In many ways, the wild tom turkey is underrated as a big game animal. He’s got excellent eyesight and hair-trigger instincts that have helped him avoid hunters and spread all across the country. Public land turkey hunting increases the challenge even more. Typically, public land toms gobble less, they frequent fields less regularly, and hang up outside of shotgun range more often. Plus, you’ve got to compete with other turkey hunters who are out hammering the same ground as you.

All of this means that turkey hunting success rates are lower than you might expect. Take my home state of Minnesota for example. We’re covered up with birds and habitat. But the hunter success rate for the spring season hovers around 30 percent. That means two out of three Minnesota turkey hunters are going skunked this spring.

So if you’re planning to hunt turkeys on public land and you don’t want to be among the 70 percent of hunters who will be eating turkey tag soup, then follow this ultimate guide to public land turkey hunting.

Where to Find Public Land Near Me?

Finding a good public land hunting spot is the key to success. You want to hunt where the turkeys are and other hunters aren’t. The search begins online. Use a mapping app like onX or Huntstand to identify public lands near you. Also check your state’s public land website (just Google the name of your state and “public hunting land”). Here are some common (and some underrated) land types that often offer public turkey hunting (check local regs before hunting):

• State wildlife management areas
• State forests
• National forests
• Bureau of Land Management land
• National wildlife refuges
• National scenic riverways
• Waterfowl production areas (non-toxic shot only)
• Walk-in access or voluntary public access areas
• Open forest crop
• County-owned forest land

Once you find public land parcels that look promising, it’s time to evaluate each one more thoroughly. Read my full guide on how to scout turkeys here.

Ideally, you’ll find an area that is hard for other hunters to reach. This means areas they are far from a parking lot or road, across a creek or stream, or on the backside of a steep ridge. Check out the screen shot below. This is just what you’re looking for: an hilly hardwoods surrounded by private land and it’s accessible only from the river. Most hunters are not going to go through the trouble of jumping in a kayak or canoe to access this piece of land. And this is precisely what makes these types of places so perfect. (Always double check your local access laws).

Terrain Features and Habitat

Toms love open fields and green meadows where they can display for hens and feed on bugs or leftover crops. But on public lands, these areas tend to get pounded. Many public land hunters will simply walk to the first field they can get to, set up some decoys, and then spend the morning waiting for a tom to strut in. This is unlikely to work on pressured public lands. Look for these areas instead:

Secluded Hardwoods

Get back into the woods where toms will be spending most of their time. Look for open hardwood flats that are secluded and hard to access. Search for roost sites along the way. Mature oaks are ideal, and since oaks often hold their leaves longer than other hardwood trees, you can identify stands of oak through the satellite view on digital maps if you sort by month (look at November and December).

Funnels

Turkeys will travel through pinch points in the terrain just like rutting bucks will. This might look like a strip of timber between two waterways, a saddle between two ridge tops, or a flat between a river and a steep hillside. Look for turkey sign in these areas, they’re good places to setup midmorning.

Small Open Areas

Avoid the big, popular fields everyone else is hunting and focus on smaller, less obvious openings where toms might want to strut. This could be an intersection of two old logging roads, an abandoned homestead, or an area that was burned or logged the previous season. If you can find one of these spots well off the beaten path, it will likely attract turkeys.

Calling and Decoying Public Land Turkeys

Most of the guys I hear in the public turkey woods are not great callers (full disclosure: I’m no Will Primos, either). Luckily, you don’t have to be a great caller to kill a whole bunch of turkeys. If you know you’re not an expert caller (or even if you flat out suck), you can be successful by setting up where the tom wants to be and then giving him some light yelps and clucks. If he likes it, give him a little more. If he doesn’t respond with enthusiasm, then you should stop calling. Curiosity might draw him, but a whole run of crappy calling won’t.

When it comes to bad turkey calling, a little goes a long way. If you can’t make even the best turkey mouth call sound like a real hen, then for God’s sake leave it in the truck. A slate call will draw the bird in, and a simple push-button call (which you can run with your shotgun shouldered) will pull him those last few yards into shooting range. When turkey hunting on public land, try to get close to a gobbler (within 200 yards or so depending on how thick the cover is) before calling to him. Most of the time it’s unlikely to call in a bird from a mile away on public land. And getting a turkey to gobble over and over from long range will only draw other hunters to him.

Be ultra careful with turkey decoys on public land. Do not use reaping decoys while hunting turkeys on public ground. Personally, I won’t use a tom decoy on public land either. There are simply too many other hunters around and it’s not worth the risk of them mistaking your decoy for the real thing. I also think that many hunters are too reliant on decoys. You know those videos you’ve seen on hunting TV or Youtube of a big tom strutting in to jump on a turkey decoy at close range? Yeah, that rarely (never?) happens with pressured public land turkeys. I prefer to set up in a spot in the woods where I know turkeys like to be and set out no decoys at all. If I decide to hunt a public land field, I’ll run two or three hen decoys.

Public Land Turkey Hunting Tips

Walk slowly, stop often, listen closely. Far too many hunters bomb through public land scaring turkeys as they go. When you’re moving through areas were turkeys are likely to be, walk as slowly as you can (then slow down even more). Stop and scan for strutters in the distance. Always listen closely for far off gobbles (especially after crows, owls, or coyotes sound off).

Hunt mid-morning and midday (if legal). Most other hunters will be out of the woods by then but those gobblers are still out there. Sometimes midday gobblers that have lost or bred their hens are the easiest ones to kill.

Find the roosts. Even though calling a bird right off the roost and into gun range rarely works, it’s still useful to know where gobblers roost. It gives you an idea of where birds will be first thing in the morning and where they’ll be in the evenings.

Talk to the other hunters you meet. If you see other hunters in the parking lot or on the trail, be nice and chat them up. Find out where they intend to hunt and let them know where you’re planning to hunt. It’s far better to work together than compete for the same bird. If you’re both targeting the same birds, consider hunting with each other instead of against each other.

Use trail cameras (if legal). If it’s legal to run trail cameras on the type of public land you’re hunting, you should do it. This will give you intel and when and where turkeys are moving. Just make sure the cameras are in places other hunters are unlikely to stumble into them. And, read our guide on how to use trail cameras for turkey hunting.

Read gobbler behavior. Most of the time public land toms will be sneaky and elusive. They won’t come into your set up gobbling and strutting. These birds take more patience to kill. So if a tom gobbles at one or two of your calls and then goes quiet, don’t be discouraged. There’s a very good chance he’s coming in silently. Give birds like this more time. On the flip side, when you encounter a fired up tom, get aggressive. Call actively and quickly get ready to shoot. This is the bird you’ve been hoping to hear.

Common Public Land Turkey Hunting Mistakes to Avoid

I’ve screwed up my fair share of public land turkey hunts, but I’ve learned from those bone-headed mistakes. If you’re struggling with public land hunts this spring, avoid making the following mistakes:

Don’t Hunt the Obvious Birds

Turkeys that you can hear gobble from the parking lot, birds you can glass from a busy road, birds that roost at the end of a walking trail. Forget ’em. Any public land gobbler that seems too good to be true, probably is. If you were able to find them without much effort, other hunters certainly will too.

If you spend your morning setting up on these “easy” birds, you’re almost guaranteed to bump in to other hunters and your enjoyable outing in the woods is going to get frustrating quick. It might seem crazy to pass up turkeys to find turkeys, but you’re much better off hunting birds that other guys aren’t messing with. Just like deer hunting on public land, you’ve got to do a little extra walking to get away from the crowds. Also, you’d be surprised how many turkey hunters won’t cross a creek or a marsh. Wader up and find birds that haven’t been called to yet.

Don’t Stop Scouting During the Season

The most successful waterfowlers spend way more time scouting than they do hunting. When they do commit to a hunt, it’s usually a great shoot. Take a page from their book and sacrifice a couple days of hunting to relocate birds. This is especially useful during midseason when those birds you scouted before the season have been bumped, buggered, or killed. Taking an early-morning drive and hitting as many locations as possible will help you find fresh birds and new spots.

Don’t Keep Sitting in the Same Old Blind

I’m amazed at how many hunters will pick a field edge to hunt for the season and just wait… and wait. There’s no doubt that sitting a field edge with decoys can be an effective way to kill turkeys. But on public land, the dynamics are always changing. Your go-to spot can get blown out without you even knowing it. So instead of stubbornly waiting in an area that used to have turkeys, change as the conditions change.

Try new, out-of-the-way spots. One of my best public-land spots is a hardwood peninsula that juts out into a big cattail marsh. Gobblers roost in the hardwoods and can’t get off the peninsula without walking by me. The best thing about it is I’ve never seen anyone else hunt it. But, I never would have found that spot if I hadn’t left a more popular piece of public ground to search for new birds.

Don’t Be So Damn Loud

Public land turkeys get blown off roosts. By the second week of the season they know that headlamps and boots tromping through the leaves mean trouble. Sometimes, birds that hear the noisy approach of a hunter won’t blow off the roost right away, but they’ll go quiet. Then they’ll fly down and slip away to safety.

Often times the hunter thinks the birds were henned-up and uncooperative. In reality, they were spooked. So on calm, quiet spring mornings, sneak in like a ninja when you plan to hunt near a roost. Leave earlier than you need to, so you don’t have to rush. Leave the blind at home and go as light as possible, so your extraneous gear won’t get caught up in the brush and make a racket. Turn your headlamp well before you get close to the spot. Tiptoe to within 100 yards of the roost and there’s a good chance the gobbler will fly down right in your lap.

Legendary turkey hunter Ray Eye once told me a story about a tom in Missouri that he and his buddies just couldn’t seem to kill. After a week of blown attempts, Ray decided to sneak in on the roosted bird at zero dark thirty. He took off his boots when he got close and crept toward the roost tree in his socks, guided only by the light of the moon. Then he waited silently for hours until sunrise. Eventually, the tom flew down and Ray shot him when his feet touched the ground. I’m sure parts of that story have been stretched over the years, but the lesson is a good one: be quiet and get there early.

Don’t Get Discouraged When the Hunting Gets Tough

Sometimes it seems like everybody and their 10-year-old kid has already got their bird. Plus, with all the Facebook and Youtube videos of suicidal toms charging in to decoys, it can be easy to forget that turkey hunting can actually get pretty challenging. So don’t get discouraged when your first couple outings don’t go as planned. Keep changing up your tactics and enjoy those early mornings and late nights, because it’s only a matter of time before that old tom slinks in to range.

