Saw/heard something a bit different today

[wprebeck]

My buddy and I went out to try and bag a yote or two (unsuccessful, again, but that's another story), and saw some turkeys acting a bit weird...at least, weird from my experiences with them.

While I'm calling the yotes, using a Preymaster with the extra big speaker, the birds start gobbling at us. I'd started out using a coyote locator sound (with all the howls, barks, etc), and first heard a bunch of gobbles. After no luck getting a response from what I was really hunting, I switched over to a rabbit in distress call. The birds still gobbled back.

We spent over an hour doing this, and finally saw the birds on a ridge about 300-350 yards out, walking down a fence row. I glassed them, and every bird I saw (about 6 or 7) had a beard. More than that, one was in full strut, puffed out and with his tail feathers at full spread....

Again, I've never had turkeys respond to a yote call, and never seen them fan out like this...I didn't get ANY response to a gobbler in distress call (just threw it out to see how they'd react), but only to the locator and rabbit calls. I'm guessing the one was puffed up/fanned out due to some kind of dominance thing, but I'm not for sure. Wish they been in closer, so I could get some pics of 'em.

[turk2di]

Turkeys were possibly shock gobbling to your loud calls! This is normally associated with spring, when gobblers are wired, tuned to a fever pitch due to the mating season & raging hormones i reckon. Like sex birds usually flock together in the winter, especially gobblers, tho any drove of birds may have a mixed bag of hens,poults, jakes & gobblers. Gobblers normally prefer to be away from the large family groups during winter.

[Valley Station]

Sounds normal. Turkey will normally gobble at a coyote howl.

[notimlmit]

Like you I was amazed this past deer season. I wasn't calling, only sitting when after daybreak a tom started gobbling several times before flying down just yards in front of me. He was nice with what looked to be a 10" beard and he stayed around the area for awhile even when some does passed by. I spoke softly to him to stick around till spring when we can meet again.