Blood drained by mosquitoes. Fell in a marshy swamp. Tired and exhausted. Hundreds of miles walked. Sun burned. Some shots, not a single kill.

[8mm Enthusiast]

The way people hunt fall turkeys around here is to find a flock, break them up, set up near where you think they are and then call the young ones back in.
Doves are typically hunted by sitting in the field and shooting birds that fly by near enough, decoys can help if you can get them up where they are visible.

How to find the flock in the first place? If I found a flock, my immediate reaction would be to crawl up to them in an extremely stealthy manner and take a reasonable shot with my fixed full choke 12 gauge using 3 inch shells.

However, finding the flock in the first place is the tricky part. I found one flock and they started moving away from me at a distance where they were little dots on the landscape to my human eyes.

 

[8mm Enthusiast]

Are you calling while moving. When I said move slowly I didn't mean tippy toe through the woods. I meant take a couple steps then look around a few minutes. Don't walk in a pattern. Meaning change how many steps you take and how long you stand. Then there is over pressured areas. Hunting the same area over and over. Animals will pattern you and avoid the area. If you're seeing spent shells all over that may be the reason you don't see anything.

I am not calling. Just purely disappearing in the woods while still managing to cover ground. Moving extremely quietly. But not just that, also, not making sudden movements and always sticking to edges and covering my back. I have flushed turkey's in the past like this at reasonable ranges so I am trying to recreate those scenarios. It's happened during hunting season with a shotgun in my hand but at times when turkey's were not in season.

I don't see the value in taking steps and then stopping for a bit followed by breaking up patterns because I am making almost zero noise in the first place so why would I do those things? Maybe you can add to why I should?

The pressured areas are mainly where I hunt dove. The turkey hunting parcels of land aren't littered with shells nor do they have a bunch of people walking around.

 

[RememberBaker]

How to find the flock in the first place? If I found a flock, my immediate reaction would be to crawl up to them in an extremely stealthy manner and take a reasonable shot with my fixed full choke 12 gauge using 3 inch shells.

However, finding the flock in the first place is the tricky part. I found one flock and they started moving away from me at a distance where they were little dots on the landscape to my human eyes.

You listen. A flock of feeding turkeys makes a lot of noise scratching in dry leaves.

 

[JD338]

How to find the flock in the first place? If I found a flock, my immediate reaction would be to crawl up to them in an extremely stealthy manner and take a reasonable shot with my fixed full choke 12 gauge using 3 inch shells.

However, finding the flock in the first place is the tricky part. I found one flock and they started moving away from me at a distance where they were little dots on the landscape to my human eyes.

You will never sneak up on a turkey, let alone a flock of turkeys, no matter how stealthy you try.

JD338

 

[sako2]

Because animals don't keep moving. They stand still for minutes at a time.