How to Get Permission on Private Land

Sometimes it’s nice to have a go-to private land spot if you’re striking out on public ground. Farmers are often more willing to grant permission for turkey hunting than they are for deer hunting, which is a blessing and a curse—because there’s a good chance somebody else already has permission to hunt the place. So start your private land search the same way you’d start your public land search: Use a digital mapping app to locate likely turkey habitat that’s off the beaten path. Look for hardwood ridges near agricultural fields, river bottoms that might hold good roost trees, and timber points that jut out into corn or soybean fields. Mark all your potential new hunting locations and make sure to record the landowners’ addresses.

Then spend a couple afternoons in late winter knocking on doors. Don’t show up during dinner time or on Sunday morning when folks might be getting ready for church. Be friendly and upfront. Tell the landowner you’d like to hunt the place for spring turkeys only, you won’t rut up the fields, you won’t hunt near the cattle, and you won’t have a whole crew of other guys hunting with you. If the landowner declines (no matter what the reason), don’t argue or try to persuade him or her, just say “thanks for the time” and be on your way. Remember: Farmers don’t owe you anything. They’d be letting you hunt their land and not really getting anything in return. Also, local landowners talk to each other. You can earn a reputation in an area quickly, for better or worse.

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Turkeys are tough. They’re covered in dense feathers, and their vital area is deceivingly small—this is especially true for strutting toms. Because of all this, you must shoot a tom in the head and neck in order to kill him cleanly and ethically. Quite simply, putting the core of your shotgun pattern on a tom’s neck and head will drop him in his tracks. 

But it does get slightly more complicated than just “put it on his head!” Turkeys move constantly, and their heads move the most. Shot distances vary, which changes the spread and density of your gun’s pattern. Then there’s the challenge of turkey hunting with a bow, which requires a whole different type of shot placement. In order to simplify turkey shooting and help you make the quickest, cleanest kills possible, I’ve put together an in-depth guide on where to shoot a turkey. 

Where to Shoot a Turkey with a Shotgun

Decades ago, shotshell expert Tom Roster conducted the most in-depth turkey load lethality test of all time. In a report on that testing, he says that the fourth cervical vertebrae down from the head is the ideal aim point for killing a turkey quickly. Winchester copyrighted targets with an “XX” marking this aim point (which you can see circled in red in the photo below, left). Hitting a turkey here with a tight pattern ensures that pellets will strike the skull and vertebrae, which makes for a very quick kill. It essentially shuts the tom’s lights off. 

However, I recommend aiming slightly below Roster’s point. See the red dot in the photo below (right) for my ideal aim point. 

There are several reasons to aim here. First, there is a clear aim point: just above the large caruncles on the neck (which are usually glowing bright red on a fired-up gobbler). You can further bracket your aim point by holding where the black feathers meet red skin. Hit this area and the core of your pattern should strike the tom in the neck with a few pellets from the top of your pattern hitting him in the skull. This aim point is ideal whether a turkey is facing you, walking away, or broadside.

Second, turkeys move their heads frequently. At close range, your spread of pellets fired through a tight turkey choke is barely bigger than a softball. So if you aim higher at close range and the turkey bobs his head as you squeeze the trigger, you’re likely to miss. However, my aim point just above the caruncles on the neck stays relatively still, even while the gobbler’s head is bobbing back and forth. Just watch the Instagram video of a gobbler walking below. As the tom’s head rocks forward and back, the area we’re aiming for remains still, which makes for a much easier target on a walking bird. 

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A post shared by Robert Lake Pickle (@lakepickle)

Lastly, turkey hunters (especially those not shooting red dot sights) tend to miss high. With all the excitement of a gobbler strutting into range, many shooters fail to get their head down on the gun. Instead of looking down the barrel, they look over it, which causes them to hit high. An extreme version of this will cause a miss no matter where you aim, but it doesn’t hurt to shade just a little lower on the neck.

The downside of a lower aim point is that on longer shots, it’s likely that some pellets will hit the top of the turkey’s breast, which means that you might have some pellets in your meat. It’s pretty easy to pick a few pellets out when you’re butchering the bird, but you can also buy a small metal detector to make sure there are no strays left over. 

If you shoot a tight turkey choke, don’t be worried about meat damage. I typically kill four to six toms a year with this aim point and rarely lose meat because it’s bloodshot. 

Turkey Shooting Tips

Beyond knowing where to shoot a turkey, you should know a few things about ethically killing gobblers. 

Don’t Shoot at a Turkey That’s in Full Strut

Shotgun hunters should avoid shooting at a strutting tom because his neck is curled and his head is tucked close to his body. This makes it easy to miss the core skull/vertebrae area. Turkeys that are hit in the body often roll over and then get up running. This is not an ideal result. To bring a gobbler out of strut, give him a few clucks on a mouth call (but be ready to shoot). If you’re not using a mouth call, simply moving your gun ever so slightly so that it covers the tom is often enough to catch his eye and bring him out of strut. But again, be ready to shoot.

Pattern Your Gun

Patterning your turkey gun is critical. Not all shotguns hit exactly where you aim them. You need to know your exact point of impact and the density of your pattern at all the ranges you intend to shoot. Don’t shoot beyond the capabilities of your load/choke/gun combo. For most hunters shooting lead turkey loads, that’s going to be a max of about 45 yards, but it could be less depending on your pattern. You want about 100 pellet strikes within a 10-inch diameter circle, or about 200 pellet strikes within a 30-inch diameter circle. Hunt with a rangefinder.  

Identify Your Target and Know What’s Beyond It

This is one of the core rules of hunter’s safety and it’s especially important for turkey hunters. We need to make sure that we are shooting toms (or jakes and bearded hens where legal). Make sure you see a visible beard of a live turkey (not a decoy) before putting your finger on the trigger. It’s also important to make sure that you don’t accidentally hit any turkeys near the bird you’re aiming at. Remember your pattern will spread several feet wide at longer ranges. You don’t want stray pellets to hit collateral birds that are next to or behind your tom. 

Where to Shoot a Turkey with a Bow

Shooting a turkey with a bow is much more challenging than shooting one with a shotgun. Turkeys look big when their feathers are puffed up in full strut, but their vitals are relatively small. Plus, they typically don’t leave great blood trails, even when hit well. Here are your options. 

Head and Neck

There are different “decapitator” style broadheads out there with extra-wide cutting diameters. With these broadheads you aim square for the turkey’s neck and either miss completely or kill him cleanly. But that’s not the only option for archery turkey hunters.

Broadside

For a broadside shot on a turkey, you want to strike them through the heart and lungs, which are lower than you might expect. Move up the leg and slightly toward the base of the wing. The video below from Heartland Bowhunter shows about perfect shot placement. The Heartland crews shoots a ton of toms each year with archery gear. Aim where they aim. 

Facing Away

If the tom is strutting away from you, aim for the vent (or base of the fan). If the tom is walking away from you, shoot him square in the middle of the back just above the tail fan. See the video below for proper shot placement. 

Facing Head On

Bowhunters can shoot a strutting tom, you just need to understand the target is smaller than it looks. If the tom is squared up, facing you directly, aim just an inch or two above his beard. Make sure your arrow doesn’t drift left or right. You want to bury your pin inline between the gobbler’s beard and its head.  

Final Thoughts on Where to Shoot a Turkey

Turkeys are easier to miss than you might think. Hunters are able to shoot ducks flying through the air, how could we possibly miss a turkey standing in the open at 35 yards? Misses mostly happen because a shooter gets excited and jerks the trigger, while also pulling their head off the gun. So stay calm, keep your head down, and press the trigger. I think misses also happen because shooters don’t always pick a specific aim point. They just shoot in the general direction of a tom’s head/neck. So, focus closely on the gobbler’s neck where black feathers meet red skin, let your bead or red dot hover just above the big caruncles and … bang! Dead turkey.

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Best Overall		Primos Double Bull SurroundView Double Wide Ground Blind	SEE IT	LEARN MORE	Summary Intuitive, purposeful features.
Best for Bowhunting		Ameristep Pro Series Extreme View Hub Blind	SEE IT	LEARN MORE	Summary Allows you to shoot from almost any angle.
Best Budget		Rhino Blinds 180 See-Through Blind	SEE IT	LEARN MORE	Summary Premium features at a reasonable price.

It’s tough to beat a cool spring morning in the turkey blind with booming gobbles and the sound of heavy wings coming out of the trees. The sight of white, bronze, or cream-colored fans inching over a rise can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. And keeping your cool while a gobbler struts into range can be tough, especially if cover is sparse or you’re bowhunting. In these situations, ground blinds are a must. Throughout my years of turkey hunting, ground blinds have upped my ability to leave the woods with a fan over my shoulder and a grin on my face. I even prefer them when I’m shotgunning. 

Turkey blinds come in all shapes and sizes, and like most products, there’s a crowded pack with winners and losers. If you’re new to the turkey blind game, it can be tough to know what differentiates one from another. Luckily, I consider myself an aficionado when it comes to the best turkey blinds, and to help you choose one that fits your hunting style, I tested a pile of them this spring. 

• Best Overall: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Double Wide Ground Blind
• Best for Private Fields: Redneck Outfitter HD Bale Blind
• Best for Bowhunting: Ameristep Pro Series Extreme View Hub Blind
• Best for Shotgun Hunting Solo: Ameristep Gunner
• Best for Tall Turkey Hunters: Browning Envy
• Best for Run-and-Gun: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Stakeout
• Best Budget: Rhino Blinds 180 See-Through Blind

Best Turkey Blinds: Reviews & Recommendations

Best Overall: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Double Wide Ground Blind

Primos Hunting

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Key Features

• Dimensions: 70 inches x 70 inches hub-to-hub
• Weight: 26 pounds with tote bag
• Limited lifetime warranty

Pros

• Sun visor
• Zipperless double wide door 
• 180-degree full front windows
• Silent window closure
• Four one-way see-through walls

Cons

• Expensive
• Heavy

I’ve been a Primos Double Bull fan for years, and the SurroundView Double Wide is loaded with purposeful features like the 300-degree one-way see-through mesh, which allows you to cover almost every angle. Whether you’re bowhunting alone or shotgunning with the kids, this roomy bulletproof blind is a great choice. The hub system makes it easy to set up and break down, and you’ll be blown away by how well the see-through fabric works. The first time a gobbler comes in on a string, you’ll duck and try to conceal yourself. Don’t worry. You can see them, but they can’t see you. The window system is silent, and I appreciate the built-in sun visor, which comes in handy during sunrise and sunset. Those premium features come with a premium price that might make you flinch, but if you want a blind that can weather the conditions and provide ample room, the SurroundView might justify the price for you. 

