Adjusting Setups and Being Where Turkeys Want to Be

So , in other words , apex makes sure that the conclusions to those long-fought battles of spring are instant , absolute and ethical .

All right , what's going on y'all ? Welcome back to the Spring Legion Podcast Week number three for the 2025 season . I'm your host , hunter Ferrier , along with the other host , chase Ferrier , again today . Per usual , I got a couple stories to tell . We'll be talking a little turkey hunting stuff and kind of what went down the um .

We're actually recording this on a wednesday night following a recording on sunday night of uh , the past podcast that was published on monday morning , so we've only had a couple days to gather some stories , but luckily I was involved in a couple that we'll kind of dive into , both of which I don't think Chase has heard , and it's been heating up down south a

little bit and after that stale start we had going to dive into . I know we mentioned the possibility of having a guest here , but I've been packing up some bags and stuff to get ready for where we will be headed back from . If we're not already back from california , gary and I a quick trip out there to uh hunt some rios and some pretty turkey woods .

Is that rios , or ? merriam's out there I think it's rio's .

Pretty sure it's rio's yeah I have a feeling they're gonna be a little different than the usual rio , just considering the , the terrain and stuff , which is , I would think , probably nice oh yeah , I think california , I think nice , um , I think a couple other things , but unrelated to a turkey I'm just kidding , not really , but um , but yep , well , we had out

there giving them a good old swing and uh , really , all we got to update on is , uh , on the on the spring legion side , I feel like , uh , according to chase , we got a lot of car tags back in stock because we found them . And is that all three ?

Yes , all three black , green and white yeah , should have a handful of each and uh that , and all the books have been restocked in all formats . So that's about of turkey , hunter and any given spring morning and

the combination of both in the green covered combo . That one , the combo copy , is only in a hardcover format , but the other ones are back in paperbacks and hardcovers on springleaguecom or Amazon , whichever you fancy , and the plethora of new casual hats we got . I'm not even going to list all of them because there's a lot of them .

We got going on a pretty quick one for a limited time on the um , the six new turkey hunting hats we've we've released this year . Uh , they kind of go with that uh spring turkey 2025 collection , kind of on the main page of our website 25 off any of those six hats with uh with the code cap 25 . So cap25 will get you down to about $15 for a hat .

On those we have the mesh backs , green leaf and original bottom laying , some solid back ones , some old-school looking ones . Yeah , the five panels and then the quick drive material , the four-way stretch , made of the same stuff as our pants is made of , so pretty comfortable on those .

They're honestly all surprisingly comfortable they are and they're all really different . I mean I hand tailored them .

I like a deep fitting hat and I made those like an like two-eighths of an inch depth in the hat is a big deal , because some of the samples we got kind of matched the general , you know , build or construction of most hats and I was like can you make it a little deeper , just so it's a little more snug .

And you know most everybody asked , nobody asked hey , do y'all have any shallow hats , right ? They always ask does it fit pretty deep ? yeah , okay deal I just want to make sure , because I'm a hat guy . I mean , I've worn a hat since I came out the womb , I feel like every day at the house , hunting , not hunting .

I'm wearing a hat 24 , 7 and um , so I'm pretty particular about it and so looking out for the other folks who are . But other than that , y'all know the drill , we got everything .

You might not have every size , but we got everything that we've been having on the website and hopefully I'm gonna be pumping out some more social media stuff , because I've been lacking I've been busy , yeah so the tiktoks and the root to youtubes and stuff like that , snapchats , all that's gonna be .

Instagram , all that's gonna be hopefully getting a little bit of a revamp because , uh , due to layovers and stuff . So that's my plan we'll All that's going to be hopefully getting a little bit of a revamp due to layovers and stuff .

So that's my plan We'll put some headphones in my bag and hopefully be able to chop some stuff up for y'all to keep up with us this season , because it's off to a decent start . You know , what seemed like to be a not so lively beginning , turned into the past few days , is picked up Right .

