Ep. 37: Mountain Gobblers with John Weik
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Welcome to Cutting the Distance. Today, I'm live from the field. I'm joined with John Wyke of Northwest Bird Chasers. He served 35 years in the military and military aviation work. He's originally from the Northwest hardwoods of Connecticut, where he started hunting at the age of 10. He moved to Washington about 28 years ago. From there, he started hunting turkeys shortly after, and he's never looked back.

To describe the way John hunts turkeys, he's a mountain turkey hunter who would rather sit at home and watch TV than hunt turkeys out of a blind. He has a run-and-gun style, chasing and setting up on gobbling birds, and it's his only style. Today's episode, I want to give a quick recap on the Kansas turkey hunt, as well as the hunt we're on right now here in Washington. So welcome to the show, John. Hey, good to be here, Jason. We're two weeks into season. Are you tired of it yet? Oh, yeah. No, no. How can you get tired of doing this?

Yeah, it's been fun. I get tired during the season. It's long days. This morning we got up at what, 345, I think, to try to get past a bird. Yeah, 345. You go to bed at 10, but long, long days. So we're physically tired, but I'm not tired of turkey hunting yet. Yeah, no. Try not to be anyway. Yeah. So we're going to start this episode like every episode of Cutting the Distance. We are going to take questions from our listeners.

Um, if you have questions you'd like to submit to myself or our guests, email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. Um, I have to laugh at this question before I get ready to, to, to give it to you because we've, we've both got this question on this hunt as we're hunting, people are messaging us this. Do you have a spot for me to hunt? Oh yeah. That's, that's a question I never hear. Never. Yeah. We don't hear any of that too much at all.

So, uh, cause, because we all know that that's all that matters when it comes to killing a turkey, right? If you have the right spot, then everything else is going to be a gimme. Oh yeah. It's golden. You just picked the right spot in the woods. You're going to kill birds. It's real easy. So let's, let's, uh, elaborate on that question a little bit and, uh,

Rather than give them spots, how would you prepare somebody to go investigate, look, find, e-scout, whatever it may be, good hunting spots? You know, here in Washington, and I know you hunt Idaho, Montana, other places. Like, what's a good recipe for figuring out where to hunt? Well, first thing for us always, you know, we jump right on Onyx and then mix Onyx with Google Earth at the same time. Yeah.

And we're looking for, you know, state land that has a lot of variation in it. We like the higher elevations. Our birds tend to move up pretty quick. They'll follow the snow line. They'll chase it right up to whatever elevation that you want to go up to. Not that you can't find them down low as well.

But we prefer to hunt the upper stuff, so we find the birds up there as they're chasing up the snow. But yeah, you get on Onyx and start looking at timberland. You got all kinds of different timberlands out here you can get into, some IEP stuff as well. And it's just pretty easy to find. If you're using Onyx, it's gonna identify it for you and then mix it up with Google Earth at the same time and say, are there farmlands that aren't that far away that the birds probably wintered in?

And known after that, as stuff starts greening up and some of the lower shrubs start leafing out, the hens are going to start nesting and you're going to find the birds. It's not that complicated if you're able to look. Yep. And that's one thing you touched on there a little bit is a relationship to ag. One thing I love about the birds we've been hunting the last couple of days is they have no real like...

No real requirement to go back down there. Right. I, I, one thing I don't like is hunting a bird that would rather run down to a field or run down to, you know, where he'd been getting, you know, chicken scratch all winter. Um, these birds are mountain birds, but you still have to look at that ag or those farms to figure out like where they came from this winter. And they're going to be in, you know, somewhat close relationship, um,

to those yeah to some degree I mean granted there are some places we've gone to where it's so deep and dark and there's no ag anywhere there's no fields there's no people I mean I can think of some places that we've crawled into just to elk hunt and in the middle of nowhere you're looking at your onyx you're like where do these birds live and there they are staring at you yeah

So it's not the ones you really want to hunt probably, but yeah, yeah. They're there. Yeah. You had, we were hunting a spot last night and you had made mention that, um, you, you have a buddy that lives there and you know, at the time when he says the birds leave his, his yard, they're now up in the mountains. So it's like, you know, and then maybe that's why Washington's doing so well right now is because we do have a lot of ag winter ag that supports those birds. And so our populations are staying real high, even though we did lose, I think a few hens this year with,

with the winter? - I think so too. I mean, we had a really cold winter, but on top of that, we had powder. And powder's just not something that happens out here. You talk to the biologists, they say that's one of the reasons that we have such great populations is that we have snow that the birds can stand on top of, walk around and still get a lot of feed. But this year, we had cold right up front and we had powder for a long time. And the hens, they were pushing through it. People even gave reports where like, man, we're watching these hens struggle just to move through the snow.

And find food. Unfortunate. So, yeah. So just quick recap, um, get on Onyx, figure out where you can hunt, find an area that's somewhat adjacent to ag and you're most likely, especially in Washington, you're going to find birds. Yeah. Um, and we're going to get into it a little bit later and it's like, just let your boots, you know, burn up some boot leather and go figure it out. Absolutely. Carry lots of water with you. Yeah.

Yeah, I have. Question number two, which we've lived a little bit here already in the first couple days of this hunt. Birds are gobbling really hard in the roost. They fly down, gobble a little bit. They'll gobble up my calls, but about 30 minutes later, they haven't committed to my setup or my calling, and they've completely shut up.

what should I do or why is that happening? And the question was, what should I do? But I think more importantly is why is that happening and what can you do to take, you really can't take advantage of it, but what can you do to maybe turn that into a positive or what do you do with that information to maybe get that turkey later that day or the following morning? Right. Well, first thing is take note as to what their pattern was when they did it.

Because, you know, maybe you're not going to be successful today, but you're creating a setup for understanding them better and their movements. So you can put that in your pocket and come back in the next time and get in front of them rather than behind them. And a lot of the birds are just going to be henned up because we're like two weeks behind still in our season, honestly.

Some friends I know have found a couple nests. I found one too with one egg in it only. And that was just a few days ago. So, you know, with this weather we had and the snow just leaving the woods still, things just greening up, we're just behind. So they're going to be pretty henned up still, which is not normal so much right now.

