Josh Honeycutt shares some of his top secrets for bagging a spring turkey.

Wild turkeys might have a brain the size of a pea, but they use it pretty well. The following tips can further your efforts to kill a big turkey. And I guarantee ol’ tom doesn’t want you finding out about them. Some of them are just cool tips. Regardless, check out these lesser-known facts about the great American wild turkey.

1. Tag-teaming works

You’ve got a bird that doesn’t want to work those last 150 yards. For whatever reason, it’s hung up and isn’t coming any closer. You’ve changed calls. Changed setups. Changed decoys. It doesn’t matter. It’ll answer every call, but that bird ain’t coming any closer.

Stick your calls in the turkey vest and have a buddy call for you. Have him start out where you are, then gradually work away from you, getting further and further from the bird. Once the caller is about 75 to 100 yards behind you, have them anchor down for a few minutes and not change location. That might prove enough to coax that bird the rest of the way in.

If that doesn’t work, the caller should start swinging left and right. If the bird moves right, the caller should move left. If the bird moves left, the caller should move right. Oftentimes, the bird will work a little closer with each pass.

2. Playing hard-to-get kills gobblers

You don’t have to call aggressively to get birds to commit. A lot of those birds that don’t come in would if you just played hard to get. Old gobblers are like us in a way; they like it when their better half plays hard to get.

Don’t give up on gobblers that suddenly go silent. That sometimes means they’ve broke and are coming into your setup. But for those that don’t and just keep gobbling, go silent on them. That sudden ceasefire of hen vocalizations can trigger a reaction from gobblers that sends them into a panic. They might think that hen finally had enough, is going away, and therefore the tom will sometimes come running to intercept it.

3. Fighting purrs perform

This is one call that very few hunters use, and I’ve never really understood why. It’s a killer tactic—literally.

Fighting purrs are obviously used by turkeys in fights. It’s a turkey sound they use a lot. It only makes sense to use it in your calling sequences, too. Turkeys aren’t as conditioned to this tactic because hunters don’t use it very often. I’d venture to say that if you use it, you’ll be the only one around who does.

4. Gobbling is killer

Here’s another tactic that few hunters use. Kill more birds by gobbling to them. If a tom shuts up for a while, and it doesn’t come in, gobble at it. That’ll often get the bird worked back up if it senses another tom is working against it.

Diaphragm (mouth), tube and box calls all perform this sound well. Learn to gobble on at least one of them and implement that tactic this spring. It’ll pay off in filled tags.

For more useful turkey hunting insight, check out the spring issues of MidWest Outdoors. Subscribe on our website.