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

Roger Shields with the Florida Fish and Wild Game Conservation Commission is on the show to talk about Osceola wild turkeys.

The Osceola wild turkey is great fun to hunt. Their habitat is some of the harshest in the country, and Osceola's have an amazing ability to disappear into nowhere.

With plenty of public and private land to hunt in Osceola range, there are no shortages of opportunities to harvest an Osceola wild turkey to complete your Grand Slam.

In this week's episode, an experienced hunter shares the story of his recent hunting accident and shares a gun safety reminder with us.

Most of us, at one time or another, have a lapse of judgement when handling a firearm. Fortunately, most of the time, nothing bad or harmful happens and we often don't even realize what we just got away with because nothing negative happened.

A friend of mine recently shot himself in the hand while hunting because he committed two firearm safety sins on one hunt. Today, he shares the story of how the accident happened as a reminder for us to slow down and think before we make a big mistake when handling guns.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, here are 3 quick and easy wild turkey recipes. 

First up, we have wild turkey poppers.  I think they are called poppers because they are so good they'll make your eyes will pop out of your head.

Second, we have a wild turkey thigh and leg wild rice soup. This soup is delicious and simple to make.

And, last but not least, is wild turkey steaks. This very easy recipe is one of my favorites because it is absolutely delicious.

Listen in and pick a recipe to prepare some wild turkey for your family this Thanksgiving. Even if you don't have enough wild turkey to feed everyone, you can make a great first course or appetizer with 1/2 of a turkey breast.

Also, if you have a favorite wild turkey recipe, please send it to me.  I'll try it, of course, but I'll also share it with The Turkey Hunter family as well.

Listen in to this week's episode.  I hope you enjoy it, and I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

In this episode I take you on a little field trip to the shooting range to pattern my new turkey hunting shotgun.

I shoot 3 different chokes and two different shotgun shells through each choke tube to see which choke and shotgun shell patterns the best.

My birthday has come and gone, and my new turkey hunting shotgun has been tricked out with all of my birthday gifts from my family members.

I've gotten it ready to take to the range, and I'll be doing that this coming weekend. I'll also be recording that sighting/shooting session for future playback on the show.

In addition to all of this gun talk, I also have more gun talk for you in this week's episode as I answer questions about shotguns from a listener and relative newbie to the sport of turkey hunting.

Listen in!

Today I have a quick tip for our new turkey hunters, and that is to try to start thinking more like a turkey when hunting.

We can never know what a turkey is thinking with 100% certainty, but I can with 100% certainty tell you that it is related to at least one thing.  That one thing is either food/water, shelter/cover, safety, and the need to breed.

If we start out knowing what the turkeys want is that simple, then we can start to pay more attention to our surroundings and the woods that we are hunting in to find more turkeys.

If we can think more like a turkey, then we should be able to find more turkeys.  If we can find more turkeys, then we should be able to tag more turkeys.

I recently bought a new shotgun, and I'm now ready to turn that new shotgun into a new turkey hunting shotgun.

There are some very simple and inexpensive modifications that one can make to a shotgun to turn it into a dedicated turkey hunting shotgun.

Some of the modifications I am making to this gun are replacing the wooden stock with a lightweight synthetic stock, adding rifle sights to the barrel, adding spacers to the stock for proper fit, a new recoil pad, sling swivel tube cap, a neoprene sling, and of course a turkey choke.

Listen in as I talk about the upcoming modifications and my reasons for making those mods. This will be an ongoing short term project, and I will be recording follow up episodes to cover new information as I weed through shotgun shell and turkey choke combinations to find the perfect shooting one for this gun.

Scott Lerich, Regional Biologist with the NWTF, and I discuss Merriam's wild turkeys in this week's episode. 

We talk about the extensive travel by the Merriam's turkeys, their vocal nature, where to find them in the fall and spring, and what makes them unique and their own subspecies of wild turkeys.

Listen in and get some tips on where you can find birds in the fall and spring, and hopefully this episode will help you to put a tag on a bird this coming season.

A replay of one of my favorite episodes of the show where I have my buddy, John, on the show to tell the story of The Texas Decoy Massacre.

I also have some wild turkey news bites for you as well.