And that's, that's one of the biggest reasons they're moving away from you because they're following the hand, they're gobbling and say, yeah, come join us. We're heading this way. Yep. We have it in mind where we want to be and you're not there. Yep. Uh, we're going to get into it, uh, the 9am spark or whatever that we can. Oh yeah. And we can use some of this information. We've did it already. Um, yeah, they're gobbling there, but,

let's let's keep in mind where we last heard him like where that ideal spot for them to be was because we are early in the in the nesting season but that hen's eventually going to break off around 8 39 go lay that egg absolutely and he's going to probably reverse that trail back to where you started on that morning so i mean it's great to start on a bird because it's obvious they want to be in that area they're comfortable there there's what they need there but yeah i think

Um, a lot of people get discouraged. The bird stops gobbling by shoot around here. It's getting light. So early six 37 and they're like, ah, I'm going to go in for breakfast, you know, and it's, uh, the, the better hunting still ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Sit down, take a nap if you need to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go to what you think is the best looking, you know, where you've seen the most droppings, where you know that they're feeding on the greenest grasses, uh, the greenest shrubs and hang out and take a nap and wait for them to come back. Um,

So one thing we get asked a lot, me personally, is we make an owl call, we make a crow call, we use a woodpecker call, we use different locators. The question we got is when and how should I use the different locators? And so I'll let you kind of

kind of roll into that you know me personally i mean you've seen what i've used it's an alcohol yeah it's a crow call we use a woodpecker but kind of give us a little a little bit of how and when those should be used i don't think you should be blown on an alcohol in the middle of the day and i don't think you should be cranking on a woodpecker call you know before first light so absolutely so give us a little bit of you know how you think they should be used and what typically works the best yeah well i mean we experienced that in the last couple days hunting together too

You know, early morning, obviously you get into an owl call and just to get a locator on them and they're usually going to gobble back pretty good. So, you know, practice that up, you know, make it realistic. You want some realism, but obviously noise is what it's all about. And that works really good. And then we move into the day a little bit and Jason proved really well how well the woodpecker call worked. And they were really answering that really well. That was a great call. I love that call.

Yeah. And then crow, in my opinion is real similar to that woodpecker. Like don't use it. I mean, crows start calling early in the morning, but they're already doing the work for you. Um, I feel like a crow is more of that same thing, you know, a couple hours after daylight through the middle of the day and then, you know, start to tone it down towards the, towards later. And a little quick side story. Um, yesterday, the first morning, um,

me, you, and Simone were hunting together. We were hiking up. We hadn't really heard, we heard a few birds off in the distance. We're like, man, the bird we thought was there just isn't there. And I won't say we get frustrated. You're just a little like scratching our heads. Well, yeah, because we're only six miles into it at that point. Yeah. You're in mixed company. So you're like, I don't really know if you want me to use my alcohol, but we kind of all agreed. Like, yeah, nothing you can hurt with an owl. And we blew on that thing and he was what?

70 yards up the hill in a tree. Yeah, right there. And we're able to set up and he did his thing. And then, so we thought we had that bird today, did where he had went. Same thing. We got a little nervous. Like every bird on every other ridge top mountain draw was gobbling up there. You know, we were hearing, we were pointing different directions. We got a bird there. We got a big sounding bird over there. We got a Jake over there and our bird never gobbled. And we were like,

And we're, we're, we were starting to debate, well, we got birds hammering to our left and we got a ridge there. We can get behind it and slip in. And same thing. We're like, well, there's nothing to lose if you blow on the alcohol again, blew on it this morning. And he finally answered 20 minutes after, you know, so it's,

early morning you know use those alcohols but but locators are important because we in my opinion there we we weren't close enough for a tree elk to be heard right he may have heard it yeah but um it's like the alcohol there's no real harm that can be done and it it kind of let it maybe it actually worked against us because we stayed at that tree for another half an hour where he got got around us but um yeah use your locators um you know a lot of

I used to be similar, you know, go out and only use my hen calls, but there are times we've seen it here where a hen call doesn't work and they hammer at that woodpecker. And it's just that, that shot gobble aspect that I think, you know, it doesn't hurt.

If they're not answering your hand call, follow it up with a woodpecker. Or if you think you're getting in close, we did it a few times here, like, well, we don't really want a turkey call again. Let's hit them with a woodpecker. See if we're in a spot to set up. I don't know. In my mind, I may be overthinking it. I always wonder, like, are turkeys smart enough to know that there's a woodpecker and a turkey hand calling from the same spot? But I don't know. I don't know if they're that smart. We just put them on top of each other. We don't know. I mean, I've definitely used locator calls. Not a lot, honestly, but...

definitely if I'm trying to get into an area that I don't know, don't know really well exactly where he is at that time. And I just want to get his location so I can maneuver to an area to create a setup and then pull them in. So, yeah, I mean, you definitely want to have one that you're going to use. And then not necessarily a locator call. We'll talk about a little bit later, box calls specifically on this hunt, whether it's pressured birds, whether it's something different, um, has, has been working really well when maybe our, you know,

Neither of our mouth calls might be working right. You hit that box call, and it's just something about it. Find the pitch he wants. We're going to jump into that a little bit more when we get into part of the Washington recap. So once again, if you have a question for me or my guests and you want to submit them to us, send us a social message. Email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. We'll do our best to get them here on the show. ♪

Now we're going to jump into our discussion. I want to ask John some questions. So I'm going to start out with a question. I think I already know your answer, but we always talk about patterning birds as maybe being and knowing your birds in that area and what they like to do is maybe more important than your ability to call or understand turkeys. So if you had to take...

One or the other, a pattern bird that you've watched for three days do its thing, but you'd have to leave your calls in the truck or a brand new area, but you could take your calls. Which one are you picking? Oh my gosh. This is about actually killing a bird or is it a personal choice? Or just what you personal probably for you. And then I'm going to switch a question up here and ask it in a different context. Okay. Personal for me, I want my calls. So, so once again, this is just, and we've, we've talked lots on this hunt as we walk up and down roads. Yeah.

I believe it's because you're out here for a certain reason, right? You want to work the bird. You want to get them to gobble. So if you left your calls here, it wouldn't, you know, once again, you're back basically blind hunting. We mentioned earlier, you'd rather not hunt. Yeah. This is not my choice. I mean, I want to, I want to go out here and play, play turkey chess and I can only do that with the calls and I'd rather walk away from a bird that's just in a pattern and doesn't want to talk and

and go find a bird that does want to talk. There is, though, after getting your butt kicked for a day or two that you're about to the point where it's like, all right, I'm willing to sit on this bird

and just out of spite at this point. Yeah, there are those birds. There are those times. Just getting your butt. The birds that you start giving names to. Yeah. All right. So let's switch that question around. Let's say you're a newer hunter and your main concern was just killing a bird. Would you change your answer? Would you take that pattern bird over calling?

Yeah, definitely. You know, I think back to the earlier days of learning all of this, you wanted to fill that tag. I mean, that's a big pull for every new turkey hunter, especially. You know, they put the money in, they bought the license, they got the tag, and they want to fill that tag. So that makes sense. So definitely, if you can pattern a bird, you know what he's going to do. You've watched him do it a few times. They really do get hooked into a pattern within reason. And so, yeah, in that case, I'm going to go sit on that pattern and take that bird, fill that tag. Yep.