But you know , not necessarily full speed ahead , but like , let's take it a little more serious yeah , I guess you know , do the little things . I'm gonna do the little things today and see if it works , and it works used to yeah to remember them even right , and that's , that's 90 .

I was just remembering you got to get those couple mess up days out and you know , and not hunting necessarily the weekdays . Right now it's , uh , it's taking me a little longer to get the mess ups out , which and last year not being a great , season for me .

Feeling comes around , it's that monkey needs to get off the back and needs to get off there quick , because then you're gonna start making decisions that aren't the best and you're gonna you're gonna alter what you would usually do and I've been in it . I've been in the mud and it ain't .

You know I was like man , I've never , you know , gotten lucky , yeah and and and gotten uh , won a gun at a , at an nwtf show or whatever , and a banquet mean . But this past year I went to the same banquet . I won the first gun they gave out .

I'm going to have another bad year . I'd be giving up a gun back so fast . I debated it I asked Breck if he wanted it . He I debated it . I asked Breck if he wanted it .

But , um , but after that we , um , I went , went hunting with him time or two and he and myself met , uh , buddy peyton rowell , at a place down in South Mississippi and a place that if you look at it on a map , if you look at it with your eyeballs , is built for South Mississippi turkey hunting .

I mean it's very , very nice and very well taken care of , managed . Well , I don't know if they've managed it for turkeys or deer or just whatever , but it's they got the setup naturally or constructed . However , it's very nice .

And we got there and I'm I'm thinking banner morning I don't remember which morning it was , but it was supposed to be right and we pull up and I mean we crossed the bridge before pulling in and there's a little fog over the , uh , the creek there under the bridge , and that fog never , never left , you know , it just kind of continued on .

We're like , okay , yeah , this is a zinger , because I pulled up his house about four o'clock and it was stars everywhere . And it wasn't my house too . We get down there and it's it's pretty fog actually , it ain't just light fog .

So now I'm thinking , well , whether or not there's turkeys here , I don't know for sure , but we're going to have to wait to find out where they're at . If they are , because they're not going to be gobbling too much in the fog just because of I think it's a safety thing If they can't see what's coming .

They don't want stuff that's coming to hear where they're at you know Right , Hens and stuff even .

You know we didn't . You know you don't really want to yell with nowhere to be , and if you don't answer , then you're left with a wonder and thought of well , I hope he don't fly down and walk to where I'm at , because I'm walking to where he was at and he ain't there , no more yada , yada and he'll in the fog .

You don't really know , because joker might be right there and you not know it . And that's exactly what happened . We logan hit a yelp or two and that joker hammered it . I mean probably 80 yards , oh geez . And and towards the open . I mean it's wide open , the way gobble sounded , but you can only see 60 .

So we don't know where he's at , what's going on , how long he's been there . Has he seen us or you know ? Obviously not a gobble . But we hit the deck and get down , logan peels back and calls a little bit . There was a road in front of us . I'm sitting with Peyton and I have a camera for Logan's show off days or whatever .

So I'm running it it best of my ability and I always film good whenever I'm with logan . For some reason um , anybody else , it is not the case , but every everyone every time he's handing me one .

Anyway , three gobbling and I'm like what in the world ? Because I don't , I only think there's one and I still think it's a long beard and I can see , you know , whitehead , with black ball underneath , about 65 . Now now beneath us , and and peyton has , who is left-handed has .

It was really tough at first , didn't know he was left-handed , so I'm kind of setting up behind his , you know right , so yeah , and stuff . And so I'm kind of like something ain't right here , because when you swing I'm you going to hit me . So I was like , oh , you're left-handed . So we had to kind of redo that situation .

But facing him and everything , and , like I said , it's hazy , you can't really see . And Logan takes me as a Jake , but it was two of them , two turkeys period . One of them I had smelt a rat and I was like that one sounds 20 yards behind me , can't see it , it's putting . And but I'm looking at one that is it's strutting , it ain't putting , you know .

