go in there and sit and wait. So go literally, it's as simple as you see a turkey strut, go sit within gun range of where that turkey was strutting, camo it up head to toe, get in there with the cover of darkness and just sit there and wait. And if he gobbles and he's 500 yards away and you decide you want to go run and gun him, that's fine.
But if not, I bet he's going to come to that strut zone eventually. So you can just sit there and just wait. Now there's also decoys, right? You can use decoys. I don't personally hunt with decoys anymore. I've killed several turkeys over decoys in the past. I prefer hunting them without decoys now, but for a newer turkey hunter, especially on private ground, it's something I would definitely recommend trying in the early stages of your turkey hunting career. I wouldn't recommend it on public ground cause there's a bit of a safety issue there, right? You don't really want to
sit on the ground in full camo head to toe with your back against a tree with a turkey decoy 30 yards in front of you. I just, mean, I don't think I have to explain why that's dangerous, right? But on private ground, that's absolutely, absolutely an effective technique is using turkey decoys. There's a bunch of different types. You know, you've got hens, you've got breeding hens, lookout hens, lay down hens, all different types of hens. You got Jake decoys, you've got strutter decoys. My favorite is a quarter or a half strut Jake.
Kevin Creeley (51:12.991)
Either one, just a little wimpy looking thing with a tiny little beard. It's like half kind of trying to strut. Now, if you can identify a Turkey strut zone, like I mentioned before, and then take that half strut Jake and then stick it out in the field and stick a hen decoy next to it, go set up with gun range to that thing. Yelp on a mouth call a couple of times and then just sit there or any kind of call for that matter. And then just sit there. You're in the chips, man. You're in the chips in that situation. So that's an easy sit and wait tactic. Another sit and wait tactic.
would be, let's say, your situation.
Angelo (51:43.567)
Before you go any further, we're talking about decoys. The positioning and the scenario that you build with the decoy, how important do you think that would be? So like an example is you said you had the half-struck Jake. Maybe having it positioned near, closely, or behind a laying down hen would be something that would maybe represent a hen almost maybe allowing him to breed soon or something like that. You'd think that would fire up the tom even more than maybe like
Kevin Creeley (52:08.589)
Mm-hmm.
Angelo (52:12.931)
two hen decoys standing, kind of looking like they're feeding and then a strutting Jake 10 yards behind them.
Kevin Creeley (52:20.823)
So say two things. Number one, I've killed a turkey like that before. It was kind of funny. My buddy had this hen decoy back in the day and it had legs that you had to stick on the bottom of it. Right. And then it would stand up and that was like, they kind of acted as the steak. They would stake into the ground. Those legs would, and I guess he dropped them out of his vest or something. We were walking through the field in the dark and we got up there he just had the body of the hen. And he's like, dude, what the heck do I do with this? And I was like, man, just lay that thing on the ground and put the Jake right behind it. Like he's mountainer.
And he was like, all right. And I was like, he's like, you think that'll work? I'm like, heck, I don't know, but we'll find out in a minute. Cause we had three turkeys roosted right up away from us. And we set it up. looks so goofy. was a Jake like this. Like he was like mountain to hand the hen was half fallen over on uneven terrain. And then goblers came in fired up to that boy. They came right in. so the other thing I want to touch on, off of what Angelo said,
Chris (52:55.645)
You
Chris (53:03.773)
Mm-hmm. She was drunk.
Chris (53:10.823)
That's awesome.
Kevin Creeley (53:17.229)
If you like, let's say you had just a hen decoy or two hen decoys and you didn't have the male decoy, it can work. not really something I recommend. And the reason for that is when you're using a decoy, the idea is for the decoy to be seen by the targeted species, the turkey, the gobbler, right? So if you stick that hen out there and then you make some hen calls and a turkey comes within seeing distance of that hen, let's say he's 190 yards away and he can see the hen. He might just stand there and strut.
and draw him at that hen and he's like, gosh, he'll come over here. You know what I mean? And he'll just hang up and you've just screwed yourself. Whereas if you didn't have the decoy, you could almost be more effective, you know? But then you add in that male decoy with the female decoy and now you've got a completely different scenario. Now he's got a reason to come over there and whip some tail and take what's his, you know?
