Setting Up on Gobbling Turkeys to Hunt More Efficiently
Day 3: How to Set-Up on and Hunt a Turkey that’s Across the Water
 One of the hardest turkeys to set-up on is the turkey that’s across a body of water. Turkeys generally don’t like to fly-across water to meet a hen, and most of the time they won’t. But if there’s a turkey gobbling on the other side of a creek that you can’t swim or refuse to wade, there are two techniques you can try.
- Start calling aggressively with cuts, cackles and excited yelping. Put some emotion in those calls. You want to make the gobbler think there’s a hen that’s so excited about breeding that she just can’t stand it. Frequently, a gobbler will become just as excited and drum and strut in hopes of getting the hen to fly across the creek to him.
Once you’ve got the turkey fired-up and know he can’t see you, start calling and moving away from the edge of the riverbank to create a picture in the gobbler’s mind of a hen that’s ready and wanting to breed. But since the tom won’t fly across the creek to meet her, she’s walking off and locating a gobble on her side of the water. Hopefully, the gobbler won’t be able to stand the pressure of the hen walking away, and will fly across the creek. Be sure to listen for the gobbler’s beating wings, because sometimes a longbeard will fly right to the caller.
 Imitate a one-man band, cutting and cackling with a diaphragm call, while yelping and cutting on a box call, if a turkey’s hung-up across water. You must paint a picture in that gobbler’s mind of a harem of hens that are excited and ready to breed. Then change calls, and sound like a whole flock of hens, each with a different voice and excited about mating. Often, a gobbler that hears that much hen talk on the other side of a creek just can’t stand the pressure. He believes that some gobbler will breed those hens in a short time, and that it may just as well be himself, even if he has to fly across the creek for the date.
  To learn more about how to hunt turkeys, click here, or visit www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks, and type in the name of John E. Phillips’ latest turkey-hunting book, “Turkey Hunting Tactics,” that’s now available from Kindle books and contains information on all aspects of turkey hunting, including: how to set up on turkeys; how to hunt turkeys; what equipment is best; what’s the differences in western and eastern turkey hunting and how that influences the way you hunt and more.
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