Slow playing turkeys? Jason Phelps and my 2022 Kansas turkey hunt with Randy Milligan and Chris Parrish proved to be a somewhat difficult hunt as the unstable weather and large predator base had turkeys turned off and not very vocal.

Randy had several trail cams monitoring the property, which revealed a fair amount of turkeys. Sometimes right after we had just been through that area calling to locate a gobbler, a group of turkeys would walk by the camera. The turkeys were there, but were not being vocal.  

Hunting in those conditions can be pretty frustrating, but Randy and Chris had a plan. We would hunt them like deer. We set up next to food plots just inside the timber and call off and on for an hour or more. We would do little loud calling in the beginning of the setup to let distant birds we were there, and then transition into intermittent soft calling to draw in the cautious birds. Being patient would be our biggest ally waiting on the tight lipped gobblers. If no turkeys showed up, we would move locations and start over. These were some high mileage days as we would walk 6-8 miles a day looking for ornery tom’s.

The tactic worked! After lots of quiet sits we had gobblers come in. We all want those adrenaline charged run and gun call ins, but sometimes playing the patience card will be just the ticket to punching your tag.