Chris (54:07.933)
Is that also one of those things where like, let's say you only had a Tom decoy, you only had a Hen decoy, would you not want to make obviously the sound of the turkey that you don't have? So if you only have hens, would you want to avoid sounding like a Tom or vice versa?
Kevin Creeley (54:23.981)
No, I wouldn't worry about that at all. Um, when I called it with Turkey, obviously 95 % of the time I'm making hen calls, right? I'm making hen calls on my mouth call. I primarily use a mouth call, use a slate call a little bit, mostly just for locating, but really I use a mouth call 99 % of the time and I'm making hen noises. But a lot of times if I'm yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap and a Turkey's eating it up, but then he gets hung up for a while. I'll throw in some Jake Yelps with that.
I'll go, go, go, go and throw some Jake Yelps in the mix. And sometimes that'll fire them right back up. So I don't really think, I don't know. I, like I said, I try not to overthink it. think the turkeys when they're in that mindset of like strutting and gobbling and doing their thing in the spring, they're not like, like I said earlier with the off season locator call stuff, they're not really over analyzing it too much. You know what I mean? They're just coming in cause they're fired up.
Chris (55:10.949)
I gotcha. Okay. And would the run and gun style of locating and hunting turkey be considered the same as stalking? Like stalking a turkey?
Kevin Creeley (55:22.957)
Um, yeah, I'd say that's probably like number three. That's probably its own thing. Like I've died. I had a Turkey I killed last year. I never made a single call. I never even set up. I just crawled up and shot the Turkey. Saw him 300 yards away, made a big loop, crawled up a hill and shot him. Um, and that's certainly another tactic. Some people aren't a fan of it, but it's certainly effective if you're sneaky enough.
Chris (55:27.623)
Okay.
Chris (55:40.625)
Yeah. Yeah. The reason, the only reason I ask is because New Jersey law specifically says you cannot stalk turkey. You have to pretty much be set up and hunt them. And I don't know if there's any truth to this. I just assumed as a kid, like you were saying, know, turkey have phenomenal eyesight. They can see, you know, very long distance, which is why you don't have to wear orange, at least is what I assume. You don't have to wear orange when you turkey hunt. Otherwise you'd never shoot a turkey. So that's why I'm assuming in Jersey, they don't allow you stalk because
Kevin Creeley (55:50.508)
wow, interesting.
Kevin Creeley (55:59.132)
yeah.
Kevin Creeley (56:02.593)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (56:06.657)
Yeah, it's pretty accurate.
Chris (56:10.535)
You're like you're saying people might be wearing decoys or using decoys people don't have orange on so how do you know where people are? I guess it's a safety thing so you know for those of you listening from the Northeast we need to look in we need to look into New York and Pennsylvania specifically but I know for sure it is illegal to Turkey in New Jersey and I don't know if I don't know if you know a game order would would differentiate like I heard the turkeys and I'm just going towards it versus I'm stalking a turkey I don't know
Kevin Creeley (56:15.373)
Hmm.
probably.
Kevin Creeley (56:39.181)
That's a good question. I don't know the answer to. But that's a good question. Something to look into for sure. So like I said, that's sitting way tactic number one. Set up in a field with a decoy. That's an awesome one. Let's say your situation looks a little different. Let's say it's a big large track of public land, primarily timbered, and you don't have like any obvious open areas where you can glass turkeys and see strut zones and stuff like that. In that situation, I would go get near water and then walk. Let's say you walk a creek bottom.
Chris (56:42.321)
Okay, yeah.
Kevin Creeley (57:08.395)
Walk for 200 yards, look for some Turkey sign. We're looking for Turkey scratching. We're looking for feathers. We're looking for droppings. We're looking for tracks. make it 200 yards. Don't see any go up to the top of the ridge, walk that for 200 yards. Don't see any shoot back down to the creek, rinse and repeat until you find that Turkey sign. And you want to find like where it looks like somebody took a tiller through the woods. Like it's going to be scratched to hell, right? That's your sitting wait spot in your timbered situation. You don't have a big field.
You decided that that's how you want to hunt. You want to sit and wait. That's where you're going to want to sit and wait. It's right there. Anywhere you have dense turkey sign.