Best for Private Fields: Redneck Outfitter HD Bale Blind

Redneck Outfitter

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Key Features

• Dimensions: 72″ Long x 72″ Deep x 72″ High
• Weight: 146 pounds 
• Six windows

Pros

• Big and roomy
• Turkeys will get used to it 
• Ideal for wide-open fields
• Great for taking kids hunting

Cons

• Expensive
• Heavy

Want to hide right out in the open, in the middle of a cut field? You need a bale blind, and the Redneck Outfitter HD is tough to beat. This blind looks just like a farmer’s hay bale. Simply set it up a few months before turkey season in that go-to spot and let the gobblers get used to it (they will).

The only downside of this blind is that it takes some work to construct and set. I set mine myself on a farm I lease, but it’s easier if you have a buddy with you. Because of its size and weight, this style of blind is best suited for private land hunting (you can’t exactly pack it into a public land spot).

But for private-land hunters who want a dual purpose blind for hunting deer and turkeys, this is an ideal option. I’ve had the blind sit out for a couple winters now and it’s held up nicely to the elements. It has six sliding windows that are quiet to open and close. It comes with a stout metal stake, but if you set it in open terrain, I’d recommend augmenting it with extra heavy-duty garden stakes. The powder-coated steel frame is sturdy and the pullover material helps quiet any noise you might make in the blind. Because it’s so roomy it’s a perfect blind for taking kids hunting or taking a buddy along with you to film (or shoot a second gobbler). –Alex Robinson

Best for Bowhunting: Ameristep Pro Series Extreme View Hub Blind

Ameristep

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Key Features

• 12 window openings
• Silent-slide window system
• Durashell Plus fabric
• Dimensions: 56 inches x 56 inches x 77 inches

Pros

• Full-size walk-through door
• Can fit three hunters plus gear
• Excellent one-way, see-through mesh

Cons

• Some hunters might prefer a taller ceiling

I have always felt ultra-concealed in Ameristep blinds, and I’ve whacked a lot of long birds out of them. Though it’s a five-sided hub-style build, this Ameristep blind has a shooting width of 77 inches. The Black ShadowGuard eliminates inside-the-blind shadows and silhouettes, and this is an excellent option for taking kids or a new bowhunter to the turkey woods. 

This brilliant turkey blind should appeal to the stick-and-string crowd, and it’s worth the $300 price tag. This ground blind is super roomy, and additional depth in the rear makes hiding the blind in the brush and concealing it all the easier. A total of 12 windows provide bowhunters limitless shot options, and you can’t beat the one-way, see-through mesh. When it comes to durability, this blind is tough as nails. 

Best for Shotgun Hunting Solo: Ameristep Gunner

Ameristep

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Key Features

• Dimensions: 58 inches x 56 inches x 57 inches 
• Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Durashell Plus fabric

Pros

• Light
• Durable
• Matte fabric finish
• Budget-friendly

Cons

• It’s a pop-up

I’m not a fan of pop-up-style ground blinds, but Ameristep’s Gunner is an exception. This blind is roomy for one hunter, super durable, and a perfect when you don’t need the extra room of most blinds. Ameristep has been building quality hunting blinds for decades, and if anyone has perfected the pop-up, they have. This one-person ground blind is lightweight and roomy, and the design makes it super simple to blend into any environment. The outer shell is made of tough Durashell Plus fabric, and the matte finish reduces any glare. Its size makes it one of the best turkey blinds for solo hunts or if you’re hunting a distant spot with minimal cover.

Best for Tall Turkey Hunters: Browning Envy

Browning

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Key Features

• Dinmensions: 59 inches  x 59 inches x 82 inches
• Weight: 23 pounds
• Silent-Trac window system

Pros

• QUICKCONNECT door system 
• 180-degree window placement
• Strong, flexible poles

Cons

• Harder to blend to environment than competitors
• Heavy

For tall hunters, sitting in the ground blind all day with your knees touching your chin can be a drag. Many prefer to stand and shoot when it comes to archery, and it’s also nice to stand and stretch throughout the day. Thankfully, the Browning Envy provides plenty of room to do so. 

The Durable and rugged 600D polyester fabric should endure several seasons, and the shoot-through mesh lines the 180-degree window openings. I also applaud the pair of camera ports, which simplify still photography and video. The Silent-Trac window system is quiet, and the window curtain and construction provide plenty of concealment. However, the extended height and durability come with weight, so you might end up carrying a load, especially if you’re hunting over the best turkey decoys. But if a taller ceiling height keeps you in the blind longer, the Envy is a great option.

Best for Run-and-Gun: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Stakeout

Primos Hunting

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Key Features

• Dimensions: 59 inches corner to corner
• Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Three shooting windows
• Limited lifetime warranty

Pros

• Two rugged hubs
• Maximum concealment
• Budget-friendly

Cons

• Not the best for especially windy conditions

This quick-deploy two-hub open-style blind with a trio of shoot-through windows is great when you need to pull up and make an adjustment on the fly. I’ve used the SurroundView Stakeout Hunting Blind for shotgun and bowhunting wild turkeys, and it’s phenomenal. Toss it in a backpack or carry it in your offhand and roam the woods in search of that old boss gobbler while you’re running a turkey mouth call. The two-hub system is a durable, quiet, and fool-proof design. The windows are sized just right for shooting without giving you away. Plus, you can back this almost 60-inch blind against any cover. When you consider the versatility and price of this blind, it’s almost worth buying as a just-in-case option.

Best Budget: Rhino Blinds 180 See-Through Blind

Rhino Blinds

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Key Features

• Dimensions: 75 inches x 75 inches hub-to-hub
• Weight: 16 pounds
• Reinforced stress points
• Shoot-through mesh

Pros

• Plenty of adjustable window openings
• Silent-Slide window technology
• Brush-in straps included

Cons

• Fabric feels thin, like it won’t hold up over time
• Door closure system is cumbersome

Though there are cheaper options, you won’t find a roomier blind with as many purposeful features for the money as this one. The 180-degree see-through system on this Rhino Blind gives excellent visibility, and the large door provides quiet entry and exit via hook and loop tabs. This blind will hold two adult hunters comfortably—three is a crowd—but an adult hunter and two youth hunters can fit well.

I applaud the roominess and the brush-in straps around the blind’s top and bottom. Window openings are plentiful, and turkey hunters can hunt from this blind with any weapon. Silent-Slide keeps the windows church-mouse quiet, and the 180-degree shoot-through fabric sports reinforced stress points with triple stitched corners for multiple season durability. The hook-and-latch door is wide, and while I’m not a fan of this system, it is quiet. 

Things to Consider Before Buying a Turkey Blind 

Depending on your hunting approach, some turkey blinds are better suited than others. Make sure to get one that best accommodates your style. You don’t want to wait until you’re in the field to find out that your hunting blind is too heavy or too small for your preferences.

Are you a run-and-gun shotgun hunter looking for an airy build you can deploy in seconds? If so, look for small, one person blinds that require minimal setup time. There are also ground stake options that have a small footprint and could easily fit into some of the best turkey vests. On the other hand, if you bowhunt and plan for all-day sit-and-wait sessions to stake out a tom, you’ll want a roomy blind that offers multiple windows, has excellent visibility, and ensures maximum blind concealment. The same applies if you’re trying to film your hunts or introduce young or new hunters to turkey hunting.  

FAQs

Methodology

I’ve been hunting gobblers in turkey blinds for years, including the models in this article. For this review, I evaluated each on their durability, ease of set up, shooting room, and concealment. I also considered the features each one includes at their respective price points. 

Why Trust Outdoor Life?

Since 1898, OL has been a leading authority in testing and reviewing hunting gear, fishing tackle, guns and shooting equipment, and much more. We have more than a century-long history of evaluating products, and we’re now bringing that expertise to online reviews. Our editors are experienced outdoorsmen and women, and most importantly, we’re trained journalists. We prioritize field testing and objective data when reviewing products. We conduct interviews with gear manufacturers and engineers as well as outdoor experts so that our readers have an understanding of how and why a product works—or doesn’t.

Advertising does not influence our gear reviews and it never will. While we always focus our coverage on standout products—because we want our readers to be aware of the latest and greatest gear—we also cover the flaws and quirks of any given product.

Final Thoughts

No matter what part of the country you hunt, the best turkey blinds can help keep you concealed while a gobbler struts into range. Whether you’re bowhunting on all-day sits or looking for a quick-deploy ground stake, find a blind that best fits your needs and helps you notch more tags.

• Best Overall: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Double Wide Ground Blind
• Best for Private Fields: Redneck Outfitter HD Bale Blind
• Best for Bowhunting: Ameristep Pro Series Extreme View Hub Blind
• Best for Shotgun Hunting Solo: Ameristep Gunner
• Best for Tall Turkey Hunters: Browning Envy
• Best for Run-and-Gun: Primos Double Bull SurroundView Stakeout
• Best Budget: Rhino Blinds 180 See-Through Blind

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New York has a new number-one gobbler in the record books, and it was taken by an unlikely hunter in a location that some might find surprising. First-time turkey hunter Christopher Tellone killed the giant tom on Long Island in Suffolk County, which held its first-ever spring turkey season this year. And if Tellone’s state-record bird is any indication, the season was an even bigger success than state wildlife officials had hoped.

The 28-pound gobbler sported a 10.5-inch beard and a pair of 1.75-inch spurs, and using the National Wild Turkey Federation’s scoring system, it had a total score of 84.2. This makes it the highest scoring “typical” wild turkey ever killed in New York. (The state maintains a separate record book for “nontypical” wild turkeys—those with more than one beard—and the highest scoring nontypical bird was taken in 2002 by hunter Roland Palmer in Chenango County. Palmer’s gobbler weighed 25 pounds, had seven total beards and a total score of 160.)

A Deer Hunter’s First Tom    

Tellone, 32, lives in New York City but is no stranger to the woods. A lifelong deer hunter, he grew up chasing whitetails with his dad upstate. So, when he heard Long Island was holding its first-ever spring turkey season, he figured he might as well give it a shot.

