Editor’s Note: Calvin Perryman from Troy, Alabama, has hunted many hardwood bottoms and upland pine stands for 25 years for gobblers, primarily on family lands in the Black Belt in Wilcox, Dallas and Butler counties in south Alabama. Much of south Alabama never has had a closed season for turkey hunting. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, turkeys were revered there. Many large landowners protected their turkey flocks, so that they could hunt them in the spring and the fall. Also, that section of the U.S. had quality habitat for turkeys. Today many of the landowners around where Perryman lives and hunts do intensive predator control, which positively impacts turkeys, their eggs and their poults. That’s why hunters around this place are so effective in taking turkeys.

On one of Calvin Perryman’s turkey hunts in Alabama, he went to a place he’d hunted before and heard two toms gobble on the edge of a pond in hardwood bottom that had a food plot about 100-yards away. He went to the food plot that contained winter wheat and rye grass left from deer season and set-up. About fly-down time, Perryman heard two turkeys fly out of the tree and start gobbling. The vegetation around the food plot was thick and then thin in various areas. Thinking the turkeys wouldn’t walk through the thick vegetation, Perryman set-up in one of the more-open sections. In 20 minutes, Perryman spotted the turkeys coming, gobbling every breath. He poured the calling to them.

“I’ve learned to hen call with the same amount of enthusiasm as the gobblers demonstrate by my calling back, and these two gobblers were really cranked-up,” Perryman explains. “Both birds were 2-year-old gobblers, which might explain why they were gobbling so much. I’d hunted these turkeys previously in that same general region.”

Sometimes Perryman goes out before the season to try and pinpoint turkeys. But other years when he’s busy at work, he doesn’t do any pre-season scouting. “I think remembering that I’ve hunted these same spots for 20+ years is important,” Perryman emphasizes. “The places where I’ve taken some of my first turkeys when I’d started hunting are the same areas I’m hunting now. When I take a gobbler out of one region, I’ve learned that the following year, one or more gobblers may be in that same area. There are certain spots in turkey woods where turkeys like to feed, strut, hang-out and find hens. If you take a gobbler on a section of land one year, more than likely, another gobbler will move into that spot the next year. The second year that gobbler may not roost in the same tree where you’ve taken a turkey previously. However, another gobbler still may be there the following year.

“I have certain places where I almost always can take a turkey most years. If you don’t have time to hunt the pre-season, one of the best ways to find turkey gobblers is to go to the regions where you’ve taken a turkey before and hunt there.”

Tomorrow: Blow a Trumpet Call for Turkeys

Expert Guidebooks on Turkey Hunting: Best Sellers

Turkey Hunting Tactics
This turkey hunting audiobook has entertaining chapters like: “How to Miss a Turkey”, “Hunting with a Guide”, and “The Turkey and the New York Lady”.

You’ll learn about all the subspecies of turkey across North America, how to use a turkey call, how to scout before turkey season, how to find a turkey to hunt, and what hunting gear you’ll need to put the odds in your favor to take a wily gobbler.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

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How to Hunt Turkeys with World Champion Preston Pittman
You easily can take a turkey if you don’t make any mistakes, but you have to know what the deadly sins of turkey hunting are to keep you from making those mistakes. If you understand how to hunt a turkey, you’re far more likely to take a gobbler than if you just know how to call a turkey.

Of course, calling is important, and if you want to learn to call a turkey, Preston Pittman will teach you how to call turkeys with box calls, friction calls, diaphragm calls, and other turkey sounds.

You’ll also learn why Preston Pittman once put turkey manure all over his body to kill a tough tom.

When you have turkeys that strut and drum in the middle of a field, when you know there’s no way to get close enough to get a shot, Pittman will show you some weird tactics that have worked for him to help you hunt tough ole toms.

But the main thing you’ll learn in this book is how to become the turkey.

Using what he’s learned while hunting wild turkeys, he’s also become a master woodsman who can take most game, regardless of where he hunts. To learn more secrets about how to be a turkey hunter from one of the world champions of the sport, this turkey-hunting book with Preston Pittman is a must.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

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The Turkey Hunting Guides’ Bible
The quickest way to learn how to turkey hunt successfully is to either hunt with a turkey hunter with years of experience or a turkey-hunting guide. These two types of turkey hunters have solved most of the problems turkey hunters ever will face. 

Just as one size of shoes won’t fit every person, one style of turkey hunting doesn’t fit each hunter.  Each turkey-hunting guide interviewed for this book has his own style of calling, hunting, and outsmarting turkeys.  

While listening to this book, make a list of the new information you’ve learned, take that list with you during turkey season, and try some of the new tactics. Then you’ll become a more versatile turkey hunter and prove the wisdom from The Turkey Hunting Guides’ Bible.   

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

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Outdoor Life’s Complete Turkey Hunting (2nd Edition)
This Audible book will help you learn how to call turkeys with two of the nation’s best, longtime and well-known turkey callers, Rob Keck, formerly with the National Wild Turkey Federation, and Lovett Williams, a wildlife biologist who recorded wild turkeys giving the calls that you’ll learn how to make on various types of turkey callers.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE & KINDLE