Chris (57:47.101)
Now let's say you have the opposite, and I'll be honest, this is a little bit more of a selfish question, because it is how our property lays out. Our property is pretty much woods, hardwoods, and then logging roads or two tracks going through it. And essentially, any one of those trails or roads that you drive, they're scratched from end to end. There are scratches everywhere. I actually, I gotta send you some videos. I have videos.
Kevin Creeley (58:02.775)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (58:11.266)
Hmm.
Chris (58:15.829)
of, you know, from the game cameras of turkeys walking up, scratching, then backing up, kind of picking through the dirt. was the coolest thing to see because I've never seen that before. But how would you tackle it where, you know, the scenario you just gave is where you walk and you don't find it, move, you don't find it, move, you don't find it versus everywhere you go, you're seeing turkey.
Kevin Creeley (58:22.413)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (58:36.139)
Man, that sounds like you're in a beautiful place to hunt turkeys. And that's one of the beautiful things about turkey hunting, man, is, know, as deer hunters, we have to constantly, when we find a large density of sign, we have to think to ourselves, is this night sign or is this day sign? Turkeys don't make night sign. Turkeys sleep at night. So all the sign you find is day sign, which is awesome. Right? So if you find that logging road that's scratched to hell, I would just set up and hang out. If you're going with the sit and wait tactic, that'd be a great place to hang out.
Chris (58:53.723)
all right.
Kevin Creeley (59:05.335)
do a couple of soft clocks and purrs and some low yelps on a mouth call. Take your hand and scratching the leaves like a hen and hang out for a couple hours. That would be a great spot to do it, man. And turkeys love strutting those logging roads. When you just described that property to me, the massive hardwoods and the two tracks going through it, that got like, that got me excited. Cause that's some of my favorite stuff to turkey hunt right there, man.
That type of habitat is so, there's nothing cooler than a Turkey Goblin in the hardwoods coming up a two track man. It is so cool to me.
Chris (59:34.845)
And it's so cool to hear you like talking about him because I'm picturing the places where I've seen the turkey before and I'll be honest on our property I haven't seen him in person except when my when my dog ended up tracking one and set one flying But outside of that on our property I haven't seen him while hunting but we have a lot of data of them on cameras and we basically Exclusively see them on the cameras that are on food plots
Kevin Creeley (59:48.129)
Okay.
Chris (01:00:02.149)
and they're just sitting there either strutting or walking through or feeding, know, feeding in the fields and stuff like that. Now, our property is really long road frontage, so think of like a rectangle with like a curved corner, our entire, that entire corner covers one half of the long side of our property and it's all road frontage. And then once you get into the woods, you have to walk through our property to get to the back ends of the property or the far ends of the property or whatever. If we're, if we're,
Kevin Creeley (01:00:23.373)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:00:31.983)
If we're planning on trying to turkey hunt our property throughout the turkey season, would it be safe to say then you want to start on the outside of the property in the beginning of the season and kind of work your way towards the middle as the season goes on from a pressure standpoint?
Kevin Creeley (01:00:49.197)
Hold on, me one second. Sorry, my mic's doing something crazy.
Chris (01:00:54.973)
you getting feedback or something?
Angelo (01:00:59.164)
I was getting it too.
Kevin Creeley (01:01:02.157)
Alright, I'm back. Sorry. Well, Mike just started going erratic in my ears. I don't know what that was. Yeah. Anyway, um, your question was, should you hunt the fringes of the property first and then slowly move in? Ah, it's a hard question to answer. I mean, really, I just hunt where the turkeys are at, you know, that's the beautiful thing about turkey hunting. What with deer hunting, they're not quite nearly as vocal. So you don't necessarily know where the deer is at unless they're laying down a bunch of sign. But with turkeys, you know exactly where the turkeys are.
Angelo (01:01:03.735)
I was getting that feedback too. Now, yes, sometimes it randomly happens.
Kevin Creeley (01:01:32.427)
Now I wouldn't dive bomb into the center of the property on open end day. If you don't know there's a Turkey there, that would be pointless. Right? So like maybe stay in the fringes of the property for listening purposes, but then you hear a Turkey like a mile away gobble in the center of the property.
Chris (01:01:47.965)
Come on, Edge. Come on, guy. We're trying to work here.
Angelo (01:01:48.623)
Sorry.