“I love to hunt deer, and have most of my life, but I don’t know much about turkey hunting,” Tellone tells Outdoor Life. “The places I’ve hunted deer are a long way from the city, and when New York opened a firearms turkey season in Suffolk County for the first time this year, I decided I was gonna get after the birds because there are turkeys just 90 minutes from where I live in the city.”

In March, he started scouting on public land in the county and set up a few trail cameras. It didn’t take long for him to locate some turkeys near a large open field, and he went out for the first time on May 2, the second day of the spring season.   

“I got to my hunting area late that morning after sunrise, and toms were going crazy, gobbling everywhere,” Tellone says. “On my way back to the truck, I spotted the birds, tried calling to them, but they wouldn’t come close.”

Realizing that his lack of experience with a call might be doing him more harm than good, Tellone bought a full-body strutter decoy before going back to his spot on May 7. But it was 25 degrees warmer by then, and the gobblers had gone silent. He hunted another full day without seeing or hearing a bird, and was starting to think his window of opportunity had already closed.

“Then I read a story about hunting later in the season when it was hot and the birds weren’t gobbling much,” he says. “The story said to be aggressive, and not to give up, and that’s what I did. My dad taught me never to give up.”

Late-Season Turkey Tactics

On May 10, he left New York City by 3:30 a.m. and made it to his spot by 4:30, roughly 45 minutes before first light. He walked to the area where he thought the birds were roosted and heard some activity right away.

After sunrise, he spotted a couple hens and some toms 80 yards away in an open field. He stopped and called, but after not getting a response, he figured he could close the distance by half and get in shotgun range.

“There were four big toms and they were pushing two hens around in the field,” Tellone says. “The only way I could get closer was to belly crawl through the cold mud toward them. I used my turkey decoy as cover in front of me as I wiggled into the field.”

Noticing a slight depression in the field, he crawled down into it and got on the opposite side while the six turkeys headed his direction. The entire stalk took about an hour. He came out of the depression near a small pine tree, and he placed his decoy beside the trunk for additional cover.

 “They hadn’t seen me, and right then the hens turned my way, pulling the four gobblers along behind them. One hen passed by me, and the first gobbler walked within range. I figured he was the alpha tom, so I shot him with my Mossberg 500 from about 35 yards.”

A Shocked Taxidermist

His turkey choke (which he had just received in the mail the night before) did its job, as did the Federal turkey loads he was using. (He says he can’t recall what size shot he used.) The bird folded on the spot.

“It was the first time I’d ever seen a dead wild turkey, and of course it was my first tom,” he says. “I called my dad from the field and told him the bird was huge and really heavy.”

Still, he didn’t realize how big the bird really was until he brought it to his taxidermist.    

“The taxidermist told me it was the biggest bird he’d ever seen, and he’s an ardent and well-traveled turkey hunter.”

This prompted Tellone to score the bird using NWTF’s system. Had he not done so, he never would have known that his gobbler was the highest-scoring wild turkey ever taken in New York, surpassing a 24-year-old state record.

Read Next: College Kid’s First Turkey Turns Out to Be a Record Breaker

Tellone’s gobbler wasn’t the only bird of note taken during Suffolk County’s first-ever spring season, either. Just four days before he sealed the deal on the 28-pounder, another hunter tagged a record-book tom on public land there.

“When we checked with NWTF, we learned that another big Suffolk County tom had also been taken this year,” Tellone says. “I think that bird now ranks as No. 3 in the state’s record book.”

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River McDaniel had herself quite the turkey season this spring. Hunting with her dad, Matt, the six-year-old from Ridgeland, South Carolina, tagged the four common North American subspecies and earned herself a Grand Slam. While hundreds of hunters have pulled off the same feat (many of them multiple times), only some have accomplished it in a single season. And to Matt’s knowledge, River stands alone as the youngest female to ever do so.

“As far as I know, she is the youngest,” Matt tells Outdoor Life. “I did a lot of research, and I found a boy in Mississippi who [got a Grand Slam] at age five, but he didn’t do it in a single season. There was also a girl from Alabama who did it at age seven.”

Matt, who has five Grand Slams under his own belt, explains that the National Wild Turkey Federation doesn’t recognize age in its running list of hunters who’ve earned their Grand Slam pins. He’s been trying to convince the organization to incorporate age into its record book, and NWTF Communications Director Pete Muller confirms that those changes are in the works.

Muller says their book shows at least one boy who achieved a Grand Slam at age four, but that as far as he can tell, River is the youngest female hunter to do it in a single season.

Setting Her Sights on a Slam

While River deserves the credit for sealing the deal on each of her gobblers, it was her dad who set her up for success. A lifelong hunter and career wildlife manager, Matt oversees a private hunting plantation in South Carolina. He has the skills, the connections, and most importantly, the desire to put River on birds. And he points out that her Grand Slam isn’t the only “first” in his daughter’s short hunting career.

“She is officially the youngest person to kill a turkey in the state of Georgia at age 4. And she’s the youngest girl to kill a turkey in South Carolina at age 5,” Matt says. “She’s always heard me talk about my own Grand Slams and this spring she said she wanted to get one. So, I said, ‘Okay, let’s go get one.’”

To accomplish their goal in one season, the daddy-daughter duo traveled across four states between early March and late May. Because of Matt’s connections in the hunting industry, they were able to hunt on private land the whole time.

River used a custom-built TriStar .410 semi-auto mounted on a BOG DeathGrip tripod to shoot each of her gobblers. Complete with a pistol grip, a 22-inch barrel, and a Burris FastFire red-dot sight, Matt also swapped in a custom trigger with a lighter break so River could pull it with one finger. She was shooting No. 9 Apex Turkey Ninja TSS loads through a SumToy Customs turkey choke.

Read Next: Best .410 Turkey Guns of 2023, Tested and Reviewed  

“I put her gun on that tripod and she does everything else 100 percent herself,” Matt says. “She turns the [sight] on, clicks the safety off, and pulls the trigger. I just sit behind her while I call and video.”

Four Gobblers in Four States

Starting in Florida, River killed an Osceola during youth season on March 10. Over the next two weekends, they capitalized on youth seasons in Georgia in Oklahoma and tagged both an Eastern and a Rio. With only one bird left on their hit list, the two flew to Nebraska in early May to chase down a Merriam’s. This proved to be the hardest hunt of them all, and after a week in the plains, they headed back to the South empty handed.

“We hunted for three days and just didn’t have any luck,” Matt says. “It was a tough hunt between the weather, terrain, and a lack of birds. We almost chalked it up as a loss, but a bunch of our friends insisted that we had to keep trying.”  

He says they would have tried their luck elsewhere, but due to River’s age, Nebraska is one of the only states in the Merriam’s range where she can legally hunt. (South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, for example, all have hunting age minimums of 10 or 12.)

Read Next: Turkey Population Declines in the Great Plains Lead to Canceled Seasons and Reduced Bag Limits

Their sights still set on a Merriam’s, Matt pulled River out of school a week early so they could fly back to Nebraska during the last week of May. They booked a DIY hunt with an outfitter, and on the second-to-last day of their trip, River finally connected.

“We set up on some birds around three in the afternoon, and I called them in at 4:30 but some hens took them off. The birds came back in at 6:30, but then the hens took ‘em off again, and the only reason we stayed is because we could constantly see or hear them.” Matt explains. “She killed her bird at 8:30. Shot him coming in across the pond in the rain.”

Looking back on their turkey season, Matt says it was the miles traveled and memories made that he’ll remember. As for River, she’s already looking for that next gobbler. When asked about her future goals, the six-year-old girl’s response was short and simple:

“I want to get another grand slam.”

This article was updated on June 29, 2023 to include a comment from the NWTF.  

The post 6-Year-Old Turkey Hunter Is the Youngest Girl to Achieve a Single-Season Grand Slam appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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I UNSLUNG MY SHOTGUN and army-crawled beneath the barbed-wire fence. Then I got to my feet and hustled along the field edge in the dark. The lights of the farmyard glowed up on the hill, and I walked quickly to create more distance between myself and the neat white house where I imagined a farmer was making coffee and preparing for his morning chores. I’ll admit, what I was doing felt sketchy. I didn’t have permission from the farmer to hunt his ground. In fact, I’d never met him.

But I wasn’t trespassing. 

I was hunting on Turkey Hunter Access Program land, which is privately owned ground where public hunting is allowed—but only during spring turkey season. This is thanks to a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources plan that pays landowners $5 per acre to let me (and other turkey hunters) prowl their property. 

What an ingenious program, I thought as I hiked the 600-plus-acre farm that seemingly no one else was hunting that morning. The landowner earned more than $3,000 from the state, but the state taxpayers weren’t taking the hit, because the DNR paid the landowner through turkey stamp dollars, federal grant money, and National Wild Turkey Federation funding. The end result is that hunters get access to private land without paying for it, except for a $5.25 turkey stamp.

As it turns out, there are programs like this one expanding across the country. They offer private landowners payments, tax benefits, and habitat improvements through federal or state funding. In return, landowners open their properties to public hunting. In the Midwest, East, and South, where most of the best ground is privately owned, the concept of public conservation and recreation on private land could be the silver bullet for so many of our hunting-access shortages and habitat issues. But these programs are generally so underfunded, obscure, and, frankly, boring that they haven’t gotten the love they deserve. And in some states, the programs are facing competition from outfitters who are looking to privately lease large tracts of land and ambivalence from transplant landowners who don’t like the idea of public hunters on their newly purchased hobby farms. 

Somewhere in the distance a turkey gobbled and I picked up my pace. This may be private land, but it’s a public gobbler—and I was determined to beat my fellow turkey hunters to him. 

Paying for Access

You’ve probably heard of these voluntary access programs or seen their property boundaries on a digital mapping app. Commonly referred to as walk-in areas, they are all essentially the same in concept, even though each program is called something frivolously different in each state. In Ohio it’s OLHAP, in Kansas it’s WIHA, in North Dakota it’s PLOTS, and in Virginia its POWRR (what these abbreviations actually stand for is irrelevant, so I refuse to spell them out). 

All of these programs are funded by federal dollars through the Farm Bill under VPA-HIP (another abbreviation I won’t bore you with by naming fully). In 2019, there were $50 million available for states to vie for. Twenty-six states and one Native American tribe were awarded funding in 2020. The most that any received was $3 million (Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Virginia). While many states prop up their access programs with hunting-license dollars or donations from outdoorsmen, the federal funding is lifeblood for most programs in the East.

