Roost Pitting
Make one of turkey hunting's least-used strategies work for you.
by Bruce Ingram
Official sunrise is at 7:10, the turkeys should fly down around 6:50, we should be in position by 5:50, it's a half hour walk up the mountain, and a 45-minute drive from the house. That means you'd better be up by 3:45, so you'll be ready to go when I pick you up at 4:35.
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The Roger Parks' Tree Talker slate is an ideal call for tree pitting. |
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Larry Proffitt uses a Zach Farmer Woodwind trumpet caller after sunrise, too. More than just a spring call The soft pre-dawn clucks that constitute tree pitting are not just a spring call. I've started using it in the fall as well. I went to a nearby neighbor's farm this October in an attempt to roost birds for the next day. Failing to do so and arriving back at my house just before dark, I walked into my woods and turkeys began flying from their roosts almost immediately in the gathering darkness. The next morning before sunrise, I set up against a red oak and, unsure of how many birds might have remained on the roost in the hollow, I tentatively voiced some tree pits. I heard some tree pitting, then flapping a short distance away. A dark bird landed just 20 yards from my position. This time not only was I unsure of whether the creature was a tom or a hen, but I also had doubts that it was even a turkey. (In the past I have called in hawks and owls during early light.) But within about five minutes, legal shooting time and "correct identification time" had arrived (the first considerably before the latter), I downed the hen that had been waiting patiently for a response to her pitting. Like all turkey hunting strategies and calls, tree pitting is not a magic elixir that will work every time. But it is a tactic very much worth including in your game plan. — B.I. |
Everyone should have a turkey hunting mentor like Larry Proffitt, who spoke those words to me last spring. At 64, Larry is only six years older than me, but for the past 10 years, I've made an annual trek from my home in Virginia to hunt with and learn from him in the mountains of east Tennessee.
I have come to realize it's best not to question Larry's tactics, since he has taught me so much, but I almost did that April morning. Why on Earth did we have to get up so early? To my way of thinking, we could be in position by 6:30 instead of 5:50, and the turkeys would be none the wiser.
When we arrived just below the ridge of the mountain at 5:50 in pitch-black darkness, Larry had to whisper his instructions for our setup. I put my back against a hardwood tree, and Larry remained standing and cast forth a few light barred owl calls, followed by some slightly louder ones. For the next few minutes, I listened as he uttered the softest clucks I have ever heard as he silently moved back and forth.
Larry took a seat next to me and remained quiet. Then about 6:20, my mentor made some more soft clucks, defined by Lovett Williams and others as "roost pitting." It was then we heard three toms erupt, their gobbles coming from some 75 to 125 yards to our left on the ridge above. I was astonished that such soft sounds in such dark surroundings — the sky had barely lightened in the East — could produce such an outburst.
Larry responded by articulating more roost pits mixed with tree yelps, meanwhile casting his sounds by slowly moving his head back and forth in different directions. Our trio of old boys exploded at this response to their initial gobbling.
"Now that I've got them going," murmured Larry, "instead of them responding to me, I'm going to wait until they gobble again. Then I'll respond to them."
The longbeards only waited a few minutes before bursting into more gobbling, and Larry let them carry on for a while before replying with both roost pitting and tree yelps.
It was now 6:30 — the time I had wanted to arrive on the mountain — and Larry, in hushed tones, instructed me to move my body 6 inches to the left.
"I think that's the way they're going to come," he said.
Even in the gloom of pre-dawn, I had no doubts he was right. At that point, I also decided not to mention that I had almost protested his plan for us to arrive so early.
The intense gobbling resumed. Larry made his last tree pitting sound of the morning, then transitioned to straight tree yelps.
At 6:40, the sky in the East was noticeably lighter, and it was then that Larry slapped his right side several times, simulating hens flying down. My response? Heavy breathing — the kind we often experience when we realize that unless we do something stupid, we are about to kill a longbeard.
We heard flapping 10 minutes later, 40 yards up the mountain; I glimpsed an ebony form land on the ground. I couldn't tell if that shape was a tom or a hen, but the sex issue was resolved a few seconds later when the creature gobbled. Although legal shooting time had arrived, I didn't feel comfortable taking a shot until five more minutes had elapsed and the bird was 20 yards closer.
"Not bad for a Tennessee mountain bird," Larry smiled, as I hoisted the tom over my shoulder. "I'll pick you up the same time tomorrow morning, OK?"
"That'll be great," I sheepishly replied.
Larry Proffitt's Epiphany
"My personal method is to emulate the real lady in the tree," said Larry Proffitt. "At Fisheating Creek hunting camp in Florida one spring, I sat patiently in the dark in some palmettos. The first turkey sound I heard was a hen just across a slough maybe 20 yards away, and she started with a call too light to even consider a cluck. They sounded like 'pitt, pitt,' as if you were uttering a well muffled 'tick, tick, tick.' An old gobbler just started jarring the ground, gobbling at those little sounds that sounded so very low to my ear at no more than 20 paces.
"Shortly after, she started light tree yelping. That old rascal tom came right in behind me in that palmetto thicket. She flew over me, in front of him. Of course, I was calling to no avail. He gave me courtesy gobbles as they left. From that time hence, if I know where there is a gobbler and I have a pretty good hide, I will start a calling sequence just like the real lady I heard that morning."
"Today, my best pitts are rendered on a Zach Farmer Woodwind trumpet caller, but then I go to a mouth call, a Primos True Double, a double framed diaphragm. If the humidity is low enough to use a slate, I always go to the Roger Parks' Tree Talker. It is the most realistic sounding call I have used to render light quavers, light clucks, tree yelps and purrs. It fits my hand, and its secret is in the handmade strikers Roger matches to each caller. The Tree Talker is pure turkey."