Lure in tom turkeys by making turkey gobble sounds and stumble across edible fungi to cook together.
For whatever reason, the toms on a West Virginia mountain weren’t gobbling much that May morning but, nevertheless, my game bag was filled when I left for home. That’s because I found a half-dozen dryad’s saddles (Polyporus squamosus) growing on some fallen ashes. A few weeks later, my wife, Elaine, paired this mushroom, also known as “pheasant back,” with a Virginia gobbler to create a delicious stew.
Pursuing both turkeys and edible mushrooms is a delightful way to spend a spring day out in nature. Here’s how to be successful in both endeavors.
Turkey Gobble Sounds
Learning how to effectively call in gobblers is the essence of this pastime. By nature, toms prefer to strut in fields and forest openings, thus luring hens to their side so the male can mount the female and mate. In other words, the gobbler instinctively expects local hens to come to him. So the hunter’s primary challenge is to convince a rooted tom to leave his position and come to ours.
Three of the best sounds to accomplish this chicanery are the purr, cluck, and yelp. Purrs are the soft, subtle sounds (think “purrrrr”) hens utter when they’re feeding along and scratching the forest floor to dislodge insects or uncover hard-mast foods, such as the previous fall’s acorns. I’ll often employ a stick to make it seem like a hen is disturbing the leaf litter.
Clucks are another contented sound, like a turkey is making a “chuck” periodically. Yelps (“yawk, yawk, yawk”) convey a little more urgency and seek to communicate that a nearby hen has heard a tom gobble and is quite excited about him possibly coming to her side. Box calls, pot and pegs, and diaphragms (also known as “mouth calls”) all excel at imitating these sounds.
Habitat Features
The aforementioned Virginia gobbler was strutting (displaying his impressive tail fan) in a field when I first heard him sound off. I moved through the adjoining woods for about 200 yards, coming out on an old logging road around a bend from where the tom continued to gobble. I set up inside the bend, just out of sight of where I knew the old monarch had to be. My mission was simple: Make the gobbler believe that the unseen “hen” was excited to hear him but wasn’t going to leave the tote road area.
For some 20 minutes the gobbler continued to rock the field, and I responded with a variety of purrs, clucks, and yelps, which caused him to respond enthusiastically, although he remained locked to his position. Then I played my trump card. I turned my head away from my quarry and made a series of yelps, as if to indicate that the hen was moving away. A few minutes later, more softer yelps followed, to create the illusion that the hen had moved farther away. That last little bit of deception caused the gobbler to depart the opening for the bend in the road. The shot couldn’t have been easier.
One habitat feature that gobblers like to frequent is a saddle on a mountain or hill. A saddle is basically a dip in the terrain that allows wild animals to travel from one side of an area to the other or, as is often the case, from one hollow to another. Hollows, also known as “coves,” often feature creeks, small streams, or springs that tend to “green up” more quickly in spring than do other places, making them a draw for turkeys.
Flats are another habitat that entice turkeys come spring. Flats, also called “shelves,” are broad areas on mountains or hills that provide places for turkeys and hens to commingle and search for food. Gobblers will come to the sides of flats to send their thundering sounds across a valley.
A third place to concentrate on is some kind of opening, such as a field, pasture, agricultural area, or food plot. Gobblers naturally visit these types of places anyway, so why not set up at a place a turkey wants visit daily? For example, this past spring, I was scheduled to hunt on a Virginia farm that I’d never been to before. I asked the landowner where she often spotted birds, and she pointed to a narrow, linear field that connects two pastures.
I positioned a ground blind where the linear field adjoined the lower pasture. At dawn, I heard lots of gobbling, but I resisted the urge to leave the blind and run to the sources of those sounds. Sooner or later, I knew a gobbler would leave his strutting position and come investigate the timid little “hen” at the field’s edge. To add to the deception, I positioned a hen decoy 20 yards beyond my blind in the lower field. My records show that I downed a tom at 8:37 a.m. at a distance of just 10 yards. He had materialized in front of me after having made no sound for about 20 minutes.
Gearing Up
I always bring a day pack when I go turkey hunting. Inside the pack are the following: a box call, a pot and peg, three or four diaphragms in a case, two flashlights, hunting licenses, extra 12-gauge shells, a range finder, bottled water, an energy bar, and a saw for clearing a place to set up or to cut shooting lanes. I also tote a seat cushion and a hen decoy inside a carrying bag. I bring two locator calls, an owl hooter, and a crow call, as well, to make a tom shock-gobble and betray his position.
Mushroom Targets
The aforementioned dryad’s saddle is one of the easiest spring fungi to identify. It can be up to 18 inches wide, but most of the ones I’ve encountered are about 8 to 9 inches wide with tan or creamy fan-shaped sides and reddish-brown or dark-brown markings. Some of them look as if half a pancake had been left lying on a log.
Yellow morels (Morchella esculenta) and black morels (M. elata) are other edible spring mushrooms. Both are commonly between 3 and 5 inches tall with 2-1/2-inch-wide wrinkled, cone-shaped tops and pale, hollow stems. The yellow version has a brownish-yellow top while the black one has a dirty-brown top. Morels can be found in a wide variety of places. I’ve encountered them in hardwood forests, pine stands, old clear-cuts, and, most commonly, under poplars.
Oysters (Pleurotus ostreatus) begin to appear in mid-fall and continue to grow on dead or dying hardwoods until well into spring. Last autumn, for example, one ash stump on our land reliably produced every six weeks or so from late October through mid-April. Oysters can grow up to 7 inches wide and feature a fan-shaped side. They can be dark brown or creamy white and various shades in between. The anise-like smell aids in identification, but other folks say they can smell fishy or fruity. Their flesh is white. By spring, black beetles with red heads can hit oysters hard. If you find beetles on an oyster, pick these fungi immediately because the beetles can quickly destroy them.
Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) begins to appear at the tail end of many states’ spring gobbler seasons and is a welcome addition to the edible mushroom lineup. Indeed, chickens are, by far, mine and Elaine’s favorite mushroom at any time of the year. This fan-shaped, bright-yellow to bright-orange mushroom can grow up to a foot wide. Another identifier is the yellow or yellow-white flesh. Look for chickens growing on dead or dying hardwoods. A closely related edible species is L. cincinnatus. This chicken has a much paler surface.
Editor’s note: Always confirm your foraged foods before consuming. Lookalikes can be dangerous.
Make our Mushroom and Wild Turkey Recipes.
Bruce and Elaine Ingram co-wrote Living the Locavore Lifestyle about hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits and nuts for food, plus recipes. For more info: BruceIngramOutdoors@gmail.com.
Originally published in the May/June 2025 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.