And I can hear him drumming . So and I was like , is that joker putting in between his ?

Best thing when we agreed to do was wait , because all we're going to do is just bump them to high heavens off the limb .

A lot of times I've done it a lot of times go in there when it's muggy and it ain't got to be foggy if it's muggy and it feels like fog , but you doesn't even look like fog and you go walking around walking roads and stuff like that .

You're gonna hear wing beats off of a limb you might not see what it is , but you're gonna bump them off of it and they'll stay in there until hey , you see the ground . I mean , imagine being a turkey and trying to fall into the ground . You can't see . Yeah , falling into just a hole , a white abyss .

You know you're not knowing what's there , but Jake's did . So we sit up there and we kind of make ourselves comfortable , don't call or nothing , and we're at a very high spot . I hear a lot of stuff .

You know here , you know two or three different creeks and stuff and if they are , or if they are , or off the ground kind of regardless , we should be able to hear them , with it being , you know , recently cut and um , we , uh , I think we , we kind of start hearing one and we debate moving towards him and as soon as we kind of gather our stuff up ,

we're looking that fog is gone and we're in the middle of the wide open and all the creeks is around . So we're like now we're in a little bit of a pickle . But this one gets fired up pretty good .

Only one other one we heard go , I think this jake's got put again back behind us a time or two but I started ripping a glass cause you know kind of , and you can almost hear it hitting the

same bank that he's above . So I'm thinking like , yeah , he's , he's hearing it and that knows , you know kind of got him fired up and I'm thinking you know what I mean . Joker might be in a tree and fly down in this open and walk up here . So we gave it a little bit of a minute but he didn't .

And uh , long story short , pretty much , we uh , he gets . He gets in one of those little bowls like a horseshoe holla kind of deal and it is on the opposite side of where we can kind of get to without getting seen , probably , and he's hung up . I mean he's about 120 in there and there's a little ditch with some water in it .

The route to get to us is not ideal . He'd have to . He'd have to make a sure enough , loop or or fly the ditch or whatever you know , which I've seen him do so I always try it and um gave that a go . Nothing happened . Hit him with silence . Logan moved and changed the call . He answered all of them . He answered the silence .

He gobbled the second you hit another call , he moved . He advanced towards the silence at all . So we're thinking this is a bad setup . It's a great setup had he not been there .

It took us a minute to get there and you just have faith that when they're gobbling that consistent a lot of times they're not with hands , because the hands move . Hands don't care what you're doing .

They're looking for food and going to a nest and stuff and there he's going to be moving when they're , when they're stationed and hung up like that , a lot of times there's one solo gobbler or , you know , maybe two gobblers , but no hands moving them , because if they're with hands they're gonna . They're not gonna worry about you that much either .

A right but um , but a lot of times they'll get hung up for 40 minutes maybe , but they're just scratching and pecking in the bottom and after 40 minutes they're going to be moving because those hands are going to be moving . This one didn't . This went on about an hour and then tack on another 30 , 40 minutes .

To get around him we took a road up there and and peyton knew of some strut marks , and I think logan might have too in years past , so obviously they kind of come through this area that they'll kind of hang out here , strut around and um , yeah , headed on up there , came back down down a road in between a bunch of pines and uh , set up , called twice and

there he was really yep , I mean just had to unravel the kind of you know make it easy on him . Yeah , get where he's willing to go and that's that's what I was telling peyton . Now , if we make it easy on him , I feel better . I feel like it's not a bad setup . This is a good spot .

But where he's at , I think we're asking him a little too much more than he's willing to give . I think he wants to . He just wants it to be easy and sometimes birds are like that . Sometimes they don't care , they'll fly to the interstate to get to you if they wanted that bad .

But some of them don't want it that bad and you got to make it easy , make it convenient and make it safe . That's another thing . You make it easy , convenient and safe . You know the the , how many notes in your yelp and all that stuff .

