To Hoot, or not to Hoot

[POk3s]

I believe this is worth throwing out there...I don't hoot at owl "hooting" times very often. I hoot after flydown/mid morning usually but am not scared to use it mid day.

My typical hunting style is running and gunning on public land so there are times where a turkey has moved off and in moving positions myself, I need to know where that gobbler is without drawing attention to myself and being a "hen". I'll usually hoot in these situations just to get a shock gobble out of them.

I don't think it's at all unnatural, as they just gobbled to it a couple hours before, I'm not blowing their ears out, and I'm not trying to call them in. It's simply just a way to locate them so I know my next move.

Like anything else, it doesn't always work, but even if it doesn't work, I'm very confident I didn't spook the turkey with it. I do think turkeys are sometimes spooked when you blow their ears up with a loud, crow call. 

[deathfoot]

I've never been able to hoot. So I don't. I suck at it.

Like many have said, there's a lot of natural noises they will gobble to so I never saw the need to try to learn.

I do love listening to some others tho. Then I don't feel so bad about not being able to.

Funny story, I may have shared this before. I was in the black hills 20 years ago. At that time you had to quit at 6 pm (I think it was 6) so me and my buddy was just sitting there (guns unloaded) waiting to see if any gobbled at fly up. We hear a truck pull up several ridges over. We hear the door slam. We here him hoot 5-100 times, we here him coyote call about 5 times. He gets in his truck drives off. 10 minutes later about 8 birds sounded off not far from where he hooted from. I learned a lot by that. Mostly, just because they don't respond to you, doesn't mean they aren't close by. So I let nature do its thing