I figured that was going to be your answer. That's the honest answer. Yeah. And we're going to talk, remind me to talk a little bit about patterns and then what, what your opinion versus what we've seen out here. When you add some hen calling to your, their pattern, it disrupts it a little bit, even though we want to call and we want to do this. I feel that,

um calling in a spot where maybe the hen doesn't want to take her tom by or they're you know they didn't hear him there last night like we i think there's also a little bit of chance to to booger up the setup oh yeah just from calling so we've we've looked at each other multiple times like should we just stay quiet and let the birds you know it's like yeah try at least until he gets closer more committed so remind me to pick back up on that one when we get to the gap

So as we're walking down the roads, as we're, you know, let's say we locate a bird on this hunt. Many times we have said this, don't do what a typical hunter would do. Yeah. Like we're, there's a bird there and, you know, we see boot tracks as we're on public ground here. There's other people hunting this, you know, some, some birds are pressured. Um, some birds you can walk and get to a spot where maybe they haven't heard as much, but

we've said that, don't do what a typical hunter would do. So you look at a bird, it's like, oh, the easiest path of resistance to walk down the road, get there and call. Where we've mentioned this, and I believe it's important to

Not necessarily overthink it, but just put some thought into it. Like this, these turkeys aren't dumb. They've, they've been called to from this road or that spot. They've, they've heard it all. Um, what do you, in your opinion, what do you, what are we doing? We've talked about like fading away with our calling. Um, we bushwhacked to my bird, you know, some of this stuff like, yeah.

What are some things people can think about as they're out there and do a little bit different? Like, don't be afraid to hit the brush. Let's just elaborate on that because there is so much stereotypical calling from roads, setting up on bends in the roads. How do we break that habit and make ourselves a little more successful? Well, yeah. I mean, depending on how much pressure is in an area, that can be hard to figure out. Sometimes it takes a little while.

So you're going to have to figure out what's going on in the area that you're hunting. And then as far as pressured birds are concerned, it is important. I found they get conditioned. They get conditioned by us. You know, what are all the hunters doing? Are they calling from the same spot? Are they using the same calls all the time? And that's why it's important to keep a bunch of different calls. Yeah. I love mouth calls, but I'm no dummy. I keep other calls with me too. And sometimes you got to try different ones and move to a different spot. We've, we've already seen that happen ourselves. Um,

Another great tactic, you know, when it comes to that type of scenario is if you're hunting with a partner, especially, get the bird interested, but he's holding up or he's actually moving away, but he's still talking to you. Then you can take the other caller and have him start walking away from you, the shooter, and just pull that bird in. I mean, and it works great. We've done it numerous times. Yep.

Yeah. That bird only wants to, if he's with hens only go come back so far. Right. Or, um, he just doesn't believe it maybe. So he's like, oh, she's walking away. I mean, I can walk over there safely now and take a look, you know, is she really real? And then he's in front of the shooter. Or even the lone toms just aren't comfortable leaving their, you know, the area where they've got good visibility. Right. Or a lot of this area we're hunting, um, there might be a road system and some of the ridges are very clean, but then they may not want to be, they may not be willing to go through the jack straw, just,

thick garbage either. And so you're not going to get them to cut that. Right. Um, you know, so we, we've ran into a little bit of vegetation really causing, you know, some, some, um, impediment on, on their travel paths. At least. Yeah. Um, and then same thing,

I don't necessarily, we had got that bird this morning going. We thought, oh, he's going to come down the road. So we did what a typical hunter would do. We ran down to the edge of the road and squawked on our hen call. And the next time we heard him gobble, he was literally walking down the creek, which we never thought he would do. And so it's just one of those things like, is that one of those times where we did what we thought was right, but that's what every other hunter would do. Like, oh, we're going to go set up on the side of the road. And then that, whether it is or not, it's just one of those things that goes through my mind as I rethought this morning, like,

we did exactly what a hunter would do. Did that affect it or maybe not? Maybe he's going to get drugged down there by hen anyways, but it always makes you think. Right. Could we have, and multiple times, even this morning, like we've, and yesterday, uh,

We would try to get like one move ahead of the turkey, right? Right. Yeah. I'm the more we do this and the more it keeps, I'm like, we should, we need to almost be like, we need to guess like two or three moves ahead. Right. To get us some more, because it seems like we're always playing, um, like, Oh, well that makes sense. We think we can, but then they beat you there or they do something different. It's like, well, shoot, we knew that that second or third, you know, uh,

That second or third idea, like they were going to a, but we should have just went there versus trying to cut them off in the middle or. Right, right. Yeah.

And that's another good thing for having on X. Yeah. Yeah. We were in an area today we didn't really know the clean way through. And we had those three or four different birds gobbling. And finally, oh, shoot, there's an open ridge in here. We got in there and it was the most beautiful turkey ridge ever. It has everything they need. Yeah. You never would have known it was there if you didn't flip on on X and you're like, look, this is open in there. Yeah. We got in there. I'm like, I want to live here. It was nice. And it was literally the only way we could get through this area without just going

you know, bushwhacking horribly. So, but now, you know, where they were set up and where they were gobbling from in the morning, you know, their fly down area and you know, their pattern to get out of there. So now the hard part will be setting up in there in the morning and not touching a call. Like we say, sometimes you can get in there and booger them up. I think I,

I'm very, very confident. You know, we always joke as we sit down on our setups this morning, we had to go to 3%-er at one point. Sitting here, you know, mid-afternoon, I would go into that spot with an 80% chance of killing the bird there tomorrow. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, this morning we're like 30% chance of this being successful. Yeah, yeah. Turned to zero, but that's okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're...

And the reason you need to ask this question is we walked our road system today just trying to explore the area and we've seen two dead birds, you know, two...

Somebody had breasted him out, taken the legs, you know, basically cleaned up birds. And it's like, man, there are a lot of birds getting killed in here. Yeah. We didn't realize how much pressure was in here until we started finding the carcasses. I'm like, no wonder this is happening the way it is. Now we know we got to change our tactics. Yeah. Yeah. One predator. I mean, one was so fresh, a predator hadn't even got to it. The other one had been picked on a little bit, but both real, real fresh kills. So yeah. Yeah.

don't do what a turkey on a word do. And then that doesn't, I mean, you have to take that with a grain of salt. Like there are things that are just the right move, but don't typically do the same thing. You know, we took, we talk about seven to nine note Yelps. I'm going to get into the calling a little bit. Um,

Yeah, you hear everybody... You know, somebody's just going to do their normal yelp. Yeah. You listen to me and you call. It's like too loud, one quiet, three, you know, and throw a bubble cluck in there. And it's like... And if you listen to real hands, that's what they're doing. They're... Yeah, they're raising their tone up and down. They're facing one direction, turning and facing the other direction. They're not monotone with a straight note. Yeah, and these turkeys, I mean...

I don't want to give them too much credit. They're not the smartest bird on the planet, but they're also not dumb. They're, they're, they get conditioned. They're turkeys. They're doing what turkeys do. So calling different, um,

We're not afraid to purr. We're not afraid to cluck, you know, bubble cluck, mix it up. Just sound like a realistic hen. And there's times where, and we also escalate our calls. I think we start with a low volume and then nothing answers. Then our second set of yelps and clucks will be a little louder. It's just, you don't typically hear a hen out here just, you know, she's just not doing that. And I think 95% of hunters that come out here, that's how they call. So yeah.

All right, we're going to diverge off of the don't do what a typical turkey hunter would do, but it's important to think about out there, like, can I get this bird to work somewhere besides down this road where he's been called? You know, it's just changing the game a little bit. Oh, yeah. Can I call him up a ridge versus a road? Mm-hmm. All of that.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

There's also millions of wide open acres chock full of different landscapes, meaning the hunt in one county is often completely different from just a few counties over. But what really makes South Dakota the greatest goes way beyond just hunting a colorful bird. It's the pursuit of something more like the camaraderie that awaits all kinds of hunters from all walks of life and partaking in South Dakota tradition over 100 years in the making.