It's kind of out the window , right , because you just sound like a turkey for a hot minute and it's enough to talk them into it .

that loop , right he does jump that you tried everything with silence and now they're in silence yeah , and then all of a sudden , you get all right , I'm right , I'm on top of this , I'm on the same ridge as you . Now let me yell where is he sitting ?

You know just part of it . But if he , if he's stationed there , I mean his feet are in concrete , yeah , more times if they're hung up . You hung him up . Yeah , if you were to become from a different direction , he wouldn't have hung up at all . He was headed straight to you right a lot of times he , he walks 15 feet and then there's the hung up part .

It's a geographical something usually , um , and we consider for a the road that is in front of us from that spot and he's , he don't want to leave it because a hen should walk by it . Eventually he can kind of see is a little open in the canopy . Considered that it just I was like he didn't want to walk down that hill and walk back up this hill .

I don't really want to .

in . Came out mid-season , though feel like it , I will still a little sore . Came out 45 years old .

I originally planned on hunting because I heard a different one , yeah , and I knew kind of about the different one and I expected to hear him . You know , nobody shot him in the last two or three days , but I was headed towards him and I heard another one down here in the creek and this a little further .

But I'm like , yeah , probably , probably less options . Yeah , I mean the other one could be a approach from different areas and I I'm thinking when I hear this . I'm like I might be the only one that can get to him .

Yeah , cause it's just it's surrounded by private or or no access to these areas and it's one of them , like , if somebody else wants him , they going to have to bring it , you know . I ain't going to get mad at them cause they going to have to earn it , cause there's some stuff you got to get to to get to him .

And I found that out about I don't know if you can see the bottoms of my legs , but they were or the my kneecap to my about half thigh was getting yeah , those briars are rough in there and the dark and like there's a chance I can get there before he flies down , because , as of lately , if you don't get , if you're not within about five minutes of his

first walking around , and he does find a hen it's over . I mean you're in a delay for an indefinite amount of time with them hens . They don't let you know where they're at often . These past couple days they have a little more .

They've been a little lenient on the location , but I'm trying to get there and I don't and like that's just a hard pill to swallow is like I can . I can do it . I can get there and get there and get to this ridge and I know it opens .

I can see where it opens up and I'm like you know , caught in every freaking briar there is and trying to be quiet . Oh yeah , and then you're like all right , maybe screw quiet , if I can just get here yeah you know , he'll never know , and um , and this time I'm gaining .

I've gained about 20 yards in about that's 20 minutes you know , and just stuck left and right and there's no going backwards left or right you know you're in it .

of here yeah , and then all the briars are stuck in your pants and up in them and all kinds of stuff .

Maybe he'll fly down this way . You know , maybe not . I ain't called to him or nothing , and I sit there gonna catch my breath pulling thorns out of my legs and stuff and , um , he got was , he got was one time and I was on the ground . I'm like , all right , here we go . He flew the other way , by the way , kind of glad .

Actually yeah , yeah , I was a little glad . I'm like you know what . This is the best case scenario .

Now I know he's not in a tree , he's not watching me because it gets on open up in there , and so I pretty much , here we go again go again you know , go through the second half and get there and finally get to a creek bottom and and it's got a bunch . I don't know what it's called , but it's it ain't . It's just dead looking grass yeah .

I mean savannah type looking stuff sage grass looking stuff yeah so I don't know what savannah means oh , like prairie , not a prairie , I'm talking like habitat words Like , I think , sawgrass and stuff like that . I mean , I don't know , Tall dead grass . Bingo , it's probably not dead , it's probably just the color of it , yeah , but anyway .

So it doesn't have thorns , thank God . So it's about the same height as all the briars have been walking through , but it's a lot more spaced out . I think it's good habitat , judging by some biologists I follow . I don't know the name of it , but I know what it looks like on their Instagrams or whatever .

So get up in there and then I find where they probably roosted , opens up a little creek and I find a lot of scratching . I'm like , okay , this is from today , so this is probably where they roosted . So in my mind now I'm playing a little little defense , little offense , seeing maybe I can just kind of see what they do .