Angelo (01:01:53.615)
it was off in the other room for a couple of minutes and I came back in and there was something notification from a realtor I have. Anyway, I clicked on it and then it was, got some.
Kevin Creeley (01:02:04.333)
No worries. But anyway, so like you're in the fringes of the property, you're listening and that turkey gobbles in his way in the center of the property. Then I'm going to the center of the property. I don't care if it's the day after opening day. I'm going where the turkey is. You know what I mean? So.
Chris (01:02:05.533)
That's hilarious.
Chris (01:02:18.587)
I got you. Okay. And when you're walking through the woods, like when you're deer hunting, and I'm relating this a lot to deer hunting, because that's like my base of knowledge to kind of like build off of. So when you're walking through the woods, you always want to be silent. I don't know about you, but when I'm, unless I'm planting a food plot, any other time of the year, in season, out of season, it doesn't matter, I'm going in there with my camo, I'm going in there with my scent control stuff on, and I'm trying to make as little noise as possible.
Kevin Creeley (01:02:27.053)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Chris (01:02:47.151)
It doesn't matter. could be June. don't care. Is that something you need to worry about with Turkey? Are they as I know you said they're sensitive to hunting pressure, but are they sensitive to, you know, noise and stuff like that? Like, do you have to sneak around the woods the same way you would for deer for long term pressure?
Kevin Creeley (01:03:02.571)
Are we talking about in a hunting situation or just a word just on our property doing some tree work or something situation?
Chris (01:03:08.125)
Let's keep it real simple and let's say this is starting when we want to start scouting for Turkey. ready to like, so you said like March 20th. So starting March 20th to the end of the season is like noise.
Kevin Creeley (01:03:19.981)
Yeah, I want to sound like a turkey when I move through the property. It's really all about audio and vocal with turkeys. don't have any like, and they don't really smell too good. You know what I mean? They're not like, oh, picking up your ground scent and stuff like that. So you don't really have to worry about that necessarily. Like you're not going to go into an area when they're not there and disturb it and then cause them to not want to return necessarily. But if you walked up on a flock of turkeys and bumped them, that's certainly going to have an impact on them. That's going to affect them negatively.
for hunting situations. anytime I move through the woods, when I'm scouting for turkeys, I want to sound like a turkey. Lucky for us, turkeys have two legs and so do we. So our cadence when we walk through the woods is pretty similar. The one simple thing you can do, man, is walk through the woods and every once in a while, maybe every 40, 50 yards, stop and just take your foot and just kick some leaves to the side and make like a...
Same sound a hen makes when she walks through the woods and scratches at the leaves pecking, right? Oftentimes I'll throw a mouth call in and I even do this during deer season to access. Man, my mic keeps doing this funny noise.
Kevin Creeley (01:04:32.184)
There it goes. Sorry about that. I'll even do this during the deer season. I'll throw a mouth call in my mouth and walk through the hardwoods just Every 50 60 yards and then scratch the leaves and man I'll do that during turkey season when I'm scouting I'll be scouting midday and I was gonna touch on that in a minute when we talk about running gun I'll be scouting midday and I'll do that
And oftentimes I'll be doing that and a turkey 150 yards away will just fire off a gobble. Now I'm in the game. You know what I mean? So just sound like a turkey when you move through the woods.
Chris (01:05:07.261)
I got you. And you got anything on, any questions on, know, Turkey calling, walking through the woods? Then what was it? The running gun I think we started with, right?
Angelo (01:05:16.335)
I mean, I do a lot of that type of stuff throughout all seasons. mean, I'm really big on moving through the woods. One of my secrets is kind of basically doing that, sounding like I'm part of the woods, making sure that I'm, you know, if I'm trying to walk a little bit faster, then, you know, I'm trying to sound maybe more like a deer or if I'm walking really slow, like you did, like you said, you scratch a couple of leaves like that, try to sound like a turkey. You know, sometimes I'm making calls randomly about, you know, different animal calls.
to try to cover up my noise, just to kind of blend in with what's going on so that nothing's alerted to my presence. mean, because at this point, you know, we're hunting mostly public land and a lot of that is pretty pressured. And, you know, a lot of scientific studies will show even in deer woods, when you're hunting deer in the preseason, you start walking around, as soon as they know they're getting hunted, it starts to change their behavior. I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean they completely disappear, but, you know, they start to definitely start, you know.
knowing how to move, they know how to move through the woods differently when there's pressure. So, you know, that's something that I'm doing as well. When I turkey hunt, I do the same thing. I have more of a run and gun style of hunting in general, no matter what I'm hunting. So I have to kind of always be thinking about those types of things. So I can relate to that.
