Ridgelines and traveled paths are a fine place to find a strutting tom. (John Hafner/)
Not all of us have the opportunity to turkey hunt vast public lands. In some places there just aren’t enough public acres for us all to utilize without setting up on top of one another. And certainly, many folks don’t own huge farms or have permission on multiple private properties to shoot a spring tom. In most cases, the more property you have access to, the better your chances for punching a turkey tag. I’ve been on tracts big and small, and can attest that killing a gobbler on a small farm—unless it’s the perfect farm and roosting a bunch of turkeys—is difficult. For the last few seasons, I’ve had just 40 or 80 acres to hunt.
On most small farms, the birds are only moving through the property, looking for food or to find more hens to breed. It’s one of the most difficult scenarios to kill a gobbler in, because birds have to be on the move near your setup in order for you to coax one into the decoys. If you hunt a small property, there are a few smart rules to follow. Just know, you have to put in more time than those hunters with better access. I’ve been on both sides of that fence—hard hunts and easy ones—and can tell you that patience and determination kill tough turkeys.
Manage the Land
Creating prime turkey habitat is key to killing small-farm toms. The best locale I ever had access to was a five-acre field at the top of a ridgeline. It was my buddy’s deer-hunting property (which he has selfishly sold since getting married and having three kids), and he always planted soy beans in that field for the deer, but also for spring turkeys, because they love to come scratch in beans to find grubs and worms. It was an ideal setup: a small food plot in a clearing at the top of a hill.
Toms walk in the bottoms along creeks and then make their way up hills by late morning. They use the top of the ridge for strut zones and presumably can see farther, so it’s a good vantage point to be on the lookout for predators. Plus, high ground leads to flat areas like fields and food plots, which turkeys love. On a small farm I hunt now, there’s a clearing my uncle cut for fall deer hunts. There’s no food plot yet, but it’s flat and it’s at the top of a deep bottom where three ridgelines converge. My brother and I struck up a tom there this season. It came to within 35 yards but stayed behind enough brush and trees that neither of us could put a bead on him. He was a smart, old bird that came in cautious even though it was a locale we had just started hunting and hadn’t received any pressure. He knew something was up and walked away from us, spitting and gobbling as he disappeared behind a blowdown. Our intuition was spot on, we just failed to execute.