In the upcoming Farm Bill, which will likely pass late this year or next, there’s a plan to triple funding to $150 million. While that sounds like a nice chunk of change, it’s a tiny drop in the bucket of what could become the first trillion-dollar Farm Bill.

Of the dozen experts I talked to about voluntary access programs, none could pinpoint a single strong and clear opponent to expanding funding for voluntary public access. The plan to increase funding has bipartisan support. It’s being pushed by two Republican senators from Montana and Kansas and a Democrat from Colorado. And yet, the $150 million is not guaranteed. 

“The Farm Bill is a delicate compromise,” says Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. TRCP helped work the first VPA funding into the 2008 Farm Bill. “The biggest issue would be overall constraints in the broader bill. If every program takes a haircut, we won’t get $150 million.

“But nobody dislikes this program.… If you’re a fiscal conservative who believes the states, not the federal government, should be the locus of power, this program is for you. If you’re a fan of private landowners, this works for you. If you like hunting and fishing access, this works for you. If you’re a fan of conservation, this works for you. The program transcends partisan boundaries.”

Even if the $150 million in funding does pass, it’s not enough to create landscape-level changes just yet. Yes, these programs are growing, but slowly.

“That’s a result of the available resources,” says Backcountry Hunters and Anglers president and CEO Land Tawney. “Fifty million dollars split among 26 states is not a lot of cash. You can’t grow quickly like that. The states want to invest, and they’re investing some of their own money, but this program needs to help supplement their investment.” 

VPA-HIP doesn’t have a clear battle cry, like BHA’s “Keep it Public” slogan or a compelling do-or-die story like Bristol Bay’s threat from the Pebble Mine. It won’t grab national headlines when exponentially larger and more controversial Farm Bill issues—like the food stamp program, which is currently estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years—overshadow it.

“Folks may be utilizing programs that are funded by VPA-HIP and they don’t even know it,” says Tawney. “It’s very similar to the Land and Water Conservation Fund.”

In case you don’t remember (and why would you?), the LWCF takes royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling operations and allocates them to local conservation and recreation projects ranging from national wildlife refuges to city parks. After years of bargaining and petitioning by its proponents, the once underappreciated LWCF received full and permanent funding in 2020 under the Trump Administration.

Perhaps with enough advocacy, VPA-HIP will have its day in the sun, too.

Public Pressure 

Hunters in the East need more public access immediately, or sooner. The National Deer Association released a report earlier this year that stated 88 percent of whitetails killed in the Midwest, South, and Northeast are taken on private land. Let that sink in for a moment: Private-land hunters are killing about nine deer for every public land hunter’s one. 

Regionally, 81 percent of the Northeast harvest, 91 percent of the Midwest harvest, and 93 percent of the Southeast harvest occurred on private land. Texas, where 93 percent of land is privately owned, leads the country with 99 percent of its deer harvests taking place on private ground.

“The deer hunting tradition, at least in the East and Midwest, has always been founded in private lands,” says Torin Miller, senior director of policy for NDA. “Farmers hunting their own land and inviting their family and friends to hunt, too—that’s just the way it is.”

But when states and organizations like NDA work to recruit new deer hunters, those folks will need productive places to go. Recruitment and access are core issues for NDA, Miller says. 

The person signing up for a Field to Fork program is more likely to live in a city or suburb than on a sprawling farm. They’re not going to want to throw down for an expensive lease or outfitted hunt. 

In popular deer hunting states where more than 90 percent of the ground is privately owned—like Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, and Oklahoma—voluntary public access programs seem to be the only real option for growing public hunting. 

For all of the attention and controversy that Western public land issues drive (think corner crossing in Wyoming, Montana elk management, Bears Ears Monument in Utah), the Midwest and South are home to the vast majority of America’s hunters. For example, in NDA’s 2020 report, Texas alone reported more deer hunters (770,000) than all of the Western states combined. 

The Access Answer Hiding in Plain Sight

Even in its early years, a voluntary access program can have a massive impact. Virginia likely would have never have had its first modern public-draw elk hunt without a voluntary public access program (this one’s called PALS). The program started in 2020, and now more than 20,000 acres are enrolled in the southwest region of the state, where Virginia’s reintroduced elk herd of 250-plus animals lives. Most of the elk live in a county with no public land. 

“We were able to have our first elk hunt in 2022 on 100 percent private lands,” says Tom Hampton, a lands and access manager for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “All of the properties but one where elk were harvested were VPA-HIP properties.” 

Six hunters drew tags through a lottery and were able to hunt private properties without paying trespass fees or outfitters. All hunters killed their bulls. The biggest was a nontypical scoring 413 ⅞ inches.

The PALS land consists mostly of reclaimed coal mining ground. As part of the program, the DWR pays local contractors to remove invasive species like autumn olive and lespedeza from private lands, then replant them with native grasses. 

“Mostly what we’re working on is early successional habitat—grasslands and shrublands—which not only benefit elk but a host of other species, like turkeys, deer, and pollinators,” says Caitlin Homan, a wildlife habitat biologist for DWR. Of course, turkey and deer hunters can access the PALS lands too.  

The concept worked on a much larger scale, too. Southwick Associates conducted an economic report of 12 VPA-HIP state programs in 2021 and estimated that these states generated $47 million in combined hunter spending. The states’ programs accumulated 1.16 million enrolled acres, which were used by an estimated 73,900 hunters. This accounted for an estimated 323,500 additional hunting days. Assuming I was allowed to hunt every day, that’s the equivalent of supporting my own personal hunting for 886 years.

But the most interesting figure was the return on investment for individual states. Idaho saw an ROI of $39.51, meaning for every dollar invested, $39.51 was generated in spending. Every state in the report turned a positive ROI.

Private Problems

If I’ve made voluntary public access sound too good to be true, remember that it’s a federally funded program, and with that designation comes no small amount of red tape. First, state agencies need to write detailed grant proposals and compete for limited dollars. 

Once their program gets approved, they have to enroll landowners, who are sometimes skeptical of government programs. In some cases, the governor’s office or state administrators have to  sign off on deals. And states must get properties approved through the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service. That’s plenty of opportunity for a good idea to die. Plus, federal funding lasts for only four years at a time, so states have to get creative if they want to consistently sign up landowners for longer terms.

In other words, states that don’t have their affairs in order will have a hard time fielding one of these programs successfully. 

Then, once properties are open to hunting, the state must manage any conflicts between hunters and landowners. That conflict could be a truck blocking a field road, an unclosed cattle gate, or shooting too close to a farmhouse. It takes only one bad encounter for a landowner to decide not to re-enroll. 

Plus, there’s that competition from outfitters and other private land lessees, who can often pay more per acre than any state program could.

“We’ve had issues here in Montana where people drive around and see the Block Management green signs and then offer the rancher $10,000, or whatever it is, to have only one person on the property instead of the public,” Tawney says. “Sometimes these programs create a short list for these conglomerates of lessees that are trying to lease a lot of land.”  

As more urbanites move to rural areas, there will be more newcomers in rural communities who might not understand hunting, firearms, or the importance of public access. You can see this play out in the Northeast, which has a long history of public hunting access on private land. In Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, it’s legal to hunt private forested land as long as the property isn’t posted. 

“The first thing someone does when they move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire is put up a ‘Posted’ sign,” says Mark Beauchesne, who manages landowner relations for New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. “There may have been five generations who had hunted on that land and maybe even been caretakers for it, and now they’re shut out. Those are the most disturbing calls I get.”

New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont all incentivize private landowners to allow public access. In New Hampshire, the state reduces a landowner’s property tax by 20 percent if they sign up for the Recreational Use program, which specifically allows public hunting and fishing. That program celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Beauchesne, a longtime New Hampshire hunter, says the spirit of the program has roots in the very founding of America. 

“Before this country was settled [by Europeans], we couldn’t hunt the king’s deer freely,” he says. “But once we revolted, the deer became a trust for the public. People relied on each other in lean times. You allowed your neighbor to hunt on your property and they shared the harvest.” 

So when Beauchesne tries to convince landowners, new or old, to keep their property open to the public, he makes a cultural and historic appeal, not a financial one. 

“I tell them this isn’t just for hunters, it’s for other recreators too,” he says. “It’s for the good of the community. It’s so you know who your neighbors are. It’s about sharing what you have.” 

Beauchesne’s argument will have to resonate nationally if voluntary access is going to succeed on a grand scale. The programs’ payments and benefits will never increase enough to serve as anything more than supplemental income and recognition of a good deed. Landowners who enroll in VPA will do so because they care about conservation and their community.

Back on that turkey hunting access property in Wisconsin, I closed the distance on the lone gobbler, which was roosted in the farthest corner of a clover field. I listened to him gobble and drum as he made his way from the timber to the field. I hastily set up on the field edge, almost certain the tom would come to my calling. 

But he acted just like a good public-land turkey should. Instead of coming straight to me, he went to the middle of the field and ducked behind a hill, not 50 yards from me, gobbling the whole time. If he ever poked his head above the shin-high clover, I never saw it. His drumming was so loud that I could feel it in my chest. In a brief moment of panic, I stood up to try to see the gobbler over the crest of the hill and get a snap shot. But somehow he saw me before I saw him and was gone before I could even raise my gun. 

On the long walk back to my truck, I saw the farmer cruising down a dirt road in his tractor. I stepped aside and he zoomed by, giving me a big wave and generous smile, as if he had watched the whole hunt play out. 

Oh yeah, I thought. I’ll be back next year.

Read more OL+ stories.

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Twenty-three hours after shaking hands with Les George for the first time, we hit the rolling mesquite and cedar south of San Angelo, Texas, where the Edwards Plateau and Chihuahua Desert converge. We were looking for a place we’d never been, with little in the way of GPS coverage or places to ask directions.

The plan was to link up with two hunters: Darren Jones, whom we had never met, and Brian Cillessen, who Les didn’t know and who I hadn’t laid eyes on in 12 years. But in a world where people are more familiar with the glow of a screen than the star-scattered brilliance of a South Texas sky, no one is truly a stranger anymore. It’s a pity for anonymity, but it’s an undeniable boon to building and maintaining friendships. If it all worked out, both Les and I would head home after killing our first turkeys. Despite years of trying, neither of us had managed to kill one.

