The Turkey Hunter Podcast with Andy Gagliano & Cameron Weddington | Turkey Hunting Tips, Strategies, and Stories

Etiquette and Safety for Turkey Hunting Public Land

This week, I speak with Corporal Dave Painter with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources about etiquette and safety for turkey hunting public land.

Corporal Painter has been a conservation officer with the state of Michigan for over 20 years, and he has hands on experience in dealing with lots of hunters on lots of public land and dealing with issues that arise in those situations.

We discuss

1. having other hunters come into the area you are hunting while you are working turkeys and how you should handle that situation. 

2. how to handle the situation when you arrive at your public land hunting spot and someone else is in the area.

3. the issues that walk-in hunting areas can present for us as we often don't have vehicles parked in a specific area to let others know we are hunting there.

4. confronting someone who is doing something unethical on public land.

5. confronting someone who is doing something illegal on public land.

6. first hand accounts of situations that have arisen in the past between hunters on public land, and

7. the story of his most recent successful turkey hunt and the one or two things that made that hunt a success.

In addition to the interview with Corporal Painter, I share the lost interview from the NWTF Convention and Sports Show in Nashville from this past February.

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The Struggles of a Turkey Hunter

This week, I interview a listener, Joe Kosalko, who emailed me to ask for some help in figuring out what is going on with the turkeys where he hunts in New Mexico.

Joe struggles with turkeys that will gobble a few times on the roost, fly down and not say a word for the rest of the day. 

We discuss what the possible problems could be and what he can do to overcome those issues and hopefully fill a tag or two this spring. 

Joe's season starts April 15, and he's ready to get out into the woods to try his luck with those New Mexico Merriam's turkeys. 

Understanding the Body Language of Wild Turkeys with Phillip Vanderpool

Phillip Vanderpool with The Virtue TV joins me this week to help with understanding the body language of wild turkeys.

Learn the signs of what to look for in a nervous turkey, and how to calm that nervous bird back down.

Learn the signs of what to look for in a bird that is content and is coming to your setup.

Learn what the colors the gobbler displays in his head, neck, and waddles mean and how to interpret what the gobbler's emotions are when those colors change.

Scouting Advice from Turkey Hunting Pros

This week Cameron and I have some scouting advice from turkey hunting pros for your listening pleasure.  In fact, Cameron brings the majority of this week's show to you as I vacation at the beach before turkey season starts.

Cameron interviews Preston Pittman, Chris Parrish, Jimmy Primos, Harold Knight, Eddie Salter, and Tony Reynolds. He asks them 3 questions about scouting public land because Cameron is having difficulty locating turkeys on some of the public land around Birmingham, Alabama.

Listen in and hear what advice some of the turkey hunting pros have to offer Cameron in this week's episode.

Dissecting A Box Call with Bob Fulcher

This week, we are dissecting a box call with Bob Fulcher with Shadetree Callers.

Tune in to learn how the thickness of the walls and bottom of a call affect the sound of the call. We also talk about tuning box calls with a pocket knife, and the difference between a one piece box call and a laminate call. We talk about how the density of the wood affects the sound of a box call and whether or not we want a box call that is made 100% of the same type of wood. 

After we talk box calls and listen to the difference in some of the box calls that Bob makes at Shadetree Callers, we get to hear the story of Bob's most recent successful turkey hunt and one or two of the things that made that hunt a success.

Listen in and learn about box calls when we start dissecting a box call.

Early Season Turkey Hunting Strategies with Ernie Calandrelli

Ernie Calandrelli joins me this week to discuss early season turkey hunting strategies. 

Early season in the turkey woods can be a tale of two seasons. The big dominant Toms are busy tending to their harem of hens; and, in doing so, more often than not are unwilling to respond and come into our calling.  The subordinate, or satellite Toms, are looking for love in all the wrong places, and they will often run over us to get to that “hen” that they think is begging for attention.