Kevin Creeley (01:06:37.421)
Alright, well with that, guess we'll move on to talking about more of a run and gun style hunt, which is how I hunt. I don't do a whole lot of sitting and waiting that drives me crazy. You know what I mean? I'm impatient as it is, but so running a gun and tie like to hunt man. And sometimes I even like to say like, I don't know if either of you guys bass fish, but I've heard you if you do, I'm sure you've heard somebody say before. I'd rather catch five bass on the top water than 20 on the bottom. You know what I mean? And for me, it's like, I'd rather kill.
Angelo (01:06:49.465)
But.
Chris (01:07:02.959)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (01:07:06.163)
One turkey in three days of hunting, running to gun and then killed two turkeys in three days of hunting, sitting and waiting both days. Honestly, I'm just out there to have a good time, you know, and running and gunning is where I'm having a good time. So several ways to go about it. obviously starting first thing in the morning, we're going to go try to get near where we think a turkey is roosted. If we've roosted a turkey, all the better. But if we haven't, we're going to go get somewhere where we think near, let's say we get 200 yards from a Creek bottom and we're standing there and we're listening.
And turkey gobbles and he's in there. Now we set up. So we're going to set up. I'd like to get at least a hundred yards from the turkey. If you can get closer to that confidently without busting him, do it. But if not a hundred yards is plenty fine. Right. So we're going to set up a hundred yards from that turkey while he's gobbling on the limb. Now you have to make the decision whether or not you're going to call to that turkey while he's on the limb. and that's entirely up to you. You don't have to, to kill the turkey. It certainly helps cause you can.
Angelo (01:07:58.935)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:08:03.689)
Oftentimes coerce them into starting their morning in your direction if you call to them on the limb Now your calling has to be pretty dang good while they're on the limb They can hear really good while they're up there and they've got a lot of options of what direction they can go so you got to be pretty convincing if you're gonna talk to a turkey on the limb and It's kind of it has to sound like tree talk and what I mean by that is a hen when they're in the tree
Sounds a lot differently than a hen at nine o'clock in the morning in the middle of the day. That hen is wide awake. She's done stretch your legs. She's had a couple meals. She's fired up, ready to go. The hen first thing in the morning, just like you and I, we don't wake up in the morning and start shouting. You know what I mean? We wake up and we're groggy and we're like, Hey man, can I get some coffee? You know what I mean? So these hens are the same way, man. They get up and it starts, it's gap, gap, gap, gap, gap, gap. And so you got to learn that.
Chris (01:08:45.405)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:08:50.407)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (01:08:57.997)
soft low tree talk the little I'd call them bubble clocks and tree yelps and easy little clucks and yelps so you start with just little little soft notes at the turkey at make sure you're pitching it at the turkey right now if he's up there gobbling on the limb and you'll hear him changing directions as they gobble they'll be doing this they'll be turning on the limb gobbling because they're locating hens if you hit that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and he turns towards you pow and rips a gobble
That's an awesome sign. You can probably just shut up right there. And if he continues to stare at you and gobble, that's a really good sign. He's about to fly down on your lap. You know, so you give them that and then you wait. Sometimes they'll completely ignore you and just keep going about gobbling on the limb, gobbling on the limb. Then you should probably just shut up and then just wait. All right. So I'll give you two situations. One, the Turkey flies down and he comes straight to you you shoot him in the face. Awesome. That hunts over.
Chris (01:09:52.731)
That's good. Well then, yes.
Kevin Creeley (01:09:56.953)
Situation two, he flies the complete opposite direction. He didn't answer any of your calling and now he gobbles again and he's 350 yards away. What's your next, what's your next step? You know, do you sit there and wait? I'm not, I'm not doing that. You know, could it work? Maybe you might return to that roost site at some point during the day to revisit and see if there's some more hens that have poked back over. But I'm not doing that because if I'm not going to kill that turkey and go find a different one.
but I'm not giving up on this turkey yet. He just hit the ground and I just heard him gobble 350 yards away. So I'm still gonna hunt him. And I know which direction he went, because he gobbled here and then he gobbled at point B, right? So I know he traveled north, for example. So now I'm gonna cut what I like to call cut in a loop. I'm gonna go in that situation, it would be west, three, 400 yards, and then north, three, 400 yards, and then east, three, 400 yards, right? I'm gonna try to get...
