Listen, I live in Michigan and I want to elk hunt as much as the next guy. You turn on your television and flip to the sportsman’s channel, you watch people communicating with and chasing elk with archery equipment and you hear that bull bugling at 50 yards and even watching it on a television makes the hair on your back stand up. I want to be that guy in the Rocky mountains with a bow in my hand too, but I live in Michigan, so elk hunting is more-so a dream than a reality. To elk hunt we have to either wait multiple years to draw a coveted Northern Michigan Pigeon River Elk tag, or save money for multiple years to go out west and chase a big bull with no guaranteed success. For most of us, it’s just not in the cards to elk hunt on an annual basis; we might get to chase a bull a couple times in our lives if we’re lucky.
However, what if I told you there’s an alternative to elk hunting right here in the mitten state? What if I told you there’s a big game animal right in your backyard that you can communicate with and chase from sunrise to sunset? What if I told you that when this animal responds to your call that the hair on the back on your neck will stand up and you’ll be hooked for life?
Enter the wild turkey.
You’ve probably seen hundreds of red headed bird-looking creatures in the cornfields on the side of the highway while driving throughout the state, or maybe you see them in your yard on a daily basis and just see them as stupid birds that keep eating away at your bird feeder. Step into the woods though on a cool April morning and just listen to them chatter. There isn’t another sound in North America that matches the sound a Tom, which is the name of an adult male turkey, makes when he gobbles from his roost to let the whole woods know that he’s the man of the timber and you’d be stupid to come mess with him. Whether it be a mouth call, a slate call, or box call; if you mimic the sound of a hen and tom responds with a deafening gobble and your hair on the back of your neck doesn’t stand up there’s more than likely something physically wrong with you. If it tells you anything, western hunters are known to travel EAST to hunt these things. That’s right. ELK HUNTERS TRAVELING THOUSANDS OF MILES TO HUNT BIRDS IN YOUR BACKYARD. If that doesn’t get the juices flowing I don’t know what will.
You can distinguish a Tom from a Hen by his red head, long beard under the base of his neck, and his pointy spurs sticking out from the back side of the bottom of his legs. Oh, and that unearthly perfect sound known as a gobble.
By the way, even though they seem like they’re everywhere; they ARE NOT easy to kill. If a tom could smell as well as a whitetail deer, he would be virtually unhuntable. They can hear extremely well, but what really makes them tough to kill is their eyesight. A turkey’s eyes are on the side of their head, which allows them to cover 270 degrees around them, and even though I've never given a turkey an eye exam, it is a well known fact that there eyesight is more than three times better than a person with 20/20 vision. What I’m trying to get at it is that with a great combination of hearing and vision, making any kind of movement while turkey hunting can be catastrophic to your chances of success. Some of the most skilled woodsman around the country are left bewildered and eating their turkey tag on an annual basis, so if you’re going to chase turkeys, be prepared for an extreme challenge.
Most of us whitetail hunters sit in a treestand all fall and use bleat calls, rattling antlers, and grunt calls to lure bucks into range. Even though we do have success in doing so from time to time, its EXTREMELY rare that a deer ever actually communicates back to you. That's why elk hunting is so intriguing to most of us, to be able to communicate with a large big game animal like that just seems like the ultimate adrenaline rush. Here’s a not so well kept secret that I already gave away above: TURKEYS COMMUNICATE BACK. Hens and toms respond to calls on a regular basis. The tricky part is luring them into range while trying to stay undetected by their keen eyes and sense of hearing.
There’s nothing like hitting the slate or mouth call, listening to a gobbler respond a couple hundred yards off and trying to make a move on him. It has all the same logistics as an elk hunt. Call, locate, chase and setup, then call him into range, fail, and then do it all over again. It flat out sucks when you chase one around all day and then get within 50 yards to only get detected because your foot moved 2 inches accidentally and all you see is a turkey’s tiny little skinny legs sprinting away from you. It can be demoralizing, but at the same time you feel a small sense of relief because you still have your tag in your pocket and you can do it all over again tomorrow.
I’m not going to go into all the different methods of turkey hunting because that’s a long article in itself. All I’m asking of you is to try it. Especially if you sit there drooling in front of your television watching elk hunt after elk hunt. I’m not going to sit here and tell you hunting and killing a turkey is as exciting and adrenaline pumping as hunting and killing an elk, but it’s as close as you can get to it here in the Midwest. There’s a reason legends like Aldo Leopold, Will Primos, and Steven Rinella are passionate turkey hunters, these things are fun to chase. Keep saving that money for your next big trip out west, but in the meantime spend $15 at your local sporting goods store and buy yourself a spring turkey tag. Whitetail season is six months away, and your next big trip out west is probably a couple years away, so mind as well “elk hunt on a budget” and go call and chase the most exciting big game animal to hunt here in the Midwest, that big old red headed bird in your neighbors backyard.