Hunting Turkeys with Respect

For ethics, for the bird, and for yourself

This year’s lodging for turkey camp in Northern Virginia

I once heard a tale about a steelhead fisherman on the Olympic Peninsula who was the purist of all purists. He would not fish with bait, spin rods, or egg sacks. He wouldn’t be caught dead with a nymph under a bobber. Rather, he was a traditionalist: he would strictly swing flies for steelhead with a 13’ spey rod. But he would take it one step further than that: he would cut the hooks off of his flies, because all he really wanted was to feel the grab of a hot fish. The grab is what die-hard steelhead fishermen live for. It’s why they swing flies instead of using a rig that would catch larger numbers with less effort. Die-hard steelheaders don’t care about numbers, they want to catch it their way. They might get one grab for every 10,000 casts. So the idea of intentionally not hooking a fish that you’ve spent an entire season chasing, especially one that is strictly catch and release anyway, is a bit insane. He didn’t want to see the fish up close, didn’t even want to fight it. He just wanted to feel the grab. He was in the game far deeper than most. I would never do that, because I like actually catching fish. But I respect the guy. That is peak sportsman. Doing it for the love of the game, with so much respect for it that he just wants to get close enough to taste it, and then he’s ok letting it go. No photos, no glory. It almost doesn’t make sense, until you realize that it does - you’re just not on his level. As hunters and fishermen, we wouldn’t do what we do if we were rational. And once you accept that, the things we do start to ironically make more sense. It’s not a coincidence, that this guy lived full-time on the side of the river in the middle of nowhere, 365 days a year, surveying wild fish returns for steelhead conservation.

The turkey hunting version of the outlier individual above, would be someone that enjoyed calling in a longbeard on opening day, and once in range, would intentionally shoot a blank out of their 12-gauge to let the bird walk. I don’t know if that person exists. He probably doesn’t. But what I do know, is that the only people as irrational as die-hard fishermen, are die-hard turkey hunters. These groups of people are people that have more in common than they think. They all lose sleep, money, relationships, sometimes their own minds - over their pursuit. Both share a quiet willingness to be a little unhinged for a few months in the pursuit of something most people will never understand. They are both pursuits that can drive you mad. And while some would argue that there is a ‘purist’ version of both of them, this not about being a purist. It’s about carrying yourself with respect as a sportsman. It’s about respecting the past, and respecting the future - in this case, of the wild turkey. To me, the way one chooses to hunt the wild turkey, says something about what they value, and what they don’t.

The spring turkey season is more than halfway over across most of the country, and every year around this time I see debates about how people like to hunt these birds. The main thing that sparks controversy, is a technique called reaping, or fanning, that has exploded on social media on click-desperate hunting videos in recent years. Effectively, the hunter hides behind a gobbler decoy or fan and crawls to a turkey in a field, and the turkey will run right up to it. It is a shockingly effective way to fool a male turkey. Many would argue that it’s too effective - the turkey usually can’t resist the sight. And while it’s now illegal in a few states on public land, it’s still legal in many.

As long as they are abiding by the law, people technically do have the right to hunt the way that they want to hunt. But when it comes to this technique, the question, goes beyond legality. Should it be illegal? In my opinion, yes, it makes it too easy to kill a turkey and requires very little skill. But to me, it’s worse than that. It’s more than a question of legality, or being safe for that matter. Reaping is a technique that disrespects the premise of the hunt, and the whole reason why you are out there. You’re out there for opportunity, not to be handed a result. Reaping can quickly remove the element of uncertainty that a makes a hunt a hunt. It disrespects the bird, because it’s barely a fair chase. Turkey hunters have honed their calling skills for decades to play the game fair in square by calling turkeys in without a biological cheat code. And I promise, you can do it too. It’s not a coincidence to me that the people who reap turkeys and then brag about it, are usually the ones filming tikoks of themselves dancing around a dead bird after they shoot it. Show me a turkey hunter who has dedicated his life to turkey conservation, or let alone lifted a finger to protect the bird from disappearing - and I’ll show you a turkey hunter that hunts turkeys by calling them in and not by taking short cuts. Most often, the people that give the bird a chance to win, are the people that care about the bird the most.

Hunters that speak out against reaping are often met with “as long as it’s legal, let people hunt the way that they want to”. In response to that - it’s not that people are doing something illegal or breaking any rules, and they absolutely have every right to do their way because of that - I just don’t think you deserve as much respect as a sportsman for choosing to do it. To use the reaping technique, is to prioritize a kill over an experience and a process. It is taking the easy way out, and never being able to accept that the bird beat you. Nobody would be doing this whole thing if it wasn’t hard. If you are in it solely for the end result, we are probably not the same.

Other common remarks against those who speak out against reaping are those along the lines of “all turkey hunters should be allies. We are a small community, support your brothers, no matter how they want to do things”. There’s some truth to the community aspect - but I want nothing to do with the guy who’s making a music video of himself shooting turkeys from the back of his moving truck for youtube subscriptions. That’s not turkey hunting. That’s an insecure, unskilled disrespectful showing of reckless attempted killing of an animal, for the purpose of clicks and likes. People promoting content like this are not on my side. They are disrespecting the wild turkey, and they’re making us all look like idiots. In fact I think they are the ones that will be responsible if hunting ever gets legislated out of existence. At the least, they’re creating fodder for anti-hunters to fester over as they work on their next end-all-hunting bill.

The game of turkey hunting is woodsmanship. The game, is tricking a gobbler into thinking you are a hen - being good enough with a turkey call to get a turkey to trust its ears, over its eyes. That’s not always easy to do to a creature that relies heavily on its eyesight that is to survive. And when he reads the script, and you play your role with respect, it’s an experience to behold. If there was no challenge to this game, and the turkey never won, it wouldn’t be fun, and it wouldn’t be fair. You’d feel a sinking feeling in your gut every time you shot one instead of complete elation after all the days that you put in to make the dots connect. It wouldn’t consume peoples’ minds for the duration of spring. And it wouldn’t be something that proudly irrational turkey hunters live for.

Your stature as a turkey hunter should not be determined by how many birds you kill. It should not be determined by if you filled your limit or not this season. Rather, it should be determined by if you played the game with respect. For ethics, for the bird, and for yourself. I can’t guarantee that you will be rewarded with a bird if you play the game with respect, but I can guarantee that you will feel a whole lot better about it when you finally get one this season doing it the right way. You’ve earned your right to smoke a cigar and drink a shooter of Wild Turkey 101 if you do. And at the least, you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that you are on the side of the line that deeply respects the bird which we are hunting, and the way that you’re playing the game will ensure that the bird will exist for generations to come.

We’ve got a handful of tees left on the GSC website and won’t do a restock until 2027 - so grab one now if you want one.