Editor’s Note: Travis Walton from Birmingham, Alabama, a longtime outdoor friend of my son, John, Jr., is my new turkey-hunting hero. Without question, some of the baddest gobblers live on public hunting lands. Generally, they receive far more hunting pressure than the turkeys living on private lands. After President Trump announced the stay-at-home order in the spring of 2020, turkey hunters all over the nation had a legitimate reason to hunt turkeys every day of turkey season. Travis Walton then had the freedom to hunt a part of every day when not working.

Here’s what I learned. I could:

* scout for public-land gobblers without leaving my house by watching YouTube videos or setting-up in areas I wanted to scout and going to those places and either confirming or eliminating those areas as possible turkey places during the season;

* scout for turkey sign on public-land to learn public-land turkey movement;

* identify where hunters were entering or leaving the hunting grounds after my morning hunt;

* move further away from hunting pressure to see more turkey sign and strengthen my odds for bagging a gobbler;

* have more success at the end of the season, if I could find a strut zone that looked like it had been worked actively for several days;

* locate the baddest birds on the property at the end of the season, since they would come to a strut zone in hopes of finding the last strutting hen before the season ended. More than likely those gobblers would come in slowly;

* depend on the old saying, “Call a little; wait a lot.” This slogan seemed especially true when trying to call public-land gobblers; and

* be successful at the end of the season by keeping my mind on hunting turkeys, not on shooting video.

To learn more about turkey hunting, check out John E. Phillips’s book, “Outdoor Life’s Complete Turkey Hunting,” at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IXXJWOQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p2_i10
available in Kindle and print. You may have to cut and paste this link into your browser. (When you click on this book, notice on the left where Amazon says you can read 10% of this book for free). To learn more about other turkey books by John E. Phillips, go to www.amazon.com/author/johnephillips.