Come back tomorrow , right , get up in here somehow , bring a weed eater with me or something . Um , I hear him gobble one more time like , okay , let's do one , and I mean it's a matter of 30 yards of walking , yeah , more . And I and I see a rat .

I'm like , and this is , and I do this sometimes , especially in this situation , and it's kind of kind of how we did the one down south with Logan , and then it was like if they can get here somehow somewhere . I don't really care how or why or where or how the route they take .

If I know they got from here to there , they can get back from there to here and a lot of times I'm kind of hesitant on thinking I can talk a turkey back into a spot he's already been . If he's moving because he just left there wasn't in there , you know , especially if you're kind of following him around .

I don't know how he did in person , but he's crossed creek , very close to the creek and I hear this um , I thought it was another hunter .

I'm like that's unfortunate , because how in the world they had to have been there the whole time , because I'm like I'd have heard them ripping through that stuff just as much as I was , and I didn't see nobody when I pulled up on the whole daggum road .

Honestly , and I don't know if you can access it from the other side , but either way I hear it and I'm thinking you kind of want to call back at them , because then you're like , then I look like a rookie too You're like man did . We do this whole like I thought you were a hand .

So I'm kind of like , yeah , these are sounding on my side of the creek , he sounded on the other side of the creek , and then the hens . I just I mean going back and forth whether it starts moving . And I found a tree set up on kind of in the open , which was my best option .

Right , it was either get back a little bit within the cover and kind of eliminate the back wall . My best case scenario was he skirts the opening Right Completely . I can shoot across the opening it's about 40 to the other end . Yeah , so if he comes out at all and takes a peek , I got him you move back to 10 to get a little cover in front of you .

You're . You're kind of hoping he comes in the middle at that point yeah , um , and I , and they are a little above me , I think of a think of the foot of a ridge kind of , and they're on the other side of it , but I know they're going to walk up and then what they do once they walk up , I don't know .

I did not see them walking the creek bank , just keeping the creek within a foot of them walking all the way back . If they started moving that way , I had a route in mind to slip down an extra 30 yards and get where I could shoot the creek , but where I was at I couldn't . But regardless , this jerk is going back and forth .

What I think is a hen and it gets 40 from me and I still can't see it and it gobbles . I'm like , oh my God , that's why it sounded funny at first . Now it sounds like , and then caulking or anything or you know , honking , kind of like jakes , do you know the ? The three ? Like chalk , chalk , chalk . It ain't doing that , it's like .

I mean it sounded like a hymn by the end of it . Yeah , I get warmed up a little bit , I guess .

Um , so these two shakes come in and they look and I'm stone cold still because I know that other one ain't with them and I've seen scenarios where it's kind of like that they just follow this dude around , yeah , and he's moved . The gobbler has come across the creek In the meantime .

Okay , so in the meantime of those jakes coming into sight and they walk , 25 from me looking , you know , pecking around , tripping over twigs and stuff like jakes do , oh yeah , in the meantime of them doing that , me being dead , still and quiet , the gobble crosses the creek . And so his next gobble is closer Right 80 , 90

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I just moved my feet , I don't you know , put my hand on the ground or nothing , move my feet a couple times , do a really good scratch sound with my foot . I'm like . I'm like I could not do that again in a million years . I ain't gonna lie . You know it made a good .

You know the full , the , the , the right cadence and kind of volume and everything like that was pretty , pretty good right there and he gobbles at it . The next gobbles closer . I'm like , all right , we're about to find out . Those get jakes . I think they got one more time and he gobbles that thing on and he's you know , he's cutting it .

Yeah , and I'm kind of I'm hoping he does the same thing jakes did , because they can't . Well , hey , they came out like jakes . They walked out , they looked both way across the street and kept walking . You know , they didn't stop , look periscope , nothing .

They were like I don't see nothing in here , like actively walking around the open area , turning circles , like I swear there was something right here 30 yards from a gun barrel . Yeah , this one didn't do that .

