Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Shooting Tom off the roost!

B

bowmaker

Member
Spring turkey hunting AIN'T about killing a bird, and that is all you would be doing if you shot one on the roost. Turkey hunting is about hearing those old boys gobbling up in the trees while you stumble arround in the dark trying to setup decoys and not spook Tom in the process. Making soft little yelps until it gets light and watching him fly out over your head into a field. Then as you call a little you get to watch him stalk towards your decoys, stopping once in a while to fan out and display. If you have done things right he will march arround gobbling his head off and you can see his red head start to turn pure white as he gets more and more angry with the decoy who won't talk to him. When he gets mad enough he will reach out and smack the decoy with a wing or jump up and spur it. Then when he knocks it off the stake he just looks at it kind of funny. Now is the time to shoot! Not while he is still in the tree!

No, I don't think I would do it if it were legal, besides how could you tell a tom from a hen when they are just black blobs in a tree before light.
 
By the way I was brought up in hunting and in the way I will soon be teaching my own children in the very near future,....shooting any turkey off the roost at any time of the year, Spring or Fall, is a big fat NO-NO!!! This would defeat my whole purpose for even being out there turkey hunting in the first place. I place this right along side with ground swatting a covey of quail. Not wanting to offend anyone, but why not go buy a Butterball at the store, much more juicy.
grin.gif
 
I couldn`t agree more with Ghost Walker
the best part of turkey hunting is being out there with the turkeys, watching and hearing them , is price less!!!!! good luck
 
i agree too, the funnest part about the hunt is calling them, not ambushing them out of the trees. the only time ive seen a turkey shot out of a tree was because it came in about thirty yards, my dad shot it and rolled it, it got up and flew about ten yards in the tree above him and he had to finish it off. so i guess i think that would be the only time to shoot a turkey out of the tree if it was wounded bad. there is nothing like getting up close and personal to those ole boys.
 
Each hunter must decide what they are out there for. If getting the bird is all that there is to turkey hunting then the method does not matter.

What gets us the most mileage of excitement out of the adventure? When the bird is dead it's all over.
 
The board seems a little slow, so I thought I'd throw this out. This topic is hot on another board. Would you do it if legal?
What do think about the ethics involved?
 
Hey HomerJ,

Are you talking in the fall? I'd pluck 'em out of the trees in the fall. I think that would take all of the fun out of the game in the Spring though. It's easy enough to wait and shoot them on the ground with a shotgun anyway, when are you going to try to get one with the stick and string?
 
Kelcher, When shooting them on the ground with a shotgun comes as easy for me as it is for you,I'll dust off my bow! Spring hunting is the season I'm talking.
 
I would never do that. If i did I would be done in about 10 minutes, wheres the challenge in that????

jason
 
...thought I would share this experience...

...it was about the mid-point of the 4th season several years ago, back when the season only covered 2 weekends...I decided to skip a day of classes at ISU to head out to the woods around mom and dad's place...it was a wet morning, the rain of the previous night had turned into a continual drizzle sometime during my drive...I had little hope of hearing much as I made my way to the river bottom, so I just headed straight to one of my favorite trees to set up...the sky was just turning a gray color as I staked out my lone hen decoy 15 yards in front of the tree I was going sit against...once I was seated I popped in a mouth call and just sat quietly taking in the sight of this familiar timber...I remember glancing at my decoy at least once and feeling sorry for her as she was pretty well beat up from several days of being crammed in my vest...I kinda laughed to myself that any tom that fell for the dented and half-bent hen should be shot just to be taken out of the gene pool...my world was then interupted by a tree shaking gobble!...and then another!...this bird was close - very close!...I slowly lifted my eyes and just as the tom let loose again I spotted him...straight above the decoy!...not 15 yards away from me on the limb of the tree that was straight above the decoy - and he was in love...he would give me the evil eye for a second or two and then turn his attention back to the decoy which would cause him to gobble, double gobble and even triple gobble...I am sure he was asking the hen what she was doing with a guy like me, but she just gave him the silent treatment...I was having too much fun watching and listening to think about calling, besides he had me busted...shucks, he could have pooped on me when I was putting out that decoy...he stayed on that limb for almost 2 hours after sunrise - I lost count of how many times he gobbled after 100 and that was a good hour before he dropped from the limb...he flew down to a field behind where I was set up and gobbled for another hour trying to get his new love to follow him...he eventually got frustrated and left...I picked up the decoy and gently placed her in my vest and walked back to my truck...I didn't have a dead bird over my shoulder that day...I had something better...
 
Great story Hershey! That's what it's all about.

Where's the challenge or fun in shooting them on the roost? It brings to mind a FarSide cartoon of a hunter shooting a bear that's peacefully drinking from a stream ... the next panel shows the mounted bear in the guy's den standing in a roaring pose. It's not about killing a bird, it's about getting that gobbler all fired up and coming to find that lonesome hen. Or just being out in the woods on a quiet spring morning and see and hear the woods come alive. Actually bagging him is just the gravy!

Threebeards
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom