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Rick , Allyn & Sean Spoerl with their 100% Gobblers

Uncle Al and another Tom

I stood on the top of the hill an hour before sunrise along side a hardwood forest in a four inch high alfalfa field in north western Wisconsin waiting for and hoping for a gobble. This is the final day of my spring hunt and the turkeys in the area seem to be roosting in a different spot everyday. The previous days have been slow. The only tom’s I had seen were with hens all day. I had set up a blind with decoys in several locations including strutting zones, resting areas and feeding areas with no luck. They simply wouldn’t leave the hens. Now it was time to run and gun or as I call it, stop and go. "READ MORE"

Uncle Al with his 2008 Tom

Scouting trip 2008

            I was completely, totally, definitely bored out of my gourd as the sitting time approached ten and a half hours. This was in the evening and I hadn’t heard or looked at a turkey all day. We were on the forth day of a five day turkey hunt in north western Wisconsin and time was running out. On day three my Uncle and I were lucky enough to call in a silent tom after only a two hour sit that he dispatched with one well placed shot. He looked out of his turkey blind and there it was running full bore right at him.

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Since I missed the first day of the turkey opener, only because I was required to pay the mortgage, I was anxious to arrive at turkey camp. It was 1:00am, yes AM and I was wide awake on our 5 hour drive. So was my seventeen year old son Sean as we talked turkey all the way up north. Sean had shot his first coyote a few weeks back and hoped he would see one on this trip. Of coarse some words of fatherly wisdom accompanied the discussion relating to girls and careers along with some talk of school as is customary on these long drives (he probably dreads that).

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It was 7:00 pm and my son Sean was calling me on the radio every hour or so letting me know he hadn’t seen or heard a turkey yet. Other than a lunch break at noon we had been sitting all day. This was the first year Wisconsin’s turkey season was open until sunset and it made for a long day. Closing was 7:52pm and it was slowly approaching that time.

We were both sitting five yards or so into the woods bordering strutting and feeding zones we had seen turkey’s in before. Sean was watching an alfalfa field on one side of the farm and I was watching one on the other side. "READ MORE"

100% Gobbler’s

As my Uncle and I sat in the turkey blind together, and my son Sean sat in the blind behind us with the video camera, I thought about the two tom’s Sean and I had whacked two day’s before. It sure was a great opening day. We had hunted hard all day moving our blind into a nice strutting field when five minutes before close we had two toms’ sneak into our decoys after getting their butts kicked by two bigger toms. They thought they were pretty sly until a couple loads of number four’s ended their sneak. "READ MORE"

My eleven year old son Sean and I quietly climbed into the camo turkey tent blind and waited for sun-up. This was his first time on a turkey hunt and although he couldn’t hunt yet, he was just as excited as I was.

My plan was to sit in the tent until I heard a gobble, than take off after the turkey and get as close to him as possible, than call him in and shoot him. If we couldn’t call a tom in, than we would return to our blind and hunt the strutting field. "READ MORE"

It was 4:30 pm in the turkey woods, when my 13 year old son Sean asked if we could leave the blind and stalk back to the truck. Turkey hunting closes at 5:00pm and Sean was hoping we’d see something on the way to the truck. We hadn’t had any action all day and we were hot, tired and a little bored.

Sean didn’t shoot a turkey the previous year but did get a shot at a bird when we were returning to the blind from a walk. We came back to find a huge Tom having his way with our hen decoys I accidentally forgot to take with us (that’s another story).

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My 16 year old son Cory shot a Jake the previous spring but now was dead set on blasting his first tom. We arrived at turkey camp along the red cedar river in Dunn County Wisconsin. A couple farmers in the area had graciously given us permission to turkey hunt. We had hunted the area before and were confident there were some nice toms in the area.

As the sky brightened the first morning of our hunt we heard a barred owl sound off. Next thing we heard was the faint gobble some half mile away. Than another, and another. Soon we could hear several gobblers sounding off. None seemed close enough to move on so we sat still in the blind calling every five minutes or so. This was an unusual year as the birds seemed to be roosted in an area we had never heard them in before. "READ MORE"

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Ryan Spoerl and his first Tom

Turkey Hunting Mistakes

By Rick Spoerl

            I just returned from my 2006 turkey hunt in which I hunted zone 37 (Dunn Co.) the first period. I was excited to be lucky enough to draw the first week and was confident I would be successful. Maybe to confident. I made a mistake that I learned long ago not to do. I moved to quicly on a hung up tom and spooked him out of the county. I thought about the times I’ve goofed up and although I have harvested a lot of toms in Wisconsin I have lost many by making mistakes. Since I started hunting turkeys there has been only one year that I couldn’t have killed a turkey. 

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Should I stay or should I go. That’s the question we have all asked ourselves after a couple hours in the turkey woods especially if we haven’t seen a turkey early in the morning. A veteran turkey hunter once told me that if a hunter would sit still in a good strutting field from the beginning to the end of hunting hours every day of the season he would score a bird 99 percent of the time.

That might be true, but I have shot turkey’s either way and have developed a system that at least for me seems to be successful. Before considering moving you have to justify it. "READ MORE"