Again, 100 yards from the turkey, but I'm going to get in front of the direction that he went. And if you feel like your access and getting there is taking too long or like, shoot, did I make too much noise? And then I bump them stop, hang out for five minutes and make one of those locator calls. You make that locator call and he's like still 300 yards up there. Okay, sweet. I'm on track. Now I know where he is. And then you just make that loop until you're a hundred yards in front of the direction that he was last traveling.
And then start your turkey calling sequence again. So I'll use my locator calls, owl calls, crow calls, hawk calls, all that good stuff on the way there. And then once I get set up, I got good cover, my guns on my knee, my face mask is up, I'm ready to go. Now I'll pop the mouth call in and start turkey calling again. And I want to get him to answer me once. Okay. So I'll just do like a soft yelping sequence or maybe just a couple cuts and he'll answer me and I'll pour into them one time. I'll get aggressive on the call.
And stuff like that and get him just pow pow pow just ripping it up and then I'll shut it down no more calling and If he keeps gobbling keeps gobbling keeps gobbling you've probably got him and it's one he we already talked about this But when he stops gobbling that is when you need to be on your piece because he's probably on his way
Chris (01:12:12.253)
Okay, I got you. it's interesting that you said, you know, he wasn't interested in me, he flew the other way around. Now I'm gonna go get him. Because I would think, okay, he wasn't interested in my calling. Now, whether that was I wasn't making the right sound, wasn't, you know, he wasn't interested in the pitch, would do whatever the case is. I would say, okay, he's not interested, I'll go find a bird that is. Is there any, is that just like a human thought I'm having? Like, is there any basis to that at all?
Kevin Creeley (01:12:40.863)
No, that's a good thought. and that goes into something I like to call taking a Turkey's temperature. If you hear a lot of people talk about that, sometimes Turkey's just ain't in the mood and they're to work that day. Right. My buddy, Adam, pride best Turkey hunter. know he always says that Turkey just don't want to die today. I'm going come back when he wants to die, you know, and when that Turkey doesn't want to die, Turkey doesn't want to die. But if you already know what's direction the Turkey's going and he's gobbling a lot of times you don't even have to call. You just have to get in front of where he's going.
and get there, right? So that goes back to like what we talked about with preseason scouting. Let's say you listen to turkeys in that creek bottom and then they flew down and then they went to a specific two track. If you already know they're doing that, you can just go get to that two track and they're going to come to you. You see what I'm saying? So because I already know there's a turkey here, I'm not going to leave a turkey to find a turkey, right? So this turkeys here right now and he's gobbling, even though he didn't come to me straight off the limb, which 80 % of the time they're not going to, because he probably had another hen to court.
That's probably why he didn't come to me. He probably already had a hen in mind that he wanted to go breed. So then he's going to fly down. He's going to breed that hen. But then once he's done with that, he's going to want to breed again. And then sometimes you just got to lay up there with them. You just got to hang out in that area that you know, they like to favor and you just sit and wait sometimes for an hour or more and complete silence. And around nine, nine 30, 10 o'clock in the morning, all of a sudden he'll just let off a gobble and be 150 yards away. And you're like, Oh, we're back in the game. Like he's ready to play again.
Chris (01:14:09.629)
I gotcha. I don't know, down in Virginia, is there like a time limit, like you have to be out of the turkey woods at this time, or are you allowed to hunt them from sunrise to sunset? Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:14:19.903)
noon, our cutoff is noon for the first three quarters of the season and for the last couple of weeks we're allowed to hunt the entire day.
Chris (01:14:26.461)
Okay, so from, Ange, correct me if I'm wrong here, but for as long as I've known turkey hunting, I've always, I've thought that New Jersey was always out of the woods by noon. Someone just told me recently, similar to you down in Virginia, where it's, you know, the last, because Jersey splits their turkey season into four quote seasons. You could either hunt the first Monday through Friday, the second Monday through Friday, third or fourth, or you can get four Saturdays.
