How to Catch a Wild Turkey: A Complete Guide for Beginner and Seasoned Hunters

My first Black Hills turkey hunt was a resounding success, with a few points of qualification:

I did take my wife, however, and we caught enough of a break in the weather early Thursday evening to hike up onto a ridge in the Black Hills National Forest off Sheridan Lake Road and snoop around a little bit.

I called it turkey hunting. At least, that was what I was doing, sort of. Mary was taking a walk in the woods, which turned out to be a strenuously rewarding one because of the terrain and surrounding landscape.

Shortly thereafter, I was out in front of Mary 10 yards or so, admiring the scenery and moving quietly on the wet, spongy carpet of pine needles when I caught a glimpse of that lone hen turkey picking at short-growing shrubs.

Turkeys tend to pick and grub studiously for a while, then lift their heads to check their surroundings. This one saw me on her first head lift and was gone.

Have you ever watched a wild turkey run when it really wanted to get somewhere fast? Yeah, they can motor.

And this one looked like a feathered cartoon character on a motor scooter, speeding through the rock outcroppings and fallen pine trees in a slalom that made the complicated, uphill terrain seem like a superhighway.

Mary and I continued to snoop for a while, however, as I got the lay of the land and she got the workout she wanted. At one point we sat on a rock table and counted our many blessings while overlooking a stunning view of the forest and meadows to the south.

There I cupped my hands around my mouth and expelled a series of horrible imitations of turkey putts and yelps and purrs and gobbles, followed by a sequence of crow-like complaints and, finally, an owl hoot or two.

Mary seemed to find it both entertaining and a little disturbing. I explained that I was hoping to inspire a response from a mature male turkey, called a “tom,” or maybe from an immature male, called a “jake,” off somewhere in the trees.

Ever wonder about those names? Yeah, me, too. There’s a story that “tom” turkeys were so named by turkey fan Benjamin Franklin in honor of Thomas Jefferson. I love that story, and wish it were true. It’s not. Nor is it true, according to the Franklin Institute, of Philadelphia, Pa., that Franklin lobbied for the wild turkey to be selected over the American bald eagle as the national bird. Shucks. Sometimes the facts are no fun.

But apparently Franklin did criticize the original eagle design of the Great Seal, according to the institute, arguing that it looked more like a turkey than an eagle. He also concluded that the eagle was a bird of “bad moral character” because of its tendency to feed on dead fish picked from the water or stolen from other raptors. Franklin found the turkey, meanwhile, to be “much more respectable.”

I’ve never found a meaningful explanation of the “tom” origins. Nor have I figured out why younger male turkeys are called “jakes” and hens are called “jennies.” But since jakes aren’t as easily defined by size and markings as toms, I wasn’t sure I could tell a jake from an illegal jenny if a sudden opportunity presented itself.

The turkey license is also my first. While I’ve talked about hunting turkeys since I moved to Rapid City from Sioux Falls in 2002, talk has been cheap and action delayed, again and again, until this year, when I finally bought a license.

And there was a pretty simple reason for that: I wanted to talk to my old pal, Clem.

But not just talk, I guess. We do that all the time by cell-phone chats and texts and email, and occasionally by getting together back home in Missouri River country, here in Rapid or down in Sioux Falls where he lives now.

“Talk” in this instance means talking and driving around in the country, maybe taking a hike or two and looking at stuff. Stuff in the forest. And maybe, who knows, that stuff could include a wild turkey.

We could call that a hunt, I figured, and we might even surprise ourselves and shoot a turkey or two.

I like wild turkey breast as much as the next guy, even though I’ve only tasted it once. It came from a “wild” turkey a landowner friend bagged on her property during a prairie turkey season past. I use the quotation marks around “wild,” because it was really only a little bit wild, as in it would stroll into the rancher’s feed yard with its buddies every day about the same time and pick for grain.

If you wanted to stand around and stare at those turkeys from 30 or 40 yards away, they wouldn’t object. But if you decided to walk over and tackle one or two, they’d resurrect enough of their wild DNA to make a hurried departure.

I recall a Game, Fish & Parks Department friend who went on a “wild turkey hunt” 40 years ago or so on a sprawling ranch in a creek drainage somewhere out in the wilds of Haakon County. He wanted to show up at dawn, decked out in a fine camouflaged turkey hunting outfit. The landowner suggested that any comfortable clothing would work, and that he should come to the ranch house at 8:15 or so instead, for a cup of coffee and maybe a biscuit.