It's about taking the greatest shots and watching your dog work the greatest fields in the greatest lands, carrying on the greatest heritage and making the greatest memories. So what are you waiting for? From the rush of the flush to the stories at the end of the day, experience a thrill like no other. Learn how at huntthegreatest.com. Let's talk a little bit about the style of turkey hunting we're doing here. You know, a typical day in the turkey woods,

You know, for most might be a couple of miles, maybe a couple of setups to get on some hot birds and you're done. This is these sort of, you know, Merriam's, Rio's type hunts. They're completely opposite. Like we've talked about it multiple times. You might as well be hunting elk or, you know, mountain mule deer or whatever. Yesterday when we killed, well, we both killed our A bird yesterday. We got back and I pulled out the iPhone, you know, it's like 12 plus miles. Yep.

Yep. Standard. A hundred foot elevation gain. Like we're working our tail off. And I think a little bit of it relates back to pressure in the area. Yeah. They've moved further out of it. Yep. And the birds that you, there are birds. There's no denying there are birds from here to mile marker one and a half in this area. There are birds there, but you can tell when you call to them that,

they've been worked or they've heard a call before they worked hard versus I joked yesterday, you should never see a mile marker more than three while you're turkey hunting. But we started to see those mile markers deep in there. Um, you get in there and now those turkeys maybe have only heard a handful of calls from guys, or maybe haven't got bumped and, and they start to react like they should like a Tom without a hen. Um, you know, yesterday the

this, this chunk that we are hunting now, we literally touched all four corners of it aside from one big peak on the opposite side, but we could hear up there. Yeah. Um, we, we put in work and, and, um, Oh, that was hardcore. I mean, yeah, we were digging deep to get out there, but, and we knew what Ridgey was on and we're looking at our Ron X as well. And we're like, man, we're going to have to crash through thick, thick.

thick timber just to avoid being seen on a point and play the game all the way over to the other ridge. And we knew we were going to, it's going to be a 12 mile day, but we're going to get near that bird. Yep. And I mean, there were decisions made throughout yesterday where we could have taken, we, we, I'm almost don't want to admit it. And I think, I still think it was a wild Turkey, but he was a domesticated wild Turkey of some sorts. He was, he was just very comfortable living off the edge of this public. So we got drug down there and we, we hiked up maybe,

a couple hundred feet and hit a road system. We could have just as easy taken that road system back towards a truck or two in a different area. We elected to go, we got to a beautiful basin. We knew it was gonna suck though 'cause we had to walk up through a fairly steep clear cut. - Yeah, real steep. - But it gave us the ability to sound check an entire canyon, amazing looking turkey country. And when we finally did get to the top, we were able to locate my bird and a different bird. And if we hadn't have put in that extra effort,

we wouldn't have had that opportunity yeah and he heard that sound too i mean he heard it from an area that another hunter probably would never be on as well so as that sound got closer to him it created realism yep and we'll talk a little bit more about once we located that bird kind of our approach and and it ties back into the don't do what hunters would do either um the way we had to approach him just to guarantee that he hasn't you know seen or heard something that um

that he didn't like. So yeah, a lot of miles. Um, it's, it's in an effort to,

I feel like you can control the outcome a little better when you're putting in that many miles, finding birds that haven't been messed versus if you're always leaving it to chance trying to hunt these pressured birds. Oh yeah. They're doing sporadic turkey things. You know, we, we talked about like how smart can something be with that little pea brain of theirs, but they, and I don't know if they're smart or if they're just have an uncanny ability to do what just random thing they need to do not to get killed. Yeah. They're very instinctive. You know, they've dealt with enough pressure. They figured some things out.

Educated birds. Yeah. So I'm going to diverge a little bit from our conversation. Just give a quick update on our Kansas hunt. I'm sure you'll have some stuff to interject with the way that the things were going. So out there in eastern Kansas, we're hunting Easterns. We'd been hunting early May, typically. That's typically when you start to get your hens with fullness. They're not near as interested in feeding as long. You're like, all right, money. We've got lone toms. And so-

We were always told that they're more callable early, so we decided to go there April 20th. We fly out there to Kansas and...

everything is a little bit late. It actually seems to be a little early in Kansas. Whatever it is, those toms are completely henned up all day long. There were some toms we'd see that would still have hens out in the field with them at 1 or 2 o'clock, which it may be extremely late. They haven't even started laying their first egg, but I almost can't believe that April 20th by then, especially being that far south, but

Or she had just went and laid her egg, nested for a little bit, and then popped right back up a little bit earlier. But we could not call those birds off very easily.

And I've always said Easterns are more stubborn. They're more difficult. They're more hard-headed. Oh, yeah. When they fly down, they don't mind if they live in the bottoms. They don't care if they ever gobble at you the rest of the time. They'll gobble out of the roost a little bit. Way more frustrating. I mean, it requires a lot more finesse, a lot of different type tact calling than what we do out here. Our birds out here don't really want to hear a lot of cutting, whereas Easterns, they do. They want to hear it. Excited. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's sometimes the only time we could get them to get a call or get anything out of them. But they were very, very content just doing what they wanted to do and not dealing with you at all as a hunter. They had their, you know, seven, eight, ten hens all within eyesight. They were all roosted together every night. You know, they roost a little more, I would say, typical in a typical spot every night there. And they knew all their hens showed up. We sat close to a roost tree one night. All the hens show up.

And Tom's being, I don't know why they didn't fall their hands out, but they come in from a completely different direction, but they all meet at the same roost tree. It's just very difficult to hunt. Yeah, a lot more tactics of crawling, a lot of moving, trying to sneak in and get in the right positions. There's so much more you got to put into it for those Easterns. And just like you had mentioned earlier, you don't like to sit in the blind, and I don't necessarily, we all know when we go to Kansas, if we just sit in a spot,

we will kill a bird. They're very, very patternable, but we don't like to hunt it that way. So what they do is they get us running ridge to ridge with gobbles and then they would be on the opposite ridge by the time you got... And you're just like...

it's almost like you have to sit still to kill them, but who wants to hunt them that way? Yeah. Some birds that's, you have no choice. And if that's the kind of area you're going to hunt in, I mean, you got to do what you got to do. Yep. I was, I was able to kill my bird on the first morning there. We didn't really roost. We don't roost those birds in Kansas like we do. And I guess you don't roost here a whole lot. I usually roost pretty, you know,

Yeah, no, I don't do much of that, honestly. I just go out and listen in the morning and get in tight. Yeah, which is awesome because every morning is kind of a new morning. I've always liked just that excitement, like knowing I'm 70 to 100 yards on a bird. And I always like to look at it and like, oh, he's going to pitch here and like guess, and I guess 90% wrong, but I still like that game. But there, I was able to, we went out,

Listen, we had a couple different birds. We had one close. And so he only gobbled once early. We had to go set up in the dark. And sure enough, as it started to get daylight, he was 60 yards away in a tree. We had already set our hen out there, not in the right spot for what we wanted. And three jakes fly down first. We're like, oh, no, he's just holding up up there. Like maybe he doesn't want to fly down because of these jakes. He doesn't want to get bullied around. So we sit there for a while.

