Keep moving, calling as end of turkey season approaches

Skeet Thomas has developed a routine for hunting toward the very end of the season that typically provides a lot of gobbling and gobbler activity.

“One of my hunting buddies is Steve Cobb from Union, a champion caller,” he said. “Toward the end of the season, we often plan a strategy to hit numerous areas, maybe 15 or more places on both private and WMA lands that we know have gobblers.

“On one trip, we hunted from dawn to dusk and had 13 different gobblers respond to our calls, and it was the last Saturday before the season ended. We both took big longbeards that day and worked several other gobblers that were not killed. In one instance, we had gobblers approaching across a field when cattle in the field started moving and ran the gobblers off.

“Late season is like any other time of the year in terms of unusual things happening to stop a successful hunt,” he said. “But the point is, we had gobblers working all-day long. It’s not always like this of, course, and sometimes we’ll only have a couple of birds to work during the day. But it only takes one to make it a very, very good day.”