So obviously I can see , you know , body here and there and the stuff he's in is about as tall as a turkey's head , yeah , so it's kind of you're just seeing pieces of him and it's I mean , it's not like twigs , it's grassy looking stalks Right , and he gets to that same kind of corner . He lets it rip a couple times through right there .

I'm like , ooh , that didn't sound like that other gobble .

And then he gets between two trees and I could have shot him but didn't want to shoot him , you know , I thought he'd give me another chance and he didn't .

So that's what's going on in the back of my head , and this joker's already stopped and all I can see is his head and he's kind of quartering to me and I'm thinking do something , Move to where he's doing the half strut thing , where I can't see all the tail .

And I can half strut thing where I can't see all the tail fair and and I can't see you know chest down , I'm like , come on , he's about 50 . Yeah , my cheeks on the gunstock at this point . He's walking out of an angle . He's going , you know , he's going to hit range here in about 10 , 15 yards .

Yeah , there are some trees in between the 10 50 and he gets behind one of them and I'm thinking where did he go ? Here we go again , because he's at 50 . So I mean , if he walks back sideways he's probably out . Any step backwards definitely out . But he's walking to me . So he comes back out at about 35 from the other side of this tree .

I'm like , okay , still can't see . I'm like , come on , he , he'll gobble at me . I'm like staring at his feet , like maybe I'll see a beard you know , silhouette . He does the whole . You know he's got his tail fan is still behind a tree . So imagine front half of the body's out . He's facing from my left to my right , you know kind of sideways .

Now broadside I guess you'd say he's looked hard , he's still kind of looking , but he's looked everywhere .

Now he , he turns . I'm like .

Unless that's something , okay , no , that's nothing you know . So he's up one more time . He turned one more back time around as soon as he did . I was like I was ready for him . Then you know , um , you shot him right there first time . I shot one with that 12 gauge in a minute since about late april last year .

Yeah , I shot that 20 gauge for a lot of it , the 20 gauge with the barrel camera .

The other one , you know , the red dot or whatever I'm posture to it .

I don't really know how to adjust it back I can say that I don't know what it is .

I was pumped up to watch the you know the little clip of it , Cause I mean the whole hunt wasn't , I think , 20 minutes , right From the time I sat down till the time I was done recording . But yeah it's . It's not good either . You can was done recording , but uh , yeah , it's . It's not good either , you can see .

It's just so grainy , you know , and that that thing ain't got a mic on it , so that , right like the audio would have been amazing if I would have . The other camera is what it is .

Heck only they'd all do that strut down a pine straw lane in the middle of pines for 40 yards and not trip their way through a briar thicket to come poke their head out at 45 and look at you until you know yeah , well , you just need to learn how to hunt different stuff , I guess I'm all right that one there's a second one and I'll be back in the

morning oh yeah , I'll do a lot of things for them did I see that clip from jeremy ? I don't know if I did .

Yeah , so , unless I changed gloves which I didn't every clip you just look at the thumbnail of where every clip starts on and I'm

talking like a five terabyte , yeah size hard drive . They're all just my gloves , just black or bottom line yeah , you just see like a bloody bottom land palm , cause I'm turning it on , and then the next one is me turning it on , so it's all . You can't see where we're at nothing .

So , yeah , that's why it's what it is and it's hard to do stuff during trick season .

Yeah , if I might hunt a new place , and when I like I'm like just state like North Tennessee and Kentucky are a lot alike , so it's not that different . We're hunting somewhere neither of us have ever really . I mean , he's hunted like Oregon and Washington and stuff , but I don't think this is even like that necessarily .

It could be completely wrong , I don't know I have no clue . He's been out there playing shows and stuff , obviously , so he knows what it looks like . But that's out of my imagination .

We do this for the heck of it and I hope y'all enjoy listening as much as we do . Telling them Seems like it , so we'll keep pumping them out . Appreciate it . We'll see you next week . Thanks for listening to the Spring Legion podcast .

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