20 minutes. He's just gobbling up there in the tree. And he sat there for 40 minutes after the jakes had flown down, gobbling in the tree. And at about, I'm guessing, 50, 55-minute mark. And these jakes are just at full strut under his tree. So it almost looks like

They're waiting for him to come down and they're going to whip his butt. We had that hen decoy. I don't know exactly what's going through their head, but they were just puffed up under his tree for 50 minutes, 50 yards from me. Just strutting in the tree, basically. So all of a sudden, two hens fly down and hit the jakes.

And we're like, oh boy, it's about ready to happen. And what I think happened is why we were setting our decoys up. And I was being a dummy because I didn't think that that bird was that close. I had like a spider come land and I was trying to like move my gun barrel around and I loaded my shells. And I think he just got nervous. Like he wasn't, we didn't spook him enough that he just flew out, you know, and just fly away. But we knew something. And I think even his hens knew something, even though they were even deeper than the Jake's, um,

And those hens flew down and I, I was keeping my eyes on her. They flew into the Jake's and then you could see, they kind of like did the scurry walk away from us, dead away from us. I'm like, Oh boy. They just knew someone's right. And, uh, that bird hits the ground. I let him take about two steps and clear everything. I'm like, I know what's going to happen. And so, um, it was shot that bird. So I, you know, if it wasn't for an hour of him hanging up in a tree, you know, I wouldn't have hunted for very long, but we were able to get that one, um,

And then we actually, we went and did a cold sit on a field where we know two big birds had been frequenting. And we'd only been set up for half an hour, set at just a Dave Smith decoy, a hen out there maybe 40 yards from us, a little bit further. But we wanted them to pull our attention off of the edge. And all of a sudden, boop!

and they're coming two big giant birds like old old birds big old paint brushes on them and they could see it we're able to able to get him coming to decoys but then the the bird the non strutter he came over and started to mess with the big bird and he did it at the wrong time he needed to do it like 10 yards later because as soon as they started to tussle up and wrap necks and kind of mess with each other they just went straight to our left at 60 yards and a little too far to shoot and so we had to let that bird go um

They were active in the morning, but you needed to, once again, you really needed to be in the way of where they wanted to go. Later in that hunt, we got some really good action. A tom actually pulled off of his hens, came into us, but once again, saw something in that decoy he didn't necessarily like and exited at about 50 yards and just not quite the guy I was hunting with wasn't quite comfortable.

shooting there. But yeah, we don't need to tell the whole entire hunt, but it was just one of those things where Easterns are stubborn and I'm starting to really unlike them, especially now that I only had a two-day break and was able to come out here and hunt Merriams. I'm like, man, this is way better for the most part. They answer, they're more huntable, you can get back on them at three o'clock in the afternoon and they'll typically start gobbling again. Plus we have terrain you enjoy being in too. Yeah. And those birds in Kansas, they would just

Gobble half hour in the morning, half hour at night, and that was all you're getting out of them all day. So really, really frustrating. So we're going to jump more into a Washington focus. Now let's do a little update here. First thing we need to mention is it is hot. Yes, it is hot. We're hitting, what, mid-80s? Yeah, we're only a couple days into this high pressure, and it's had its effect for sure. Yep. And give us a little of your...

I'll call it your opinion, but it's also probably pretty factual since you've been out here doing this enough. You talk about like three days in a row is what you like to see, no matter what it is, but it needs to be three days and then maybe not this hot. Yeah. I mean, I've experienced this so many different times over the years. It's not even funny and it's, it's, it's realistic to me. So we'll call it my science if you want.

But anytime we've seen a pressure drop or pressure change, whether it's going into a high pressure or a low pressure, if it's extreme like this is, you know, we just went from 50s to low 60s at the most. And then we jumped straight into this high pressure of upper 70s and hitting 80s and

What I've always experienced when that happens, whether it's either direction, you know, it usually takes a good three days minimum before things really get back to normal and birds start becoming extremely workable. You can still kill a bird, obviously. We did it, but it took a lot of work. It took more work than it normally does. We've been trying to tell Jason this is not normal. This is not what we normally experience. It's got to get better. And what I've found, it's always about a three-day mark.

And that's just whether it's bad weather, you can, three days, boom, doesn't matter if it's still bad as long as you're slept into it for three days or so. Yeah, and we'll roll into that a little bit. Not what I'm used to. So I hunt a different area typically. I haven't been in this area and I'm a little...

I'm a little shocked at how much contrast there is to my normal spot and, and the way. So you, you, I still think this is pretty dang good hunting. And these guys are telling me this is nothing like it normally is. So I'm excited to see if maybe this high pressure holds for a couple more days and we can experience that, you know, third and fourth day. Yeah. Even the fifth day before we, we head out of camp and see if those birds really turn it on. Yeah. I hope so. We're hoping to, um, on this hunt, uh,

The 9 a.m. and this is we've always talked about this. If you listen to almost any cutting the distance podcast, you know, we always joke about the old timer saying you young guns, young guys can go go hunt those birds off the roost and I'll go kill him at nine o'clock.

I'm going to eat breakfast. So 9 a.m. and the 3 p.m. kind of spark. It's the time to be out there. It really is. Get on those critters. The 9 a.m. to me makes a lot of sense. Hens are going to go lay on their nests, go lay their eggs, and those toms find themselves lonely. The 3 p.m. spark is a little bit more interesting to me. I don't know if it's a temperature thing, if the sun's getting low enough finally. Why 3 p.m.?

I'm not going to lie. Like my sweat-o-meter says that 3 p.m. is still damn hot. It's the hottest it's been all day at 3 p.m. And these birds are starting to fire off at 3, 3.30. Yeah. Well, the other good thing about when you have this kind of a high pressure is we can kind of predict they're not going to go sit in it.

So like we did yesterday, we moved to a different area. I knew that area was going to be a little bit cooler in general. But that three o'clock time frame has just been golden for a lot of years that I can always think of it. Birds are usually out and they've spent their day eating. And now it's heading towards their thought process, in my opinion, is, you know, we're going to be starting to gather up. And a lot of times you're just going to see toms out there by themselves and they've lost their hens for most of the day, but they want to gather back up with them so they can

you know, have their way first thing in the morning. And if you're a hen that's kind of starting to talk around that time of day, you're probably looking to gather up with them. Yep. And so they're more apt to come in.

