Ever wonder how the old timers killed gobblers without fancy gear? The answer is patience.

Running and gunning, fanning gobblers, and turkey reaping are all the rage right now. But, how did hunters successfully take gobblers back in the day? They used a great deal of patience, and often harvested, and still do, more turkeys than many people using aggressive tactics. It may not be as glamorous as the new wave of turkey hunting tactics, but the old, sit, call and wait method still works very successfully today.

The key to the sit and wait method is to temper your calling to be just enough to get a tom interested. That curiosity often becomes the bird’s downfall. To achieve this, we will call sparingly, often 20-30 minutes between calls, starting subtly and changing depending on the bird’s mood that day. When calling like this, make sure you give birds plenty of time to come in and check out where the calling is coming from. If you get a response to your call, stop calling. The gobbler knows where you are and will eventually come in if he is curious enough. If call too much, he will think that you are a hen that is coming to him instead of the other way around, and will stay where he is. If it has gone an hour or so without him showing up yet, call a little bit to remind him you are there. Wait patiently keeping alert, you never know when that red head will pop out.

As the entrepreneur E. Joseph Cossman said, “The greatest power is often simple patience.”