If you’re a beginning turkey hunter, you may wonder if turkey hunters wear orange like other hunters. The answer, in short, is yes! Wear orange for safety reasons during crucial times in your turkey hunt.
According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division, all hunters should review these critical turkey hunting safety tips below before gobbler season begins in the spring.
“The best way to keep yourself, and others, safe while hunting is always to practice firearms safety,” advises Jennifer Pittman, statewide hunter education administrator with Georgia’s Wildlife Resources Division. “Once you ensure firearms safety practices are in place, you also want to review and practice precautions specific to turkey hunting.”
Wear Orange, and Follow these Turkey Hunting Safety Tips
- Never wear red, white, blue, or black clothing while turkey hunting. Red is the color most hunters look for when distinguishing a gobbler’s head from a hen’s blue-colored head, but at times it may appear white or blue. Male turkey feathers covering most of the body are black in appearance. Cover everything in camouflage, including the hunter’s face, hands, and firearm.
- Select a calling position that provides at least a shoulder-width background, such as the base of a tree. Be sure that at least a 180-degree range is visible.
- Do not stalk a gobbling turkey. Due to their keen eyesight and hearing, the chances of getting close are slim to none.
- When using a turkey call, the sound and motion may attract the interest of other hunters. Do not move, wave, or make turkey-like sounds to alert another hunter to your presence. Instead, identify yourself in a loud voice.
- Be careful and use hunter orange when carrying a harvested turkey from the woods. Do not allow the wings to hang loosely or the head to be displayed in such a way that another hunter may think it is a live bird. Cover the turkey in a blaze orange garment or other material if possible.
Although not required, Georgia’s Wildlife Resources Division recommends that hunters wear blaze orange when moving between a vehicle and a hunting site. When moving between hunting sites, hunters should wear blaze orange on their upper bodies to facilitate their identification by other hunters.
Pro Turkey Caller Chris Parrish Shares Why Turkey Hunters Wear Orange with Turkey Decoys
One of the nation’s leading turkey callers and hunters for four decades, Chris Parrish of Centralia, Missouri, has won 10 World Turkey Calling Championships and 11 Grand National Turkey Calling Championships. Parrish spends thousands of hours in the woods before, during, and after turkey season, listening to, observing, and taking notes on the social behavior of turkeys.
“I only use decoys when hunting on the edges of open fields, along power lines, or on wood roads,” Parrish says. (Be sure to check your state’s regulations for using turkey decoys).
“On a hunting club, you may want to limit the use of decoys to only these areas or certain other sections of your club to keep the turkeys from becoming decoy-shy. Consider using decoys only in fields, on roadways, or during the last week of the season. This rule will increase the hunters’ chances of taking turkeys by using decoys.”
“Remember when you set-out decoys, to never sit directly behind this gobbler temptation,” Parrish continues.
“Hunt defensively, and when you pick up your decoys, make sure you wear hunter orange. Always have a tree wider than your shoulders at your back when using a decoy.”
Turkey Hunting Gear Recommendations:
Blaze Orange Hunter Safety Vests – SITKA Gear Ballistic Vest
Your orange vest should offer more than just the required inches of color. The Ballistic Vest makes shooting more comfortable with a reinforced foam shoulder pad and is treated with a finish that prevents the face fabric from wetting out, making it an essential part of the Sitka season system. Weight: 14.4 oz.
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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
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
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
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
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