Yeah. We've had great hunts. Um, well I killed my bird about 9am. Yours was a little later than 3am, but we got on a bird and worked the bird yesterday for hour and a half probably yesterday, right at three o'clock. Um, I think I busted him though, walking in. Yeah. Yeah. I think I picked off, you know, it was, it was some up and down cliffy, you know, a little bit steep elevations and it was, I think we just got caught guessing he was a little bit further, but, um, yeah, we still worked him for a bit and then, um, yeah, I was able to get into a different bird later. So, um,

Pressuring pressured birds here. Um, it, you start to realize whether, you know, I know you're good. I think I'm pretty good at this thing, but we were starting to realize like pressuring pressured birds, no matter how good you are, we're running into some struggles, right? We, they don't want to play the game. They don't want to turn around. Um, we watched a couple of birds through the binos come down, uh, uh,

you know by themselves one really big bird uh it looked like maybe i had a jake with them in tow um they didn't gobble at all coming back nine o'clock um we we did some calling they did gobble once i i think once on their own yeah yeah as far away from one of my calls on either side as it could get yes for sure literally just gobbled on his own but um it's just weird we were we were i wouldn't say we were in their zone but we were within earshot where two birds without

a hen should answer any, any hen call and, uh, nothing. Um, and when we tried resetting up, we went to multiple different spots, um, just could not get a peep out of them. Um, and so we've talked about it about this afternoon. Like we just need to go find a spot where maybe somebody hasn't talked to a bird yet or a bird that one, you know, very, very few people have less likely. Um,

So yeah, we're dealing with some pressured birds here. Turkey hunting is very popular in Washington. In this zone, yeah. It's, you know, for good reason. There's some really, really good turkey hunting here, but there's also a lot of hunters. Yeah, we've seen quite a few boots on the road. That's a good indicator. You got pressure. Yeah, pressure. So we're dealing with that, and our way to deal with that is we said put a lot of boot

you know, boot miles in and try to get to some birds. Or think a little bit outside the box, like, you know, are there short little hikes that maybe don't have good access or, you know, little chunks you can get into on ag edges, whatever it may be, like try to find that little, you know, diamond in the rough. Yeah. Don't look for the easy roads in, look for the stuff that's going to take effort that a lot of people don't want to put that effort into. Yeah.

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Let's talk a little bit. We kind of started going down that path about, you know, we worked our tail off to even locate my bird. But then in my mind, the approach to my bird was a little bit different than what most people would do. And it goes back to don't do what a typical hunter would do. So we were climbing up a very steep, real good looking ridge. Turkeys had been on that ridge, real grassy. Get to the top, locate a bird across the canyon. The big canyon we were climbing up. All right, he's there. Gobbled a couple of times. He was just on the ridge we were on too. He's been moving. Yeah.

And so we, we know, we know where he's at. We get up, we climb, um, Simone said there's a road up there another 50 yards. Yeah. We get to the road and at that very point,

It would have been very easy to walk that road directly to his gobble. Absolutely. Yeah, it would have been the fastest, easiest route for us to get in. Like most people would have got there and been like, oh, this road leads right to the ridge that he's on. You know, the only problem was you get down there about four or 500 yards and you're going to be completely exposed to the ridge that he was on. And if he looks out there, sees you,

Um, anything's up or if you try to call to him and like really get his eyes over to that road anywhere in between. Yeah. Um, the gigs up, you're not going to call a burden that's seen you. Um, he might gobble, but he's probably not going to come. He's not going to come in. So we look at it and we're like, oh man, we got to climb.

the next little knob and the next little knob and we got to stay rolled over so he can't see us or hear us. And then we get to the end and once again, it would have been very easy to just backtrack and hit the road just a little bit further back. But yeah, we had to, you know, it was put your hoods on, you know, tuck everything in and it was one of those just dry sticks snapping and crunching and cracking. Oh yeah. But we did it on just enough, I think on the backside that, you know, it wasn't right in his face and we, we took the absolute hardest route to get there. But,

The nice thing was when we finally did hit the road, we knew we were behind his ridge. We were out of his eyesight. We were out of everything. And we got to that point without screwing it up. Exactly. Where we could have screwed it up real bad. And he heard our call on that other ridge. Yep. And then he never saw anybody else. And the next time he heard our call, it was closer to him. So it was just...

I don't like, I don't want to necessarily say we did something that not everybody else would do, but I think a lot of people would have just walked that road. And so it's just going that extra step, making sure that you don't screw up the, you know, the, the opportunity that you have and keep it intact. Right. It's yeah. If you, if you blow it up early, then you might as well not even walk over there. So keep it intact. Um, I mean, look how many miles we put into it. I mean, it's like, do we want to give up going the best possible route after all these miles? No, let's give it every ounce we got. Yep. Yep. Um, it paid off. So we'll, uh,

Follow that up. So we get there, he gobbles to the woodpecker call. We didn't, we were, it was, that's one of those times where, um, not blowing a turkey calls like one of the few good times. Like we want our little bit of that shock and awe. You don't want to necessarily disclose your location cause he doesn't know there's a hen here right now. Right. Um, we would pick her call from the road answers. Um,

Simone's been there, so we didn't have to look at Onyx or anything. We just know, go down there. We got on his ridge, get set up, and we're going to talk a little bit about certain calls here on the box call on your bird, but on this bird, I think I yelped a little bit on my mouth call, and I'm like, huh. Nothing. Nothing.

Well, John starts the yelp. And sometimes I think he does this just so he can say, ha, bird answered me and not you. But no, we call a little bit different. This is my big chance, everybody. We call a little bit different. Different pitches, different. And the bird hammers back at him. I'm like, all right, I'm not calling for my own bird in. It's like, I didn't want to, but it's like, I'm just done calling. We want to kill this bird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we set up with a tree. We get all set up. We put the

We didn't have decoy that day. So we get all set up. Simone drops back. So we were at a weird spot where this ridgeline trail split. So we set up. It was a sharp ridge too. There wasn't a lot of room. This is a great segue into my next point, but we might as well roll it in. We set up at an angle, right? Yeah. This bird was not going to walk a lot of,

A lot of people, even myself, the first your instinct is to set up right here because you can see down the ridge. Right. But guess what? When that turkey gets visible and you can see it, it can see you and there's a lot of chance for stuff to go wrong. Yeah. He's going to pick you. He's going to pick something out. So we've set up at an angle, set up at an angle that gives you the ability to shoot both trails, both angles and keep his eyes off of you. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. We want to try to get that 90 degree angle if we can possibly somehow. If you're using a decoy, it's even better and, you know, putting that decoy out where if he's going to see it, he's also shootable at the same time. But just don't have him coming straight into you with his eyes. And one thing we've did with the decoy the first, the first evening and then this morning we brought one is set that decoy up so

So that you don't believe you're going to be in its line of sight when it does see it. Because if you're behind it, the idea of the decoy is to take his eyes away from you. But I've seen a lot of people set up where they're like straight in line with their decoy where they expect that bird to come. It's like, no, set that thing off at a 45 degree to your left from where you think the bird's going to come and let it see the decoy before it sees you. That way as he comes around, it gives you a chance to move your gun, whatever it may be. But yeah, don't set that bird up.

Don't line up with it. That's a good point. Don't line up with it. And that does happen. I've had people send me a text, man, I just made a classic mistake. I lined up right behind the decoy. I busted so far. It's instinctive though, a little bit, right? If you don't think about it, you're like, well, the bird's coming this way. I want this decoy towards him. And then you go straight behind it and you're just in line. And I think a lot of people get picked off and, you know, a lot of, or a lot of people say like, oh, I didn't, you know, like I just told the story. He didn't like my decoy. It's like, well, maybe he didn't like seeing the, you know,

you know, your face behind the decoy or the shiny of your gun. They'll pick you up fast. You never know what. So back to my bird, we get set up. Simone's set up behind us. You're set up to my right. I think you yelp a couple more times and he gobbles twice from down low. Yeah, yeah.