I’d been talking to all three men for a few years, thanks to mutual friends and shared interests. Brian is the owner and host of “Beyond Rubicon” on the Sportsman Channel. For him, hunting is fundamental to his family, and what it means to be an American. Darren is a lifelong outdoorsman and owner of Feral Concepts. Les is a custom knife maker, and the artist behind several production designs licensed to Kershaw, ProTech, and Spartan Blades. I’m a reawakened hunter who’s falling into outdoor writing. All that would be more than enough to get us through a few days in the woods together. But something even more fundamental than our love of wild places unifies us.

Each of us is a United States Marine, though no longer in the active ranks. Each of us served in Iraq, three of us also served in Afghanistan, and all of us served in units that only accept volunteers. We are all in the even narrower cohort who saw ground combat at close range, and found some part of ourselves there. Perhaps we lost something too, but each of us value the experiences we found at the sharpest end of human existence—where life is most illuminated—too much to wallow in regret. Perhaps those threads are what pull us to a pursuit with the potential for blood, where success may at least partially be defined in the taking of an animal.

Whatever it is, when Darren Jones learned neither Les nor I had ever killed a turkey—though not for lack of trying—he insisted we join him in Texas. When I told Brian about the plan, he decided to join us, too. He loves to hunt and tag along for a first timer’s experience, but even more I think he wanted to find himself in the company of men who know fire.

Rendezvous in Texas Turkey Country

By the time Les and I arrived at Darren’s hunting camp, we were friends. It had been a 13-hour drive to camp and, in the way of Marines long experienced at making small talk while waiting for something to happen, we easily moved to deeper topics. That didn’t stop once we arrived, either. The circle simply expanded to include Darren and Brian.

Likewise, hunting provides connections all its own, many of them found in food, and Darren’s smoker held the immediate promise of beef tenderloin. Brian announced he’d brought pronghorn, elk, and oryx meat for the coming days. But for now, we were most concerned with Meleagris gallopavo intermedia, the Rio Grande wild turkey. We talked well into the night about the mystifying nature, the challenge, and sheer maddening unpredictability of turkeys.

Mornings come early in hunting camp, especially after a late night. Darren was already tagged out in Texas and reckoned he’d only slept twenty-four hours in the preceding eight days. Brian had killed a Merriam’s in New Mexico the previous day, then driven fourteen hours to join me and Les on our hunt. That level of dedication says plenty about the bonds of service.

Meanwhile, Darren’s optimism about our chances of seeing a tom meant none of us required much more than strong coffee to get moving. We piled into Darren’s truck in the dark and set out, bouncing over ranch roads to a spot he’d scouted with us in mind.

The light came up through a leaden sky as we moved to the blind, the wind ripping across the plateau making the 46-degree morning even chillier. I wondered how much I really wanted to sit still for the next few hours, especially given my previous futile turkey hunts. Then I cast my eyes to the men around me. I realized we had fallen into a formation familiar to all of us from years of early morning walks with our guns. Reaching the blind, we settled silently under the branches of the ubiquitous cedar and mesquite trees. I smiled, despite the chill. I was exactly where I needed to be.

The Last Dance

Colonel Tom Kelly spoke an immutable truth when he wrote that turkeys have “a remarkable ability to turn arrogance into hopelessness.” Living in the Southeast means chasing Easterns in places where your shotgun’s range is limited more by terrain than technology. My first turkey hunt 20 years ago was exhilarating, but I hadn’t actually laid eyes on the tom. The bird had been drumming, spitting, and gobbling so loudly that I felt him as much as heard him.

There had been close calls since, but I’d never brought home a bird. Having hunted hard for five straight seasons without success, Les was similarly resigned. So, when the first faint gobble to answer Darren’s call was followed by the sight of a distant jake sprinting, my heart pounded as if I had been the one running all-out.

Then came a familiar hour of silence, before we moved to a tangle of thorn and cactus 400 yards away. We sat under the mid-morning overcast, Darren and Brian calling with slate and mouth calls for another hour. Then, to our north, the whisper of a gobble. I squinted at Les, unsure if I’d heard anything, unwilling to ask for fear of spooking a still possibly non-existent tom. Then he sounded off again, unmistakable this time. Louder. Closer. Then he thundered again. 

The longbeard appeared in full glory 70 yards to our left, erupting with a full-throated, body shuddering gobble as he spotted our strutter decoy. I felt as if he were the manifestation of every “almost” bird I’d encountered over the years. He came in as if on a reel, fan raised, wings dragging. It was a grand entrance that brought to mind a cable television wrestler playing to the crowd, knowing he is already scripted to take an opponent’s championship belt.

Unlike the jake two hours prior, there was no elevation in my heart rate, no rapid breathing. There was only the certainty of what was to come; a story already written, merely the details left to be recorded. Darren calmly whispered to me, “As soon as you’re ready, Worth,” and I thought back to an uncle steadying me before a shot when I was just a boy in a duck blind.

Then I shouldered my 12 gauge, placed the bead just below the wattles of the tom, now less than thirty yards away, and squeezed the trigger. The tom dropped as if he had been unplugged. I sat back, suddenly exhausted, transported by a level of emotion no hunt ever engendered in me before, knowing with cold certainty that this bird and I were now as inextricably linked as early man and the animals he daubed on cave walls.

My fellow Marines reached out to pound my shoulders and welcome me to the Tenth Legion. I rose on legs I almost couldn’t feel and walked out to my first turkey. His black iridescent feathers were shockingly warm—almost hot to the touch. Darren knelt beside me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “He gave you his Last Dance, brother. That was everything he had. You got the whole show.”

Tag-Teaming Rios

We spent the evening reliving our hunt, then fell into the easy rhythm of war stories, a common language made of acronyms and dark humor and places none of us will ever see again. As much as the Rios now on their roost, this was the reason we had come here. There are things in life that must be experienced to truly be understood, and combat and turkey hunting are among them. I had crossed more than half the country to spend time with men who required no explanation of either.

The next day dawned 20 degrees warmer under misty skies threatening rain, a rarity in country that averages 19 inches a year. A 600-yard walk brought us to another improvised brush blind under cedar limbs. We sat facing east, a clearing between us and a small brush-choked hillside, with an open area stretching westward behind us. We only had this day to end Les’ five-year string of birdless hunts, and I could tell he felt doubtful. I felt guilty for having already notched one of my own tags.

Then a hen came walking into the clearing, after less than an hour of waiting. Another followed her in before both crossed the clearing and headed up the hill. A good sign, but Les and I still exchanged a look. We knew this would be the best we’d see, both of us still jaded after years of close calls.

Read Next: Bond of Brothers: Military Veterans Find Healing in the Hunt

Then, as the day before, a faint tremolo rang in the distance. Then another, closer, followed by another closer still. I started counting and tallied eight gobbles, each coming almost before the preceding one died out.

“Don’t move,” Brian hissed, as more hens came within an arms distance of our blind, so close we could hear them kicking through the rocks, though we dared not turn to look at them. I counted gobbles again. The eleventh gobble came from immediately behind us, passing through our foursome like an explosive shock wave. We sat frozen for what seemed an eternity, staring at the decoy in front of us as at least two gobblers scratched behind, close enough to hit with a rock but almost impossible to hear over the hammering of my heart.

Then the two toms entered the clearing before us, marching from our seven-o-clock, and I knew Les would not go home unblooded. The pair beelined for the strutter decoy like bar bouncers heading for a troublesome drunk, their feathers standing on end, beards arching from their chests. Les pulled on the first and dropped him, sending the second racing up the hill across from us, only to stop when Darren stopped him with his a fighting purr on his slate. Fabn on full display, the tom came back down the hill to spur his still-flopping wingman.

I waited for Les to take the double. He waited for me to take my second bird in two days. Semper Fidelis. Our shots were almost simultaneous.

“Well, strike that off the list of shit you’ve never seen,” said Darren.

Later than day, Brian killed a third bird, the final moment of a successful hunt. We celebrated with oryx and pronghorn steaks served sizzling and unadorned from a well-seasoned cast iron. It tasted as perfect as a meal can only when it’s been earned, success where the possibility of failure once loomed.

We are too often insulated from failure and its myriad lessons, the sharp edges too rounded off in our daily lives. It’s one of the things I most seek in hunting: The opportunity to fail to accomplish the task I’ve set before me. But sweeter still is the lesson that putting in the work will eventually pay off, whether in the fair-chase of game or simply in the knowledge that you stand among people who understand where you’ve been, where you are now, and why it all matters so very much.

Russell Worth Parker is a retired U.S. Marine-turned-writer. He is the editor-at-large for TomBeckbe.com and lives with his wife and daughter in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The post In Good Company: A Texas Turkey Hunt with Familiar Strangers appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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The hottest magnum 12-gauge turkey loads are incredibly effective, but they aren’t always necessary. At 30 yards, a 3.5-inch turkey load delivering a 2 ¼-ounce payload of Tungsten Super Shot is, well, overkill. Put simply, you do not need that many high-density TSS pellets to cleanly kill a turkey at that range. And sadly, Newton’s Third Law applies to turkey hunting too. In order to send that monster payload down range, the equal and opposite reaction is that you’re going to get rocked with teeth rattling recoil. 

That’s why so many turkey hunters are opting for sub-gauges like the 28-gauge and .410-bore for turkey hunting. With TSS, these gauges are still effective at 40 yards and in, and they’re much easier on the shoulder. Now, Hevi-Shot is offering “reduced recoil” 12-gauge TSS loads which have lighter payloads at lower velocities. 

These new reduced recoil shells are loaded with the typical tungsten super shot which is a dense (18 g/cc) and expensive shot material. Because of this, the loads are spendy at over $10 per shell. Hevi Shot’s Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil TSS is a 2 3/4-inch, 9-shot 12-gauge load with a lower velocity—1090 FPS compared to typical 1200 FPS of a 12-gauge No. 9 load. 

So how did they do on the patterning board compared to standard TSS loads? 

How I Tested the Hevi-Shot Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil Loads

For this test, I shot the low-recoil load and a standard TSS load at 30, 40, 50, and 70 yards. To minimize variables, both loads were shot from the same Stoeger M3500 Turkey 12-gauge using the stock Stoeger turkey choke with a restriction of .661. I mounted a Bushnell RXM-300 red dot on the Stoeger to help with precise aiming at the longer ranges. The day of the test was a perfect mid-April day, with temperatures around the mid-40’s and a breeze of about 10 mph. Unfortunately, because of limited ammo, we were only able to shoot one load each at the various ranges.

