Originally Posted By: LGF
I am total neophyte turkey hunter, and don't really have anyone to teach me the finer points. So a few ignorant questions:

Are decoys unethical because they make it too easy to bring the bird in close?

I posted earlier in this thread about my delight in taking my second turkey with a 10 bore hammergun, brass shells and black powder. Would I be a criminal, or merely a scumbag, if this year I used my 8 bore hammergun and BP? Just to have done it? Turkeys are not migratory, right? Close range, of course, and we need to use nontox in California as of this year, so it would be #4 bismuth.

Be gentle, please. Thanks.



If you can tote the 8 ga. and it's legal go for it..

Nothing unethical about using a hen decoy but it can hurt as much as it can help...the strutting gobbler decoys are another story. Most can attest that a turkey is really stupid at times.

I had a young man tell me he didn't need a turkey call. And that I needed to get some stealth...he equated stealth to holding a gobbler decoy in front of him and walking towards a gobbler in a field and claimed that most gobblers would approach on a fast run...my reply was he rally knew nothing of stealth in the woods and that tactic was not turkey hunting it was just turkey shooting. I also told the young man I had never snuck up on nor have I ever belly crawled up on a turkey....

The real question is do you want to hunt turkeys or do you want to be a turkey shooter.

This photo was taken about 3:10 in the afternoon...after I had been standing by this tree for about 20 minutes I slipped out the phone turned it on and snapped this picture It looks far but it's not an inch over 20 yards. The turkeys were too huddled up to safely shoot one of the gobblers.



This photo was taken at 3:45pm.




The longest I've ever let a turkey stand at that distance without getting shot at....I better check into some of that "stealth".

Sadly I didn't have enough "stealth" to kill his brother.