Image: late_turkey

Sticking with tactics that worked earlier in spring might not produce a buzzer-beater gobbler. Savvy hunters often switch their approach. Photo by Bill Konway.

By the final week of turkey season, many of the hard-gobbling birds of early spring have been killed. Others have been shot at, missed and scared to death. Every longbeard in the county has been yelped at repeatedly. It’s not easy to punch your tag during this time, but these eight tricks will help you do it.

1: CHANGE YOUR APPROACH

Chances are you and other hunters in the area have moved in on a roosted turkey from the same general direction days or weeks in a row, maybe down the same logging road, power line cut or field edge with easy access. The pressured bird is on to you, which is why he flies down and walks directly away from your calls each day. Change it up the next morning. Park in another spot, circle around, approach the roost from a different direction, and call from a fresh spot. Make the gobbler think, “Hmm, never heard a hen over there,” and he might fly down to you.

Don’t Miss: 7 Ways to Outsmart Pressured Gobblers

2: CHANGE CALLS

From your new calling spot, try a call that an ornery turkey has not heard all spring. Push-pin, tube or wingbone calls have distinctly unique tones that a turkey might gobble at and come to. Heck, try a gobble tube as a last resort. Be creative to fool a crabby turkey.

3: TREE TALK

After sneaking close a roosted turkey, sit and listen. If you hear no hens yelping, don’t call too early in the pre-dawn like you did earlier in the season. Wait until the skyline glimmers pink at fly-down time, and then float one soft tree yelp to let the bird know you’re there. If he gobbles back, hush up. He thinks you’re a hen, and he knows where you are. Listen for him to fly down, and get your gun up.

4: SOFT SELL

Every once in a while, you’ll run across a hard-gobbling turkey the last week, and the bird might respond to spirited calling. But late in the season, most pressured turkeys gobble randomly, maybe only a few times each morning. As a rule, the birds almost always respond best to soft to moderately loud yelping.

5: BLIND LUCK

I am not a fan of pop-up blinds, preferring to sit against a tree and work a gobbler one on one out in the open. But I begrudgingly blind hunt some days late in the season. You can pop up a camo blind in the middle of a field where you know a gobbler sometimes goes to strut during mornings or afternoons. Set a hen decoy and a fake jake 20 yards from the blind, settle in, and fight the urge to call too much. If a gobbler struts into the field and sees your decoys, he might run right up to the blind and give you a cake shot. It’s weird, but turkeys don’t spook from blinds set out in the wide open.

6: BEWARE OF SNEAKERS

Say the next to last day of season, a turkey 100 yards or so away gobbles once or maybe twice at your calls. By answering, he has acknowledged you as a “hen.” He has no reason to gobble again, so he might walk or strut silently to your calling location. The bird might not gobble, but you can bet he’ll spit and drum as he closes in, so listen for that. You can hear a gobbler drumming 70 to 80 yards away on a still day if you have good ears. Have your gun up on your knee, scan the foliage, and be patient. It might take 30 minutes or longer for an edgy tom to show up, if he comes at all.

Check Out Our Latest Camo Pattern: Realtree APX

7: TAG TEAM

One of the best ways to fool a tough old bird is to hunt with a buddy. You or your friend — whoever has a tag left — should set up and act solely as the shooter. The caller should then hide 30 yards behind the gun man and start calling. If the turkey gobbles, the caller should immediately move 20, 30 or 40 yards directly away from the bird, yelping and mimicking a walking hen playing hard to get. If the gobbler is hot to breed one last time, he’ll sometimes run to catch up, inadvertently running smack into the shooter and finally succumbing to a load of TSS.

8: SHORT CUTT

If you don’t hear any gobbles early in the morning, walking and cutting on a pot-and-peg call (a glass or aluminum surface is ideal) is a good way to locate a silent gobbler strutting around during midday. But don’t get carried away and string together too many loud, aggressive calls that can drown out a turkey’s gobble. Rather, cutt in sharp three-second bursts, and then stop abruptly and listen hard. One faint shock gobble is often all you’ll get the last week. Pinpoint that gobble, draw a line to the turkey, and give it one last shot.