There are advantages to hunting the late season for turkeys

Your anticipation is peaking as the turkey season approaches, and the electricity running through your body is at high voltage as you step into the turkey woods in the early-morning darkness of opening day.

All of that enthusiasm might be rewarded with success. Then again, disappointment may substitute for fulfillment. With each day of close calls or no action at all, the nervousness that you might not fill a tag begins to affect your psyche.

That’s when you have to take pause and re-evaluate what you have done so far. It is also time to appreciate the fact that while the season’s end is closing in on you, the very fact that the end of May is approaching can offer you a few advantages.

First of all, you have to do something about any pessimism that has lessened that early-season enthusiasm. Recognize your turkey hunting talent.

If you have a history of turkey hunting success, then you know you have the ability to bring a tom into range at any time of the month. Tomorrow could be the day.

Second, think about what you’ve experienced so far in the season.

Do you think that approaching your hunting areas from another route might make a difference? I can remember a tom that for several days had answered my calls from his roost well below my position. Once off the roost, however, he went in a different direction, further downhill.

Although I had been calling from the most convenient spot from where I had parked my vehicle, a spot that gave me the uphill advantage I typically valued, I decided to try another entry point. It was much harder to get to where I wanted to be, which included fording a stream and winding up downhill of where I suspected the tom to be roosting.

As dawn arrived, I offered a few soft tree calls. He gobbled back to me as he had on previous mornings. I made no other calls until he was on the ground and he gobbled again, this time closer to my position.

I then made a few soft purrs on my slate call, and in seconds he was in sight. The walk uphill was much more difficult when I returned to my car. It was not only the increase in elevation that made it more tiring but the weight of the big gobbler I carried in my vest.

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Another year, in that same general area, I repeatedly was getting frustrated by a tom who would also answer from his roost, but then wander in a different direction with hens likely leading the way. As late season approached, his harem of hens lessened as their mating needs waned and they spent more time on their nests.

I had two ideas of how to take advantage of the decrease in his choice of mates. One was to cut hard and loud on my box call after hearing a gobble, giving the impression that I was a really hot hen that wanted him to come over right away.

That strategy has often worked for me, and I recommend it highly, especially in late season. At the advice of an expert turkey hunting friend, however, I decided to try a very different strategy, where, instead of making a racket by cutting, I would try the silent treatment.

This particular resistant tom roosted in some hardwoods not too far from a pasture. Although on previous mornings, he headed in another direction from that field, I decided to set up against the pasture side of a stone wall that bordered the field. Before sitting down, I set up a hen decoy in the corner of the field, where an opening for access presented itself.

Then, I gave out a soft yelp. The tom shattered the air with a resounding gobble from the roost. I never made another call. He repeatedly gobbled. My silence must have been torturing him, because after he alit, he came looking for me. When he entered the field, I put him down.

Besides the advantage of less hens for toms to breed, late-season hunting offers a couple of other benefits. One is that you are less likely to have competition from other hunters. Perhaps they have filled their tags or let lack of success, along with the late-May heat and biting insects, discourage them from hunting until the last days of the season.

Another benefit is the thick foliage that has developed in both the understory and forest canopy. It allows you the cover to get much closer to toms on the roost and especially those already on the ground.

Keeping your spirits high and re-evaluating early-season scenarios can make a difference on later-season hunts. So can the benefits of less competition from hunters and hens and of thicker cover, allowing closer setups.

After you’ve paid your dues by putting in time and effort on unproductive hunts, the satisfaction of bagging a turkey in late season is even greater, in my mind, than the thrill of opening day success.

Glenn Sapir has gathered 167 of his magazine and newspaper articles into a handsome, leatherette-covered book, “A Sapir Sampler: Favorites by an Outdoor Writer.” Copies are available for $29.50, plus $6 for shipping (check or money order; note whether you want it signed), from Glenn Sapir, Ashmark Communications, Inc., 21 Shamrock Dr., Putnam Valley, NY 10579.