Confidence, persistence and a lot of patience is what you need in order to harvest such a gobbler. The very first challenge concerning this type of wild turkey is getting close to the bird. As most of you know, Merriam’s usually travel a lot more distance than an Eastern to a call or even a decoy setup. Experienced hunters recommend confidence when calling and paying attention to what these birds might be doing.
A friction call is recommended with these birds as they are louder and the sound will carry further in the Western prairies and mountains and that is what you want, the sound to travel great distances. Wild turkey hunters recommend that once you get close to them you should look at what they are doing and try to imitate them. When hunting these birds, patience is indeed a great virtue.
Once you have got one turkey to answer your call, we strongly suggest that you stay where you are and be patient, making sure that he will come towards your way. Locating these birds is where the hunting actually starts; start by looking near water sources because that is the place where most of the Merriam’s are, mostly due to the reason that in many places we find drought conditions and these birds need water everyday just like humans do.
As far as Gould’s is concerned, these can be found mostly in the northern and central parts of Mexico where some of the most unique hunting adventures take place. Hunting this specie is like no other subspecies of wild turkey and the most important thing to do is to come prepared for the actual hunt. The most difficult challenge concerning this type of hunting is locating them but once you do, the Gould’s will most likely travel a great distance to your call.
If you do hear a bird gobble, it can take up to 30 minutes until the Gould’s will arrive so be very patient. You will need to cover a great deal of ground but once you have located them you can call very easy as they will start investigating that yen yelp but the important thing to do is not to move from the calling position. As far as the actual calling is concerned, a higher pitched call seems to do the job. We recommend using a two-reed mouth call as it sends a high-pitched series of aggressive calls.
A very important thing to remember is that you will most likely hunt this bird in a foreign country so you must obey the hunting regulations in that country, most likely Mexico as this is the place where the birds live. With other words, check the local authorities so that you won’t have any unpleasant surprises in your hunting adventure.
All in all, hunting these two subspecies of wild turkey can be a very amazing adventure if done properly but like all hunting expeditions, they require a lot of preparation and patience in order to have a fulfilling experience.
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