In saying that, for us hunters, early season turkey hunting consists of days that are really good and days that are really bad, with the majority of our days being the latter.

When dealing with early season turkeys, we can do certain things to increase the odds of being successful. 

One of those strategies we can try is to mock the boss hen and try to get her angry enough to come into our setup to fight that hen that is trying to tell her and the other turkeys in the area what to do.

Ernie and I discuss that strategy as well as other early season turkey hunting strategies in this week’s episode.

Listen in and be sure to leave a comment to let me know what your favorite, and most successful, early season turkey hunting strategy is.

In this episode of The Turkey Hunter, I conduct the 1 question interviews with turkey hunting pros at the NWTF Convention and Sports Show in Nashville. 

Hear the 1 thing that increased the turkey hunting success rates around for guys like Preston Pittman, Eddie Salter, Ernie Calandrelli, Ray Eye, Harold Knight, Chris Parrish, Trent Masterson, Matt Morrett, and Jimmy Primos.

I guarantee you will learn something about turkey hunting in this week’s show. Listen in and enjoy.

2017 NWTF Convention Recap

In this week's episode, I recap the 2017 NWTF Convention and Sports Show that took place in Nashville, TN.

With what is sure to be a record breaking crowd in attendance over the weekend, thousands of people enjoyed seminars, calling contests, and an exhibition hall full of vendor booths selling anything from shotguns to turkey calls to facemasks to cover a turkey hunter's face.

While all of this excitement was going on in the convention and sports show, I was wandering around recruiting people to let me record an interview with them.  This interview was one with a twist - it consisted of one question.

The real trick to the one question is that there really was not one answer, and there certainly was not one right answer.  I strictly wanted to know "What is the one thing that elevated your success level in the turkey woods from that of being a beginner to where you are consistently killing turkeys year in and year out?"

That is it!  That is the one question from the one question interview.  I got some really good answers, and I share those with you in this week's episode. 

Listen in and enjoy the 2017 NWTF Convention Recap and my one question interviews with attendees of the convention.

Part 2 of Advanced Trapping Sets for Wild Turkey Predators with Trent Masterson

In this week's episode I continue the conversation with Trent Masterson about some advanced trapping sets for wild turkey predators - adult and poult wild turkey predators mostly.

Coyotes are extremely wary, and they are quick to catch on to trapping in their home area. When they catch on, they get more and more difficult to trap and remove from the area. Trent gives some tips on how we can catch more of those wary coyotes before they catch our nesting hens and vulnerable poults.

Trent also discusses how to catch the best hunters in the woods - bobcats. Their inquisitive nature makes them easier to trap than coyotes, but there are some techniques that we can use to increase our odds of success when seeking these turkey killers.

Foxes are also a predator that will destroy a nest of eggs or catch our poults and nesting hens, and we need to remove as many foxes as we can to help our turkey population too. Trent and I discuss the main differences in coyote trap sets and fox trap sets.

Lastly, we discuss how to dispatch the animals we have in our traps effectively and humanely.

Trent also gives us some information on the National Trapper's Association and how we can get involved with that organization, even if we do not trap since the animal rights groups are coming after trappers as well as hunters. 

Trent Masterson joins me this week to discuss advanced trapping sets for wild turkey predators.

If you want to have more turkeys to observe and hunt on your property, there are 2 main things that you can do to really help to increase your population.  One of those is to improve the habitat that the turkeys have.  The second activity is to trap predators.

More often than not, those predators that have seen, heard, and smelled other predators caught in traps get wary and hard to catch.  That is exactly what we are discussing in this episode - advanced trapping sets for wild turkey predators.

Because this interview with Trent ran almost 2 hours, I've split the interview into 2 parts.  In this part of the interview, Trent and I discuss advanced trapping sets for nest predators of wild turkeys, so we talk coons, skunks, and possums.

Listen in as we discuss what we need to know to catch these more wary wild turkey predators.