After shooting both loads side by side, I measured the area with the densest number of pellet strikes near the aim point, drawing a 10-inch circle around that area. This was to help give the pattern a true score in case I pulled the shot a little left or right. Once the 10-inch circles were in place, I counted the number of pellet strikes to give a true comparison of how similar, or different, the reduced recoil loads performed to the standard Federal Heavyweight loads. For reference, 100 hits inside a 10-inch circle is lethal performance (assuming you also have enough penetration), however, in my opinion, even 85 hits in a 10-inch circle is solid. With less than 85 strikes, there will be gaps in the pattern, which means a higher risk of wounding a bird. 

Key Features of the Federal Heavyweight TSS

Federal

SEE IT

• Cartridge Length: 3 inches
• Payload: 1 3/4 ounces
• Shot Size: 9
• Pellets Per Shell: 634
• Velocity: 1200
• Price: $74.99 (per box of 5)

Key Features of the Hevi-Shot Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil TSS

• Cartridge Length: 2 3/4 inches
• Payload: 1 1/4 ounces
• Shot Size: 9
• Pellets Per Shell: 453
• Velocity: 1090
• Price: $72.99 (per box of 5)

30-Yard Test Results

The 30-yard test was eye opening. The Federal Heavyweight recorded 351 hits in the 10-inch circle, while the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil had 283 hits. To say that these patterns would be effective would be a bit of an understatement. While shooting, I was surprised by just how light the Hevi-18 recoil actually was. There was substantially less felt recoil while shooting these shells compared to other TSS loads. I’d say the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil are comparable to a typical pheasant load. More on this later.

40-Yard Test Results

The 40-yard test was perhaps the most surprising. The Federal Heavyweight had 134 hits in the 10-inch circle, while the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil had 138 hits. To have the Hevi-18 outperform the Federal Heavyweight at 40 yards was impressive. Not only was it a better shot experience, but also offered better performance at this range. With that being said, if you look at the two paper targets above, the Federal Heavyweight seemed to have a much wider spread whereas the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil spread out more vertically. Either way, I was impressed by the performance of both loads at 40 yards.

50-Yard Test Results

At 50 yards, both shells delivered solid patterns yet again. The Federal Heavyweight had 108 hits in the 10-inch circle, while the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil scored 87 hits. While the Hevi-18 dropped below 100 hits at this range, it remained above 85, which in my opinion is still a strong pattern. However with the lower velocity, you must start considering penetration. I would not push these loads past 50 yards. In fact, I’m not interested in shooting turkeys beyond 50 with any loads. Folks who do want to shoot at longer ranges, should opt for magnum TSS turkey loads.

Read Next: Long-Range Turkey Shooting Reality Check: Here’s What TSS Patterns and Penetration Really Look Like at 70 and 90 Yards

70-Yard Test Results

While I would not shoot a turkey at 70 yards, it was worthwhile to test both loads at this range. The Federal Heavyweight had 63 hits in the 10-inch circle, while the Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil had 42 hits. Could both of these loads end up killing a gobbler at 70 yards? Certainly, but I know I won’t be testing that theory in the field. Of course these patterns could be tightened by experimenting with different choke options. But still, shooting turkeys at long distances increases the likelihood of wounding a bird. 

Do Reduced Recoil Turkey Loads Have a Place? 

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with the performance and shot experience while comparing the Hevi-Shot Hevi-18 Reduced Recoil loads to the Federal Heavyweight. They had similar performance out to 50 yards, but the Hevi-Shot loads delivered significantly less recoil. That’s not going to matter for many turkey hunters who will undoubtedly argue: “you won’t even feel it while you’re shooting at a bird.” 

That may be true, but recoil affects all shooters, even turkey hunters. If you’re looking to save your shoulder (and avoid developing a bad flinch) going with a lighter kicking load makes sense. Maybe stepping down to a .410 turkey gun or a 28-gauge seems too extreme. If that’s the case, consider these new loads from Hevi-Shot a mild middle ground.   

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Raymond Bunn of Sylva, North Carolina is, as they say in the western part of the state, “mountain.” He’s self-reliant in the extreme, quick to help another, and deeply at home in the woods. A man of gentle passion, Bunn is a gunsmith with a deep knowledge of firearms; the only man I’m willing to trust with family heirloom shotguns. He’s a man who reads widely, offering references to things he’s read at perfect times in wholly unpretentious ways. He’s also a kind man with whom I deeply enjoy sharing a table, where I am guaranteed to find good food and great stories. But most of all, Raymond Bunn is a hunter, particularly a turkey hunter.

The mutual friend who introduced us called Bunn “the woodsiest man I know.” And listening to Bunn tell us about his younger days, when his wife would drop him on a mountain ridge 25 miles away from home so he could “hunt [his] way back to the house,” I believed him.

Accordingly, when Bunn talks about hunting gobblers, I listen closely. (I’ve been trying to figure out turkey hunting for 20 years, and the only thing I am confident about is that the fastest way to learn is from a man like Raymond Bunn.) He is characteristically generous in that pursuit as well, his stories often revolving around the joy of calling in a first tom for someone else. Bunn’s eyes crinkle at the edges as he smiles through a beard gone silver-white over 62 years and 41 turkey seasons.

With turkey season opening on April 8, Bunn planned to travel from his home in the mountains to the eastern North Carolina hunting camp where he and his friends have gone for decades. I’ve visited them there several times, but this is the first year Raymond planned to take me hunting. That is why I was excited to see a text from him on the night of April 12. I was less excited when I opened it and learned he’d been shot that morning by his longtime hunting partner.

“Trying to work out a hunt for us but this happened,” his text read. “I’m fine. Just be careful out there.”

The accompanying photos brought to mind experiences I had in Iraq: a man lying on hospital sheets stained red, his pale skin rarely exposed to the sun now stippled by black-centered blooms. Like in Iraq, I wanted to know how, and why, it happened. How is often easy enough to explain. Why is a question not yet fully answered a month later.

A Gobbler and a Gun Blast

The morning his friend shot him, the two hunters were seated on the edge of a field in a thicket of mixed hardwoods and pine. Bunn says they’d been in the eastern Carolina hunting camp for four days and planned to stay for another few. Both men had already killed a turkey and that morning, Bunn planned to call in a bird for a man with whom he’s killed countless turkeys with. Bunn thought his partner, with more than 65 seasons behind him, appeared a little more tired and slower than usual while walking the half mile to the spot where they’d heard a gobbler the day before.

Around 6:20 that morning, April 12, Bunn helped his friend set up in the woodline, facing him toward a disked-up field. As sitting is uncomfortable for him, the 80-year old man stood behind a large longleaf pine. Bunn moved 20 to 30 yards deeper in the woods and directly behind his hunting partner. Knowing they were close to the bird’s roost, Bunn sat quietly until the gobbler made himself known, thundering forth from a nearby limb. Bunn began a series of tree calls he now believes may have confused his friend, though at the time he thought the soft yelps were too quiet for the hearing-impaired hunter to notice.

For 10 minutes the tom gobbled in multiple directions. This is another factor that Bunn believes may have led to his friend’s confusion about where the bird was located and how many toms were present. Perhaps that is why, at 6:30 a.m., Bunn’s hunting partner turned partially away from the bird, putting his back to the field where Bunn expected the turkey to pitch down. He then faced directly toward Bunn, who explains: “We’d hunted so much together. He doesn’t call. I’ve always set him up and always felt very safe around him not to turn around like he did.”

But for the next nine minutes while the turkey kept gobbling, the man faced away from the field and into the woods, where Bunn was seated. At 6:39 a.m., an increasingly concerned Bunn tried to call his friend on his cell phone to reorient him. There was no answer. The phone at the other end was on vibrate. His friend just kept staring at him.

Bunn had taken off his head net and hat to wave at his friend, and he was calling to him when he saw the Remington 1187 come up. With the muzzle on him, all seemed to be in slow motion. As the turkey kept gobbling, Bunn threw his hat and began shouting at his friend, who was looking through the optic on his shotgun.

Bunn rolled to his right, throwing his left arm over his head and neck as copper-plated No. 5 shot shredded his shirt and tore holes in his side. 

“When I came up, I was really screaming and hollering, just burning all over,” Bunn says. “I knew I had to get out. My left arm and side were getting wet.” 

Still, Bunn’s good nature was evident when we talked about the incident weeks later. 

“You can’t write down everything I said. It was about every bad word I’ve heard in my life. A whole lot of them. But that got [his] attention. Thank God, he didn’t shoot me again, and thank God, it wasn’t TSS. We probably wouldn’t be talking.”

Aging Out of the Sport

On the whole, hunting safety seems to be on the rise. Nonetheless, the Carolinas saw at least two hunting fatalities this turkey season—one in Laurens County, South Carolina, and another in Perquimans County, North Carolina. While those cases, and Bunn’s, are still under investigation, Bunn believes aging and cognition are matters that merit discussion in the hunting community, especially since 38 percent of the participant population is over 55.

The Center for Disease Control calls “Subjective Cognitive Decline” a public health issue. SCD is “the self-reported experience of worsening or more frequent confusion or memory loss,” and it is prevalent among more than 22 percent of adults over 45. (It’s not clear if Bunn’s hunting partner has experienced anything like SCD, but Bunn feels strongly that fatigue and confusion played a role in this accident.) But what if we don’t recognize it? Or what if we do but don’t want to admit it to ourselves, much less anyone else? And if we do see signs of SCD, how do we tell a lifelong hunter that it might be time to put the guns away?

Read Next: What If Grizzly Bears Killed as Many Hunters as Treestand Accidents Do?

Discussions about age and infirmity are never easy. But just as you have to talk to your parents about giving up the car keys, it falls on us as hunters to have these hard discussions—and perhaps even more pointedly, the hard self-realizations about when it’s time to put down the gun. Bunn notes, however, that changing the way we hunt doesn’t have to mean quitting the sport. 

“We just have to try to be responsible and take care of each other as we age as hunters and try to look out for each other,” he says. “I’ve known people who took their relatives to the woods and held the gun for them til it was time to shoot, then took it from them [after the shot].” 

Still, Bunn says he has no magic words for how to approach these tough conversations.

“He shouldn’t have been hunting,” Bunn admits. “But you know how men are—hardheaded, can’t show weakness. Especially these mountain boys around here.”