So it's not like you buy one license and you can just hunt the whole entire turkey season. So is there a reason, I ask this to find out if there's a reason why you have to be out of the woods by noon. Is that to protect the turkey? Is that to protect the hunters? Like what's the thought process behind not allowing you to hunt past noon?
Angelo (01:15:11.927)
There may or may not even be a law that says you can't roost turkeys too. I think that's part of it. I think that like like, like Kevin said earlier, they're trying to give them a chance to breed. They know that if, if they don't come to you directly in the morning, they probably have moved off and now they should probably be left alone to breed. it's all about giving them the opportunity to breed. And then I think that they don't want anyone having an unfair advantage of.
Chris (01:15:45.021)
I heard was unfair advantage.
Angelo (01:15:48.863)
So me and Kevin, think are both getting that feedback again. But I don't think they want anyone having an unfair advantage of locating exactly where the turkeys are and then having an unfair advantage of in the morning coming in and being able to just pinpoint them and just, you know, being taunted or, you know, maybe they have the idea in their mind of shooting them out of the tree or something like that. You know what mean? They don't want people knowing.
Kevin Creeley (01:15:51.627)
Yeah, yeah, I fixed it.
Kevin Creeley (01:16:11.661)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:16:11.707)
Okay. Yeah.
No, I mean, that's very makes sense.
Kevin Creeley (01:16:14.827)
Yeah, no, I think, I think he's a hundred percent right. I think it all just comes down to giving them an opportunity to breed. And that's, that's always been the reason I've been given for the cutoff, the noon cutoff. yeah. And I'll be honest with you, man. I kind of enjoy the noon cutoff. And the reason I say that is cause I'm a turkey hunting fanatic. And if there was no noon cutoff, I would Turkey hunt every day of the entire Turkey season from sunup to sundown, walking 10 miles a day. And I would be.
Chris (01:16:25.863)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:16:43.629)
110 pounds and soaking wet and exhausted and broken by the end of the spring. So it kind of gives me a break.
Chris (01:16:49.425)
Mm-hmm. Well, I don't know about you, man, but after this fucking cold front that's come through here, I am so excited to go sit in the woods in the spring. Dude, I mean, I don't know if you noticed, I keep, while we're recording, I keep a beer in the window. So when I finished the one, just cracked, I just popped the window open and grabbed a cold beer and it ends up being colder in the window than it is from the fridge, So, yeah.
Kevin Creeley (01:16:59.232)
yeah.
Kevin Creeley (01:17:08.653)
That's funny.
Chris (01:17:14.011)
I mean, I don't know about you. It seems like this would be a logical place to kind of like clip this conversation and part one. But I don't want to cut you off if there's anything else specific that you were really looking to get to tonight in this portion of the conversation. Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on? Was there anything else wanted to touch on? all.
Kevin Creeley (01:17:21.133)
Sounds good.
Kevin Creeley (01:17:28.941)
No, I think that's a good... Sorry.
no, I think that's a good, pretty easy summary of intro to tactics and locating and calling turkeys. mean, obviously we could do, we could do a whole series of episodes on calling it turkeys and situational hunting tactics and stuff like that. But I think that's a pretty good, basic turkey hunting 101 of a couple of examples of how to locate and hunt turkeys.
Chris (01:17:57.467)
Okay.
Yeah, and Angel and I have been talking a lot over time. One of the things that we really want to get into on our, you know, Wing and Tail Outdoors network or whatever is we really want to give our listeners series. I feel like sometimes when you try to squeeze everything into one or two episodes, sometimes you either don't touch on something as in depth as you would like, or you just miss something or whatever the case may be. Would you be interested in continuing this and like maybe a multi-part turkey series?
Kevin Creeley (01:18:21.163)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Chris (01:18:28.945)
where we just talk and so we're done talking for the day and then we just pick up on the next episode. Is that something you'd be interested in?
Kevin Creeley (01:18:34.103)
Yeah, absolutely. That'd be awesome.
