Start Hunting Fall Turkey

• Turkeys roost in large trees. Finding the roosting areas and feeding areas are keys to patterning turkeys.
• Virtual scouting: Use the Hunting Atlas to locate public lands and private lands open to hunting.
  • Hint: Turn on one of the the aerial or satellite imagery base layers to look for wooded draws with large trees.
• Ground truthing: Go for drives and walks in early morning listening for turkeys. Dewy mornings are great for observing upland game species because they leave thick vegetation to find open areas to dry off, often on roads or up in trees.
• If you find turkeys outside of lands open to hunting, identify who owns the land or politely visit with someone living in the area to try to figure out if they would give permission to hunt (although some landowners are reluctant to allow deer or pheasant hunting, turkeys are less desirable and even a nuisance species for some landowners, so it may be easier to get permission).
• Once you’ve chosen an area or areas you’d like to hunt, identify which turkey unit the land is in so you can apply for a license in that unit.

Fall Wild Turkey Lottery

Fall turkey licenses are distributed via a lottery in August/September each year (view current season dates and application deadlines). You may also want to review our Guide to Lotteries for more information on how this works.

To help guide your decision you can:

• Check the license availability for each turkey unit.
• Review the previous season’s lottery statistics to understand your odds of drawing in a particular unit.

NOTE: Units which you have an increased likelihood of drawing may impact your decision of where to hunt and you may return back to Step 2 - Finding an Area to Hunt within this unit.

Fall turkey hunting differs from the spring in that the birds are not mating. They may be in larger groups and are not very vocal so hunting strategies are different. It is also worth noting that it is legal to harvest any turkey in the fall vs. the bearded-only spring season.

Spot and Stalk - Drive, hike, or use binoculars to locate turkeys from a distance. Utilize landscape features (tree rows, topography, etc.) to quietly sneak *within shooting distance.

Sit and Wait – Observe turkeys over time and see if you can key in on movement patterns (e.g. between roost and feeding areas). Set up a ground blind or simply utilize a tree or shrubs to help camouflage yourself and wait for turkeys to walk by *within shooting distance.

Note: In late fall, turkeys often move to private lands in search of supplemental food sources (grains or grain bales). Landowners often have low tolerance for turkey flocks, so it is worthwhile to stop and ask permission if you see turkeys on private lands. In addition, the Department maintains lists of landowners who want fewer turkeys, so it’s beneficial to call to see if there are places in your hunting unit where hunting would be welcomed. In these situations (called depredation hunts), the success rate for sitting and waiting is very high.

Calling – In the fall, male turkeys are not mating and thereby gobbling so you cannot really count on calling one in. But, you could still utilize calling and decoys to add to your camouflage or draw birds into shooting range that are already passing through.

Additionally, people will sometimes intentionally flush a group of turkeys from a roosting area at which point the flock may call to re-locate each other and you can utilize a call to imitate this and hopefully bring one *within shooting distance.

*Shooting Distance: Typical turkey loads for shotguns are most lethal within 30-40 yards—you can get good at judging this distance by stepping off 30-40 large steps and looking back to see what that distance looks like.