At about 8:45, the landowner led my friend to an old car seat on the west side of a shed inside the feed-yard fence. There he sat comfortably in the shade until the turkeys sauntered in for their morning meal. He picked out a nice gobbler and plugged it as it stood enjoying its breakfast in the feed yard about 20 yards away.

That’s the degree of “wild” in the turkeys that live near and regularly dine at many farm and ranch places in western South Dakota. And it’s consistent with the turkey behavior known by a lot of my friends who have houses along the edge of Rapid City or in developments nearby.

But there are other kinds of “wild” turkeys around. You’ll find them farther out in the forest, usually a fair bit away from the nearest backyard bird feeder or ranch feed yard.

There are other kinds of wild-turkey hunts, too, and some really good kinds. They involve rising early and camouflaging well and calling effectively to entice a turkey gobbler with spring-mating fever to show up, ready to dance the dance of procreation.

Midway through a courtship ritual seems like an unfortunate time to get blasted with a load of steel pellets. But at least they go out happy, with a gobble and a bang instead of a whimper.

To reach that higher-end point of wild turkey hunting, committed turkey hunters learn a lot about turkey behavior and effective calling and locating the birds by sounds and sight and behavior patterns. They scout a lot before the hunt, too.

My buddy John Cooper of Pierre was up around St. Onge for several days recently, scouting the windy woods for turkeys prior to a hunt with his grandchildren. Those turkeys are not the feed-yard variety. Nor are they the kind that show up in backyards to forage for Cheerios and raid the bird feeders while self-humiliating mule deer molest the tulips nearby.

Most wild creatures do better and behave better — are better, really — when they maintain some reasonable distance from human beings. We can be a bad influence, you know.

And the turkeys Cooper was scouting were generally distant enough and secretive enough and skittish enough to earn the “wild” adjective. Such birds outsmart hunters more often than they succumb to that siren call and subsequent cloud of pellets. Bagging one is a cause for celebration and gratitude.

I’ve had religiously committed turkey hunters tell me the golden seconds when the gobbler is responding to the evocative sounds of the call just prior to the shotgun blast are the most exciting of any in hunting. One told me it was better than sex, which tempted me to inquire about the nature of his romantic existence. But I refrained, fearing that he might respond, in detail.

Still, springtime is fishing time, to me. And after an unfriendly winter, there are few places I’d rather be than in a pair of waders up to my belly button in a hopeful piece of walleye water or bass haunt.

So, while I talk a good turkey game over the winter, when spring comes, I can’t seem to put down the rod long enough to pick up the gun. Or even send in for a turkey license. Until this year.

So, what happened? Well, Clem happened. Or called, actually, wondering if I might join him for a turkey hunt. That was good. And we commenced the planning. Then COVID followed. And that was bad. Very bad.

The really bad of COVID-19, of course, is all the people who have been sickened or even killed by it, and the threat it does and will continue to pose. It’s serious business. And as a man in a more vulnerable age group, like me, Clem — who is called Tom Clemens by some — took it that way.

He bowed out of his annual group-turkey hunt, where he and at least a dozen other hunters from across the state and nation gather each spring in an old storefront building-turned-hunting camp in Rochford. They assemble there each fall to hunt deer, too, and engage in a week or two of communal meals and collective storytelling that makes a hunting camp what it really is: a clubhouse for old friends.

Clem showed the wisdom of his years when he skipped the spring turkey camp this year. And we’re still trying to schedule a day when he and I can safely meet out in the woods and take a walk, with shotguns in hands and eyes out for turkeys.

But the clock is ticking, since the Black Hills turkey season ends May 31. And I wanted to make sure I got some use out of my first-ever turkey license.

So, after some consultation with friends and unpaid outdoor consultants Terry and Larry Mayes here in Rapid City, I picked a spot for my first-ever turkey hunt. Which is where Mary and I ended up Thursday, when the rain took a break.

We headed off into the woods and up the hill, unarmed and unlicensed but enthusiastic in our near-total lack of expectations. A good hike and a single hen-turkey sighting later, we were back at the SUV.

It wasn’t a hunt likely to be featured in Field & Stream. But every great journey must have a beginning. And my turkey hunting journey began up on a ridge in the forest not far from town, without my gun or my license but with the woman I love in a landscape I admire.

How to catch a turkey with only your hands

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