Southern exposure: Guide shares expert turkey hunting tactics during trip to Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Hunters who enjoy traveling in the spring to pursue wild turkeys know excellent opportunities can be found in various states across the country. Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska and New York are near the top of the list.

One state that doesn’t usually come up but perhaps should is Maryland, specifically its Eastern Shore — a destination that offers solid gobbler hunting and is less than four hours away from the Lehigh Valley.

On Saturday, May 3, I had the opportunity to sample the Old Line State’s spring turkey action with Branded Outdoors, a guiding service that hunts several thousand acres of primarily private land in the Cambridge and Salisbury areas. My guide for the morning was William Wilson, a Mechanical Engineering Technician at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., by day and a turkey-hunting guide on weekends and as his time permits.

“I think we have a really good population density as far as the bird numbers are concerned …,” Wilson said of the Eastern Shore’s wild turkey population. “We (do) have a ton of hens, (so) just because it’s a quiet day and you don’t hear gobbling doesn’t mean you don’t have birds.”

Unfamiliar hunting grounds

Walking into an area you’ve never hunted before always brings mixed feelings of anxiousness and excitement, as you never know how the morning will unfold. After setting up the popup hunting blind in the dark on a field edge location that had been determined based on prior scouting, we nestled in to wait. As the first rays of light began to greet the sky, we heard a bird gobble on the roost only about 60 yards from us.

Following a couple more gobbles, Wilson let out a short series of hen yelps, cutts and putts and didn’t call again. A short time later, he thought he heard some turkeys walking on the ground behind the blind.

What struck me immediately about the Pasadena, Maryland, resident was his interest in sharing what he was doing and why, including how everything related to turkey behavior and biology.

“A lot of times, guys get really excited when they hear a bird gobble on the roost and, in my opinion, they are making a mistake when they start talking to that bird too soon,” said Wilson, who has been guiding for seven years. “They get what I describe as limb-lock. When you start talking to them, yelping to them — tree yelps, whatever it might be — they’re going to turn in your direction and face you because they can hear you. Even if they’re not answering you, they’re hearing you and they’re going to start looking in your direction … .

“They want to see that hen coming. They’ve already heard enough, and in some cases, they’ll oblige you — they’ll keep gobbling back and forth, back and forth — but they’re not going to come down off that limb until they get a visual on that hen. And nine times out of 10 what I’ve experienced is if you keep that gobbler talking on the limb, another hen is going to come in and steal your bird.”

Set up less than 25 yards from the blind were a pair of hen-and-jake decoys designed to hopefully draw a gobbler out of the woods. Wilson strategically placed the pair to help position an approaching bird for a good, easily makeable shot.

“I always try to analyze where I think the birds are going to approach the setup from,” he said. “Say that the birds are going to enter the field from your right. I want to have that (hen decoy) positioned to where she’s facing away — facing her head to the left — so that when they come into the field, their natural instincts are going to be to display for them and they are going to want to get out ahead of her and kind of cut her off and make sure that they are seen.

“The way I place my jake decoys, if I’m running a jake (one-year-old male turkey), is I want that jake almost like he was first to the party, out in front of her, getting the first opportunity to display for her and make it an even more jealous reaction out of the incoming gobbler to (get him) to kind of come out.”

Hunting the Eastern Shore

When it comes to Maryland, one of the big draws for Pennsylvania hunters is the early start to the season. This year, the Old Line State’s turkey season came in April 18, a full two weeks before the Keystone State.

Another noticeable difference, especially for sportsmen used to pursuing gobblers in Pennsylvania’s mountains or even the Lehigh Valley, is the makeup of the habitat and the approaches used to hunt the birds. Instead of a hunter setting up in the woods, or taking the “run-and-gun” approach of moving and calling to try and locate a bird, the flat topography and dense forests on much of the lower Delmarva Peninsula limit longer-range visibility and the real estate one can easily ply.

“It is tough, especially down here where we have a thick wood line,” Wilson said. “You see a lot of deciduous trees mixed with evergreens. A lot of these loblolly pines and the cedars, they’re mixed in pretty well. You can see it’s almost like a 50 to 50 (ratio) in these woods.

“You can use it to your advantage. It does give you a challenge because you have to find your door — you have to find the way to get into the birds to try and get up on them — if you’re trying to get into the roost opportunity. And a lot of hunters do that.”

According to Wilson, if a person is on the hunt for a mid-morning tom, he or she may want to look for small openings in the woods, hidden fields or pasture corners that aren’t in plain view.

“Those cow pastures (we hunt) are great. They also provide good drainages that will lead into the wet lowlands that these birds are roosting over a lot of the times. They like to hear water trickling underneath of them. An old-timer once told me, ‘A turkey wants to hear his turds hit the water.’ That’s something I’ve always kept in my pocket.”

“When you are looking for roost areas, follow your creek beds and look for opportunities [where] a bird [has] a decision to make in the morning, whether they’re going to fly down on this side of the creek or on that side of the creek … or come to your calls and come to your setup.”

While the turkey that gobbled on the roost at first light never showed itself, the morning wasn’t without action. About 6:20 a.m., one and then a second bird appeared at the corner of the field in response to Wilson’s occasional calling. The pair of jakes then made their way out to the decoys, attacking the jake decoy before milling around in the field for about 20 minutes and then retreating back in the direction from which they had come.

“A lot of times, as we saw today, (the jake-and-hen setup) kind of flares their tempers. They came out and they saw her — she was leading away — the setup kind of worked as intended and they came out and they beat the heck out of the decoy. They knocked him over on his side.”

Although the rest of the morning was quiet, I was already reflecting on the morning’s action as we walked back to the truck shortly after noon. Next time I’m able to return to the Old Line State to hunt turkeys, I’m confident the outcome will be different.

Branded Outdoors offers guided spring wild turkey hunts, as well as white-tailed deer, sika deer and waterfowl hunts in the fall. To book a hunt, contact owner Jake Shaffer at 570-898-3207 or visit brandedoutdoors.com.

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