Turkey hunting with a bow

[Huckleberry Finn]

Get a guillotine head!

 

[moundhill]

Already have a few bookmarked on Cableas..i might try to pick a pack up at the expo.

 

[brock ratcliff]

Look at the Magnus Bullhead. If you get the smaller head (2 1/2 I think) you can shoot them in the head or body. I've never shot them, but looked at them pretty close at the ATA when they introduced them. They looked to be well made. The blades are angled so that you don't need to use the sleeves as you do on the giloutine. Something to look at.

 

[Gern186]

That's news to me about hitting them high. If you put one in the boiler room he's not going to run far. Do you recommend hitting them at the base of the neck if they are strutting right at you? The head is a very small target and they don't seem to hold still long enough to hit it for me.

 

[rgecko23]

This is where I have been told to aim with the bow....

 

[brock ratcliff]

The "boiler room" is high in relation to the rest of the turkey's body. If they are broadside, I line up with the leg, and go up to three inches or so below the back. If you are low, you break a leg or hip, high you break the spine, on the money you get the lungs. I've never shot one that was facing me, but I would aim between the beard and waddles. Also, I would make adjustments if the bird was facing but turned slightly by aiming off to one side or the other. The lungs are a good distance back when facing from the front and you would need to account for the angle if the bird was not facing exactly square to you. This is why I rarely bowhunt turkeys anymore. There are a LOT of places to hit one that looks perfect but isn't.

 

[Beentown]

I aim for neck/head/waddle.

High is king IMHO.

 

[brock ratcliff]

I've become pretty good friends with M.R. James over the years. If you know who he is, you also know he a pretty serious bowhunter, and hasn't shot anything with a gun for years...cept for yotes. Anyway, he is turkey hunting fanatic. He is still shooting the original Phantom broadheads and shoots turkeys in the head with them. His thought is you just never know what is going to happen with a turkey if you shoot it in the body, but if you shoot at it's head, you either kill it, or you don't. He limits his shots to 15 yards or so, which is relatively simple to do if you are hunting from a blind. The man has more faith in the effectiveness of an arrow than most (he's killed some of the continent's biggest critters with a bow) and yet knows it's often a bad idea to shoot a turkey in the body with an arrow. I have to agree with him.

 

[jagermeister]

The 11 ring on a mckenzie 3d turkey is above the beard right? I would agree with the aim high theory, based on those pictures above.

 

[epe]

One of the biggest birds I had a chance to shoot, I buried a broadhead below his beard. He ran about twenty yards towards the edge of the field, got up about 5 feet off the ground and glided down thru the woods, down into a bottom we did not have permission to hunt on.. After that I took two more by the side, shield spot shot.. They didn't go more than ten yards..