The Takeaway

What then should we take away from this? And what do we owe our fellow hunters? I believe the answer is a willingness to discuss with an individual and their families when we think that person is no longer capable of hunting as they always have. Furthermore, we have to be honest about our own capabilities. It’s a fraught topic that requires a frank evaluation of ourselves and the people with whom we enter the woods. 

“I’ve always hunted with older people. But we have to eventually ask whether the reward is worth the risk we offer others,” Bunn says.

Of the man who shot him, whom he still loves and considers a friend, Bunn says: “We’ll work through it.” And when I assert that perhaps he’s more gracious than many might be to a man who shot him, he laughs: “You’ve been around me a bit. It takes a lot to get me torn up.” 

That’s a reflection of his personality. But when asked if he’ll hunt with the man again, friend or not, Bunn is decisive.

“No. You don’t have to shoot me but one time.”

Back in the Middle of It

Less than an hour after the incident, Bunn was at the hospital in Kenansville, North Carolina, where medical staff dug approximately 30 pellets out of his left side and arm. A week later a hunting buddy and surgeon took out another 19 after his arm had blackened substantially.

Bunn posted about the issue on his Facebook page, writing: “Hunting and shooting is serious as hell…There were no decoys out no tail fans carried no wing feathers. Just me calling and movement. Please look for signs of fatigue in older hunters and any strange behavior in any age hunters you may be sitting with…I have been hunting for wild turkey [for] 41 years. I have had a few close calls with other hunters as the majority of the time I have hunted public land…The man that shot me was hunting with me and we have hunted many years together safely. Father Time catches up with us all…Please take a lesson from this. Don’t ignore changes or unusual behavior in your hunting partners. We all need to be good to each other and take care of each other.” 

It’s an issue that clearly struck a chord. People have shared Bunn’s post almost 8,000 times. Roughly 2,200 people felt compelled to comment.

Read Next: In Good Company: A Texas Turkey Hunt with Familiar Strangers

I worried the incident might keep even a lifelong hunter out of the woods, and Bunn acknowledges he’s thought about the morning a lot, “playing the tape in my head, looking at what and why.” But as far as keeping him from doing what he loves, he tells me: “Three weeks ago I got hauled to the hospital in an ambulance. Today I hauled a turkey out of the woods on public land. I’m right back in the middle of it.” 

I don’t need to ask why. Because Raymond Bunn is a hunter. And he is mountain.

The post Takeaways from a Turkey Hunter Who Was Accidentally Shot by His Longtime Hunting Partner appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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Wild turkey is my all-time favorite game meat. It’s easy to cook, it has plenty of rich flavor, and it’s just about impossible to beat fried turkey nuggets dipped in spicy barbecue sauce. Talk to any serious turkey hunter, and they’ll agree. However, not all turkey hunters know how to butcher a turkey and get every cut of meat.

In the video below, my turkey hunting buddy Josh Dahlke does a really nice job demonstrating the basic butchering process on a wild turkey. With most of the birds I shoot, I follow the exact same process Dahlke uses here.

But sometimes, I want more than just the breasts and legs. Some turkeys are killed on hunts that are more meaningful, and I want to savor every bite as a way of making that hunt last just a little longer. Here are the main cuts and organs you can harvest when you butcher a turkey:

• Two breasts
• Drumsticks and thighs
• Wings
• Giblets
• Bones

The breasts and legs (meaning drumsticks and thighs) are the most popular cuts and you can see how to remove them in the video above. Wild turkey wings are often overlooked, mostly because they are a hassle to pluck and clean. But if you go through the trouble of harvesting turkey wings, you’ll be rewarded with surprisingly meaty cuts that can be served up in a killer buffalo wing recipe. The giblets consist of the gizzard, heart, and liver. Heart and gizzard meat are pretty similar (rich and a little chewy, in a good way) when fried and dunked in hot sauce. The liver, of course, has more of an iron taste.

The Breast

Everyone takes the breast meat from their turkeys. But not everybody gets all the breast meat they should. The key to leaving no meat on the bone is to use an ultra-sharp, flexible blade. You don’t want to use your thick deer hunting knife for this job. The breastbone has curves and angles that you need to work the blade around. It’s more like filleting a fish than quartering a deer. (Read our review of the best hunting knives, here.)

Also, the breast meat on a turkey goes up much higher on what I’d call the shoulder of the bird. Make sure you peel back the skin all the way up to the wing to ensure you don’t miss any of that golden meat. After you’ve pulled each breast from your bird, it’s time to think about how o freeze each hunk of meat. On a big tom, I like to cut each breast in half so that I’ve got four dinners worth of turkey breast meat. The top of the breast is thicker and has an almost roast-like consistency. I’ll slice the breast in half so that I’ve got one thick, condensed cut and then a wider, thinner cut.

How to Butcher Turkey Drumsticks and Thighs

The leg meat on wild turkeys can be juicy, tender, and delicious, as long as you treat it right. Pulling them off your bird is pretty simple.

Remove the Legs from the Turkey

Skin down to the knee joint and peel away the skin from both sides of the leg. Then press the leg away from the body until you pop the hip joint. Cut from the inside of the leg, separating it from the body. You should never have to saw or break bones while butchering your bird. Simply cut through the joints. To separate the foot from the leg, press your blade through the middle of the knee joint (this is where a stouter hunting-style blade comes in handy) to remove the foot from the leg and you’re good to go.

Separate the Drumstick from Thigh

The key here is to separate the drumsticks from the thighs because they are anatomically different. The drumsticks have thick, heavy tendons running through them vertically, almost like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. No matter how you prepare the drumsticks, you won’t be able to cook down these tendons. So, you’ll need to shred the meat of the drumsticks. The thighs have tendons too, but they are not nearly as thick. If you slow cook the thighs, you can eliminate the chewiness of these tendons and wind up with delicious dark meat. The other benefit of splitting the thighs from the drumsticks is that two thighs or two drumsticks make a meal for two people (if you’ve got more to feed, you’ll just have to shoot more turkeys).

Separate the the drumstick from the thigh by cutting through the knee joint. First cut through the meat on the back of the joint, the line that separates the drumstick from the thigh will be obvious—just cut along that line. Then bend the drumstick backward and feel for the middle of the joint with the tip of your knife. When you find the soft spot in the joint, cut through it and the two pieces will come apart.

The Wings

I’ll be honest: the wings take a good amount of work. After you’ve removed the breast meat, pop the wing joint by pushing it away from the body (similar to how you did with the thigh) and cut the wing off the body. Now, you can separate the two parts of the wing. Imagine the two types of the chicken wings you get at a bar—the drumette (which is shaped like a drumstick) and the flat or wingette (two little bones and meat in the middle). Separate these two sections by popping the joint and cutting through it and then get to plucking and skinning. Pluck off the small feathers and use your knife to cut away the big primary feathers. What you’ll end up with what looks like over-sized chicken wings, but unfortunately you can’t cook them like oversized chicken wings. Wild turkey wings are tough. I once tried to sous vide the wings for six hours and then fry them … and even then they were too tough to enjoy (though the flavor was great). My turkey hunting buddy Josh Dahlke has perfected a wild turkey buffalo wing recipe that’s definitely worth trying. There’s a surprising amount of meat on the wings, and they’re worth working on if you’ve got the time and determination.

Read Next: A Recipe for Wild Turkey Dumpling Soup

The Giblets

Now for the organs. I do this part last so I don’t get any guts on the other cuts of meat. Carefully slice into the bottom of the body cavity (below the breast bone) and then reach up and grab the gizzard, heart, and liver. The gizzard is a big, firm ball that’s full of pebbles or gravel (known as grit) and helps the turkey digest its food. This organ takes a little bit of prep work before its ready for the fryer. First, carefully slice open the gizzard and remove all the grit and the thick layer holding them. If you’ve seen the Netflix series Stranger Things, this layer kind of looks like the Demogorgan’s head. If you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, it’s that super-tough liner inside the gizzard itself. Rinse the meat thoroughly and then peel away the gray inside tissue and the outside silver skin (using a sharp fillet knife). When I do this, I end up with two hunks of firm read meat. I’ll slice these into thinner chunks and also slice up the heart and liver and soak it all in milk overnight. Then I mix them in flour, cornmeal, seasoning, and fry them until they’re crispy. Serve with hot sauce. The heart and gizzard meat is very mild, with the gizzard having a little bit more chew to it, but in a good way. Both are delicious. The liver, well, it tastes like liver. Here’s a more in-depth look at how to remove and cook wild turkey giblets.

The Bones

Trendy health and culinary people are all excited about bone broth these days. Well, bone broth is essentially the same thing as stock, and you can make it pretty easily with the bones from your wild turkey.

The big-ticket items here are the neck, which you can skin, and the keel bone (or sternum) which will be exposed after you remove the breast meat. You can also take the thigh bones, which are stout on big toms.

Stock is a key ingredient for soups and stews, and it’s pretty cool to use to use homemade stock for a wild turkey stew, all from the same bird. If you decide to cook the bird whole Thanksgiving-style, use the remaining carcass for soup. That truly utilizes every bit of meat including those two little ‘tenderloins’ on its backend.

READ NEXT: Best Vacuum Sealers

Your turkey hunt may be over, but this bounty of meat and bones will give you the chance to relive it again and again.

Tips: How to Butcher a Turkey

• With the recent bird flu outbreak, be extra careful transporting wild bird carcasses and contaminating your butchering gear after cleaning a wild turkey. Follow these guidelines.
• Consider keeping the spurs, beard, and fan from your turkey. They’ll last far longer than the meat will.
• Remove pellets from the meat while butchering. You might see entry wounds in the breasts and legs of your turkey from stray pellets. Press on these wound channels with your finger or follow them with a thin, sharp knife and remove pellets from the meat. This will help from chomping into pellets, which can be especially painful if you’re shooting small, hard TSS pellets. Also consider using a small metal detector to find stray pellets in your meat.
• Similarly, trim and wash any bloodshot meat. If a section is bloody and questionable looking, remove it. This will preserve the taste of the rest of the cut.
• Butcher a wild turkey right away, especially if you are harvesting innards.
• After each cut is removed from the turkey, clean and wash the meat thoroughly. Make sure to wash off blood, feathers, and dirt. Pat the meat dry and also let it air dry on a rack before freezing or cooking.

The post How to Butcher a Wild Turkey (and Get Every Last Cut of Meat) appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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