And me and you were kind of BSing at the tree like, wow, we don't want to have to keep pulling gobbles out of him. And you don't want to have to force everything. Right. And I think we just get done finishing up that conversation and

And he's right. You can tell there's no more timber between him and us. He cut the distance in half that fast. We're like, all right, he's here. So I clicked my safety and we're waiting. And I can see he comes. I can see his head bobbing from the right. We can hear him spitting and drumming. It was getting loud. Yeah, I forgot. Yeah, we... I...

I evidently assume everybody's deaf when we're calling birds. I'm like, John, you hear him spitting? Yeah, I hear him. He's spitting. I'm like, all right, I just thought you might not. It's getting loud. It's getting loud. So he shows up, and we were hoping he comes a little bit like straight down my barrel, like at 12 o'clock.

um which we just said we don't want to do but this is pretty well we wanted to see his head come up going towards it yeah but he comes up more like at my two o'clock and works towards my 12 o'clock right and i see his head bobbing about three steps and then he gets to a spot and anybody that's hunted turkeys on that if you just read their their mannerisms and his head goes boink straight up in the air he's like where is he turned to the left towards us and

Yep. And he was about 30 yards and knew he killed him. And then all of a sudden I hear John say, I don't know if I could see him very well. And I'm like, oh, dang it. Cause I, I just assumed cause I had such a good view that, uh, but anyways, it was, it was a great hunt. Uh,

it was a good setup we did everything right you know and we didn't over call him he did what a bird's supposed to do what everybody hopes and yeah i mean for filming wise i was on your right if i'd been on your left i would have seen him perfectly like you but i mean we're still going to see him through the shrub he stopped right behind that shrub and stuck his head yeah great hunt um we couldn't have killed him at a higher elevation yeah no we were at the tippy top peak of the whole place but it was cool furthest away highest top yeah yeah we uh

Yeah, so we talked about setting up at an angle, which I really wanted to cover, which we did a lot on this. And then last night on your bird, we jumped in an area we've already mentioned that was cooler, a little flatter. We needed a little break after getting my bird all the way back to camp. I do want to...

don't call me a wuss but i just want to say packing a 20-ish pound bird for uh four miles on a on a shoulder sling it becomes very uncomfortable it sure does that's my complaint of the day um i'll take it every day i'd rather take that that that complaining but um so we get your bird located after um you knew there was kind of a little honey hole at the back end of this uh public piece yeah

We get back there. We got some birds answering way down. Like, ah, we're not going to make a play on them this late. And we just get to the edge and we get hit by two birds. You just said too, wouldn't it be nice if we could kill a bird with this view? And I'm like, yeah, that's the goal. It was beautiful. That's the goal. We get hit by two birds to one of John's. And so remember this little point, John yelps with a mouth call. And we get a bird to answer straight ahead and probably at nine o'clock to our left.

And just to set the scene, they're probably over a 45 degree slope, like very steep. Yeah, very steep. It was very, very steep off the edge. And so we get set up real quick and get everything ready. And I didn't have the greatest setup. And you guys kind of just kneeled behind an old root wall that had fell over. Yeah. We made do. We thought it would be if those birds came in on a string, it would have just been close shooting. We would have been able to kill them when they showed up. Yeah.

I believe the bird that was straight ahead of us actually starts to work to the right, but we cannot get this dang bird to answer. Yeah, he answered once to my original call. We knew, and we had two of them because one was a little left, one was a little right. And he answered me that one time, and that was pretty much it, but we knew it was there. Yeah, and so we're set up, and John's yelping on his mouth calling. I can kind of see the frustration. You just shake your head. You're like, another dang hind-up bird or just a bird that doesn't want to play the game. And you kind of...

I'm always hesitant and I wouldn't have necessarily did this anyways, but you look at me and kind of point at my box call. Yeah. Your box call out. I'm like, what? So here are me being real nervous. I'm like, I'm just, I'll just call real quiet, just real light pressure. And, um, I probably, I just did a real short, not a long, maybe five Yelps, pretty soft. And yeah,

They just hammered it instantly. Hammered it. Like almost cut the end of it off. I'm like, all right, that worked. They're almost going away. Yeah. Until you did that. Yeah. And then it pulls them up. It pulled them up to our elevation, but now these birds were quite a bit to our right. But we had a real good, like on the rim of this drop off was real clean. We're sitting there and I accidentally kind of squawked my box a little. You know, you're trying to keep that dang box quiet and you look at me and shake your head. Yeah. Like, go ahead and do it. I didn't mean to ask you, but I kind of in a roundabout way.

about what he did. No, I'm like, go. Whatever's going to work. Hit the box again and so we swipe it again. Same thing. And then I think we'd be quiet. We went pretty quiet there because he's real close at that point. Yeah, at that point he cut the distance in half again. And then we start to see three birds and

and you had made, uh, I'm either, I heard you whisper to me or something like they're going to see you before they see me. And I'm like, so now I'm like tucked way into my tree. I got like half my hanging out, but I do see three birds come in. Um, I'm looking at the angle that we're set up. We're set up at a good angle over us for filming. And I look over at you and I'm like, dang, he's,

Yeah. Cause the way we thought the birds, if they would have came in straighter to our left, I would have never been picked, but they came to our right, which now like exposed me way before that you guys get exposed. So we're, we're sitting there and I start to see the first bird come out and I'm like, I don't see a beard, but I, and at that point it was real sunny and shady and the sun was kind of setting weird. And I'm like, hi,

I thought it was a Jake. Right. And then I see two birds come by and I'm like, whoa, that one had a really big, you know, beard. Big old rope. The other one came by and it looked really good. I'm like, all right, we got two toms and a Jake is what I thought the whole time. Well then, they sit there and mess around on that top for a bit and that hen turns toward like,

They had heard a box call five minutes ago, but she turns directly towards us and takes off sprinting. Yeah, right over to us. Oh, boy. And there was a little dip between us about 50 yards out, a pretty good brushy dip, and then it got back up to that green grass. And when she took off, both those toms took off down to the brush. And I'm like, man, I hope they don't turn left in that little quick draw and get out of here. I don't know why they're running. Are they scared? Are they running towards us? Like, what's going on?

You know, I can start seeing heads, Bob. I'm like, oh, here they come. We're going to be good. Yeah. And, uh. It was like 40 yard max to the minute they were showing up and then better after that. And, uh.

first bird goes through i'm like oh i let the jake go and then the second bird i can see and i'm like it looks like the real you know the good one and i can hear i could hear you before that tell someone something about which bird you were going to shoot but i i couldn't hear i can hear you guys chatting and uh the bird i was watching i'm like what's taking john so long why is he not shooting that bird with the big rope yeah i'm like that bird's just sitting there and uh

Maybe something's in his way. I don't got your perspective. And pow! And the bird I was watching flew off. I'm like, what?