Chris (01:18:35.825)
Cool. So then listeners, guys, Kevin's willing to come on back. So as you're listening to this, if any questions come to mind, maybe you're a new turkey hunter or maybe you're a seasoned turkey hunter and you have maybe some input or some questions, leave them down below. We would love to start the episode with a question that you have or a listener comment. Before I end the episode today, I have two questions for you, which are more Kevin type questions. Number one, in your opinion for a brand new hunter,
who's never done either before, what's easier to get started in, turkey or deer hunting? Really? Okay. I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting turkey, I'm not gonna lie.
Kevin Creeley (01:19:09.549)
Deer hunting. 100%. Yeah.
Yeah, dear honey, way easier. Plus, don't we don't need any more turkey hunters. Don't go turkey hunting. This sucks. They have the woods. Ticks everywhere.
Chris (01:19:18.329)
Okay.
Okay, y'all, it's terrible, it's awful. You're not gonna have fun, it's hot and sweaty, it sucks. My next question, yeah. What is your turkey gun look like? Because I know you said we're gonna get into like gear at some point. But what is your, I figure at the end of each episode, if we touch on one new thing about Kevin, it would be pretty cool. So what gun do you shoot? What choke do you shoot? What rounds do you bring in the woods?
Angelo (01:19:22.479)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Creeley (01:19:48.888)
So it's a Ray-Tay Gordian Turkey. It's a 20 gauge. It's a compact 20 gauge. It's dipped in bottom line, cause bottom line's awesome. And it's got a, I can't remember the brand, Summit? Some toy? That sounds right. Something like that. It's a red dot. It's got a red dot on it. I use an Indian Creek Extra Full Choke Tube and I shoot TSS Number 9.
Chris (01:19:57.03)
Okay.
Chris (01:20:10.075)
Okay. Extra full choke. Fantastic. And now as I'm saying this, I just remembered, so I'll probably be bringing my Benelli out in the woods, which I'm very excited for, but I can't find my damn choke wrench, like, cause it comes with like a special wrench to change the chokes out. dude, you kidding? This gun? Bro, I wish I would have known this when I bought it, cause I might not have bought it. A fucking barrel, a brand new barrel costs more than two rifles.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:19.979)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:25.121)
He's a quarter.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:35.501)
See you.
Chris (01:20:36.455)
Dude, I don't know, are you familiar with the super black eagle, the Benelli super black eagle? Okay, I got one in lefty when I was working at Dick's Sporting Goods. So thankfully I got it, you know, on like an employee discount or whatever. I got a really great deal. And at one point I went to get a rifled barrel for it. Cause I was like, screw it, I'll use it to shotgun hunt. I when I shit you not a rifled barrel alone with no bells and whistles, $650. Yeah, and that was six or seven years ago when I looked into it.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:39.507)
I am.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:48.172)
Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (01:20:58.765)
Sheesh.
Chris (01:21:03.229)
So don't even know what it would cost me now. At that point, I'd rather just go buy a turkey shotgun and call it a day. You know, so. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Kevin Creeley (01:21:07.745)
Yeah.
Angelo (01:21:07.949)
All my guns are hand-me-downs.
Kevin Creeley (01:21:10.913)
Nothing wrong with that.
Angelo (01:21:12.271)
except for the new rifle that I just bought for the Upstate New York Hunts and that you can consider a hand-me-down also because that was produced in like the 60s.
Chris (01:21:22.107)
Yeah, sometimes they're made better there. all right, Kev, we want to thank you for joining us. This is a great conversation. I definitely learned a lot because like I said, I came in here knowing zero about turkey hunting. So if you could give the listeners, you've been on here before, just remind them where they could find you and what your network is.
Kevin Creeley (01:21:39.52)
man, if y'all, if y'all haven't heard enough of me rambling on for the last hour and a half or however long we've been on here, then you want to hear me ramble on some more and you can go listen over at the mid Atlantic outdoorsman. on podcasts, Spotify, all that good stuff. I'm on the same network as Chris and Ang I'm on a sportsman's empire network. And I've got some stuff on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. And again, it's mid Atlantic outdoors.
Chris (01:22:01.797)
Awesome, man. Well, we're glad to have you. Thanks for joining us. You guys know the spiel. Drive on down there. Leave a comment. Leave a nice five-star review. We love it. Helps us. Helps you. And we'll get back with you guys again next week. And until then, remember, success is just a commitment away. Have a good one, guys.
Angelo (01:22:16.207)
Peace.
