The Drum

[greenheadgrimreaper]

I have always said that too many folks do too much looking and not enough listening.

To me, learning to listen to the woods is a much more important skill of woodsmanship than anything else. I guess I am bragging a bit, but at least I am bragging about something that nobody really gives a care about but, I regularly hunt big woods, public land turkeys- and I get within just a few yards of them on a regular basis just by LISTENING to the woods and then playing the terrain.

Now, when sitting still, your eyes can help out too of course. I don't know the proper name for it, but I once read in a Tom Brown book (who is clearly a lunatic in every sense of the word) about "splatter vision". It really does increase your awareness in the woods once you get skilled enough to do it quickly and efficiently. Once you get good at it, you can move through the woods in the dark with surprising ease. In the day time with wind blowing the woods around, you can pick out movement you'd of never of seen. The key is to focus your eyes on one, specific, single spot about 30 degrees above the horizon. I don't mean let your vision "blur". I mean let your vision sharpen throughout the whole scope of your sight plane. If you do it right, it will look as if the lighting of the setting you are sitting in becomes very vivid. You will notice if say, the wind is blowing everything around, a leaf falling in your peripheral vision at 60 yards away. You will also notice a gobbler that passes in front of you in thick woods at 70 yards away as he passes a tiny narrow lane where the trees, for a moment, let YOU see HIM before he sees you. It also aides in helping me sit absolutely still. I know that the secret service calls it "situational awareness vision" or something like that. Ever notice how when the president is talking in front of a large crowd the guys in the black are facing the crowd and standing absolutely still? They use splatter vision to absorb the natural ebb of the crowd. They can pick out a person acting in a suspicious manner fairly easily- or so I have read. In any case, sight is helpful, but hearing that gobbler walk through the woods and the way other critters react is much more likely to help us throw him over our shoulder. And hearing him drum is one of the things to listen for.

The bird I posted up from opening day was drumming like a lot of satellite birds do. I knew if I sat tight, he'd come in. And he did. The bird I killed Sunday morning has, for three years, strictly drummed after he hit the ground. He was the deepest drumming bird I have ever heard. At 60 yards away he would vibrate your chest. At 25 yards, he would vibrate through my gun- or so it seemed.

I think being able to hear them drum is like what somebody else earlier in the thread said- something that is an "acquired" taste...errr sound. But if you really listen through the woods and then quietly and, in just as paranoid of a manner as a wild critter, stalk towards that sound, then you will find some sort of commotion. Ever hear that wood pecker give that irritated sounding call- like he's mad about something? Many times I have found that something such as a turkey or deer scared him from the bottom part of a tree. Ever hear those crows cutting up in the distance? In my neck of the woods you can bank on it that if one crow caws this certain way, really loud, then at least half of the time, if I stalk quietly enough, a turkey was the cause. I have seen squirrels go berserk at a box turtle making his way in the dry leaves.

Spend a few days camping by yourself in the woods with the cell phone off and you will quickly find out just how easily we humans can acclimate to the sounds of the woods- more so than we ever could have thought.

[SWAG]

I worked a bird about 6 years ago down in Homochito. He gobbled about 9:30 way up on the ridge top. Only problem was, I was down at the creek. I was not about to climb up that hogback. I told myself if he came, he was going to have to come down to me. He answered a few calls and hung up about 80 yards up a ridge leading down in the bottom. I played my favorite trick on him to get him jealous. I gave him a couple of sweet yelps followed by a loud set of gobbler yelps and shut up. The next thing I hear about 10 minutes later is Loud drumming. I mean loud. I had a net blind at the time and I told myself, "this bird has got to be close. I looked through the net blind and he was standing 8 yards in front of me drumming like crazy. He got behind a tree and I shot him through the net blind.

Fun with a drummin bird.

Mr. E

I do believe that using gobbler yelps and clucks is almost a lost phase of the game we all like to play. Back in the 80s there was a little call that came from a call maker down around Winona or Vaiden that was a scratch box type call. It made nice deep gobbler yelps, the type you hear jakes do so often. I was witness to this call being the demise of a couple of old toms down there. Rarely do you hear of these calls being used much any more. Is this a tatic you still use often? As I said in the previous post about the tame flock I had during my teen years, gobbler clucks and yelps were something I heard fairly often. That experience paid off well on a bird in hill portion of Tallahatchie County one morning when I located a gobbler on his roost even though he was not gobbling. The tom would give a loud deep cluck every few minutes. The obvious "buck" sound was a gobbler still wanting hens to know his location but reluctant for whatever reason to gobble. He died about 8:30 that morning