John, there's no way John missed. And I think Simone even off camera said, I think you missed bad. Yeah. He said, so I'm like, oh man, you missed. I'm like, I didn't miss anything. We walked out there and there was some miscommunication. You had shot the bird in the back, which typically is the biggest. Tends to be from my experience. And he got that bird in the middle to kind of come out of strut a little bit. And so there's, you know, your bird was an old bird, three years plus. Oh yeah. Great bird. Yeah. Great bird. Just, you know, he was a brawler, all tore up. But that was one of the, I want to.

I told the story there a little bit, but really wanted to go back to most people use box calls for locating birds, windy days, high ridges, big country. And in that instance, we've talked about the bird I called in for my wife and click attack only would answer a box call. I had to literally box call the thing into our lap. And not necessarily box calls, but don't be afraid to try something different. Try your crystal pot call. Try your slate pot call. Try...

A different striker. Try a box call. Try, you know, if you have a diaphragm that you think is way too raspy and, and not high enough pitch, try that and then go try your high pitched one. Yeah. Find the note they want to hear. I've learned from hunting with Eric Brott, now hunting with you, um, hunting with all these guys that call different Chris Parrish. Yeah. Um,

There are times where the way Chris Parrish, which is surprising, you know, the way he calls isn't what the birds want to hear that day. Yeah, because he's a phenomenal caller. Yeah. And they're like, I don't care. He can do whatever he wants with a call, but yet that bird wanted, you know, somebody else's old raspy calling that's a little slower cadence and a little louder. Right. And it's just, it's one of those things where just hit him with a lot and see if you've got something in your toolbox or your arsenal that's going to get him fired up. That's right.

something different. Yeah, I was not shy to saying, hey, Jason, get that box call. Yeah, yeah. Which I'm always hesitant. Everybody that's ran a box call knows, but some of you and you guys out there, one thing bad about a box call is it's the absolute maximum movement in order to get a turkey sound out, right? That's a fact, yeah. Diaphragms, very little movement. Pot call, like I really only have to make a quarter inch circle with my fingers, but a box call, I'm having to move a paddle at least three inches minimum. Yeah. And so there's a lot of movement. So I always get a little hesitant, but you either got to take

the, the, uh, little bit of risk that you might get saw versus the chance that none of your other calls are working right now on this bird. And you're about to lose them. Yeah. Yep. So it's, it's pulling out all the stops and, um, yeah, that was, that was one thing that like,

it reiterated what I learned back in click attack, you know, 10 years ago, my wife's bird is like, there are times where a box call needs to be, Oh yeah. Be used and, and can be a good box calls. Cause it's really hard to beat a lot of times. I mean, it was your one with a good drop. And you know, of course Jason was using a Phelps box call. That guy kind of helps. Yeah. That, uh, that, that boxes sounded really good. And we backed it up again this morning. Um,

and it maybe goes back to a little bit is don't be like all the other hunters yeah um we use that box call more this morning and you just because it was something different i bet you not everybody's thrown a box call at these birds and apparently once again the same as last night i think it worked better getting birds to answer when we were like searching for that gobble or working down a ridge yeah versus our mouth calling so it's just um you know don't

I guess the moral of the story is don't be afraid to try all the calls in your house. Yeah, you may have a call you love to use, and it may always work in the past. But, yeah, if a bird's not tuning into it and he's just not answering, pull out the next one. Move on and keep trying. All right, so I'm going to end up with a –

everybody's going to stereotype me as like the guy that's deathly afraid of ticks, but I think you might have me. That's what we're going to close on this. I, I put a post on there on social media about permethrin and got, I probably haven't got more questions on a specific topic in a long time. I'm holding one in my hand waiting for this to get, you got one. I could get rid of it. Yeah. As I was getting all the podcast stuff set up, you pulled one off of my leg and we are to set the stage here. We're literally in a dirt camping area.

Yeah, there's no grass, there's no weeds, there's nothing here but dirt. You went to toss your carcass last night. Yeah. Had six on the outside of your pants and just...

I shouldn't have said it because it probably made you more nervous, but I'm like, man, if you have six on the outside, imagine how many you got. And then you were trying to fall asleep. All I could hear was John over there yelling about ticks in his tent. I was. I was like, dang, I've got to drop my pants now. I was plucking them off for like, I don't even know, 30 minutes. They were...

everywhere on my legs and I was like you gotta be kidding me yeah and you said you've never I've always gotten the ticks bad over here but you said you've never experienced something like we've have the last couple days I've been walking through brush and always cutting the distance through all kinds of junk and I've you know yeah randomly I'll get a tick on me with the permethrin it's you watch them climb little ways and just

fall off. But I'll tell you what, this is a whole new game right here and we're just sitting on dirt. Yeah. And they're constantly, we're looking down like, oh, here comes another one walking up my legs. Yeah. It's been constant. It's nuts. So I'm going to just do a quick recap on some of the people

like where do you get it? What do you use? Um, the two brands that I use and I, I use them interchangeably is repel or Sawyer. And I like to use the aerosol. I don't like to use the spray or like a squirt bottle. You squirt bottle. So I just use the aerosol. Um, it's, I think it usually comes in mixed at like a half percent. Yeah. Um,

And I'm not here to give any advice. Like there is some, you know, permethrin is a poison. So do all your own due diligence. Like make sure you do not put it on your skin. That's right. It needs to be put on your clothes and it needs to be allowed to dry. Yeah. And your socks too. Your upper socks. Yeah. And one thing I would just recommend, I know you guys aren't hunting gators, but like

I think I'm faring a little bit better. You and Simone have had a few more on, you know, get inside your pants. Like the Gators are hot when it's 85, but I'm like, Oh,

I'm just avoiding dealing with them up my pants right now. You are. I'll give you that. I can't stand it when it's this hot and wearing gaiters. Oh, it's miserable. My feet boil all the time. But yeah, I'm definitely picking more ticks off the inside of my pants. Yeah, you are. Oh, I got a tick crawling up my boot right now. I know. I'm telling you. See that on my boot as we're recording this. I know. I have one inside my pants on my leg right now. I'm holding it with my hands because I'm talking through a microphone with the other

All right. Well, on that note, we're on day two of day four of our Washington hunt. I appreciate having you on, John. It's been fun. You're a wealth of knowledge when it comes to turkeys. And I want to...

I want to recognize you do a lot with the veterans, a lot with the youth. Can't thank you enough for what you do for people that want to get out and experience an awesome turkey hunt. Well, it's all about giving back. We have a good time doing ourselves, but you get to a point where you just want to give back, and that's important for all of us. So take a kid out. Take a veteran out. Take somebody out that's never hunted. Do whatever you got to do to spread the sport. We need everybody out there.

Yeah, we appreciate it. Thanks for hunting with me this week. It's been a blast. Yeah, it's been fun. We're not even close to being done yet. No, we're going to boil some more. If you want to find out more about John, follow him on Instagram, Northwest Spur Chasers. The guy spends a ton of time out in the turkey woods and knows his stuff. Thanks, Sean. Thanks, John.

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