The Turkey Hunter Podcast With Andy Gagliano | Turkey Hunting Tips, Strategies, And Stories

In preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, here are 3 quick and easy wild turkey recipes.  First up, we have wild turkey poppers.  I think they are called poppers because they are so good they'll make your eyes will pop out of your head. Second, we have a wild turkey thigh and leg wild rice soup. This soup is delicious and simple to make. And, last but not least, is wild turkey steaks. This very easy recipe is one of my favorites because it is absolutely delicious. Listen in and pick a recipe to prepare some wild turkey for your family this Thanksgiving. Even if you don't have enough wild turkey to feed everyone, you can make a great first course or appetizer with 1/2 of a turkey breast. Also, if you have a favorite wild turkey recipe, please send it to me.  I'll try it, of course, but I'll also share it with The Turkey Hunter family as well. Listen in to this week's episode.  I hope you enjoy it, and I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

In this episode I take you on a little field trip to the shooting range to pattern my new turkey hunting shotgun. I shoot 3 different chokes and two different shotgun shells through each choke tube to see which choke and shotgun shell patterns the best.  

My birthday has come and gone, and my new turkey hunting shotgun has been tricked out with all of my birthday gifts from my family members. I've gotten it ready to take to the range, and I'll be doing that this coming weekend. I'll also be recording that sighting/shooting session for future playback on the show. In addition to all of this gun talk, I also have more gun talk for you in this week's episode as I answer questions about shotguns from a listener and relative newbie to the sport of turkey hunting. Listen in!

Today I have a quick tip for our new turkey hunters, and that is to try to start thinking more like a turkey when hunting. We can never know what a turkey is thinking with 100% certainty, but I can with 100% certainty tell you that it is related to at least one thing.  That one thing is either food/water, shelter/cover, safety, and the need to breed. If we start out knowing what the turkeys want is that simple, then we can start to pay more attention to our surroundings and the woods that we are hunting in to find more turkeys. If we can think more like a turkey, then we should be able to find more turkeys.  If we can find more turkeys, then we should be able to tag more turkeys.

I recently bought a new shotgun, and I'm now ready to turn that new shotgun into a new turkey hunting shotgun. There are some very simple and inexpensive modifications that one can make to a shotgun to turn it into a dedicated turkey hunting shotgun. Some of the modifications I am making to this gun are replacing the wooden stock with a lightweight synthetic stock, adding rifle sights to the barrel, adding spacers to the stock for proper fit, a new recoil pad, sling swivel tube cap, a neoprene sling, and of course a turkey choke. Listen in as I talk about the upcoming modifications and my reasons for making those mods. This will be an ongoing short term project, and I will be recording follow up episodes to cover new information as I weed through shotgun shell and turkey choke combinations to find the perfect shooting one for this gun.

Scott Lerich, Regional Biologist with the NWTF, and I discuss Merriam's wild turkeys in this week's episode.  We talk about the extensive travel by the Merriam's turkeys, their vocal nature, where to find them in the fall and spring, and what makes them unique and their own subspecies of wild turkeys. Listen in and get some tips on where you can find birds in the fall and spring, and hopefully this episode will help you to put a tag on a bird this coming season.

A replay of one of my favorite episodes of the show where I have my buddy, John, on the show to tell the story of The Texas Decoy Massacre. I also have some wild turkey news bites for you as well.

Finding wild turkeys in the fall can be fairly difficult because as turkey flocks get larger for the winter there are fewer flocks of turkeys to locate.  Obviously, if you can't find turkeys, then you can't kill turkeys. So, in this week I talk about finding wild turkeys in the fall by looking for their food sources and water sources as well. Wild turkeys concentrate primarily on preparing for what can be a long hard winter by eating foods high in protein and fats.  These foods can be found in fields and in the woods, and the turkeys know exactly where to locate those food sources.  The key to finding success in the fall turkey woods is for you to know exactly where to locate those food sources as well. Water can be another great place to locate turkeys in the fall for areas that get little rainfall that time of year.  Wild turkeys must have water to survive.  When a drought comes along and causes the mud puddles and small ditches and creeks to dry up, the turkeys will start traveling to find water or traveli

Episode 100 of The Turkey Hunter podcast is kind of a big deal, so we are doing something a little unique to celebrate. This week the tables are turned, and Cameron (The Turkey Hunter podcast intern) is interviewing me (The Turkey Hunter podcast host) in this episode. Listen in as I tackle the Rapid Fire Q&A and answer several other questions that Cameron has written to ask me.

This week I'm going to cover a turkey hunting strategy for spring and fall. Try this strategy during both seasons when things aren't quite going your way, and see if this unconventional trick may help you to fill a tag.

In this episode, I bust 3 more turkey hunting myths.  1. Turkeys won't go downhill. 2. A spooked turkey equals a ruined hunt. 3. Calling is everything. Newbie turkey hunters are often turned away from turkey hunting because they feel like there is just too much to the sport to learn and master. They hear us experienced turkey hunters say turkeys won't do this and turkeys don't do that. The truth of the matter is that turkeys are wild animals and they will do whatever they feel like doing at the time. Let's face it, that is why we turkey hunt to start with.

In this week's episode of The Turkey Hunter, I share a quick PSA regarding the Under Armor Hunt and Sarah Bowmar break up. 

In this episode, Mike Schiavone with the New York DEC discusses the science behind setting turkey hunting seasons and bag limits. With turkey populations on the decline in many parts of the country, our state wildlife biologists and game and fish department officials have a difficult task of setting the length of our turkey hunting seasons and setting our bag limits as well.  The difficulty comes in when trying to manage the population of the animals and keeping hunters happy as well.  Mike Schiavone is one of the people tasked with that difficult assignment in the state of New York, and he shares the factors that go into setting turkey hunting season length and bag limits. Mike also shares the reasons he thinks turkey populations are on the decline in many parts of the state of NY, and he leaves us with some opportunities that we hunters can take advantage of to help our game and fish departments better do their jobs. Listen in and enjoy episode 096 - The Science Behind Setting Turkey Hunting Seasons and Bag

In this week's episode, I speak with Jenna Barron to hear and answer the story of and questions from a newbie turkey hunter. Jenna has never hunted before, and she has a burning desire to get into the woods to turkey hunt this fall.  I asked Jenna to come on to the show to share her story as to why she wants to start hunting at this point in her life, and to see if I can help to get her a little higher up that learning curve that all of us turkey hunters have experienced in our turkey hunting careers.                   Tags: Turkey Hunting, Turkey Hunter, Wild turkeys, turkey hunting Washington, the turkey hunter podcast, fall turkey hunting, beginner turkey hunter

After doing a good bit of research and talking to the boys, we have made some decisions about our 2017 spring turkey hunt.  Listen in to this week's episode to learn how we weeded out at least 1 (and possibly 2) state from our very aggressive plan of attacking 4 states in the spring of 2017.  I also discuss the results of the conversations that I had with a couple of the game biologists in 2 of those states as well.

In this week's episode, I let you in on the beginning stages of my planning the 2017 spring turkey hunting trip out of state. This year, my buddies and I plan on hunting in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. 4 of us killing a bird in each state will take a great deal of luck and skill as well as a great deal of careful planning before we ever leave home. Over the next couple of episodes, I'm going to take you through the process of planning next year's hunt with me.  From talking to wildlife biologists, park rangers, and NWTF biologists to choosing dates to ironing out the logistics of the hunt, you will get to hear exactly what my buddies and I go through in planning one of the incredible hunts that we do each year.

In today's episode, I list 6 tasks to do today to kill more turkeys this season.  

This week I have a couple of new and exciting products that I want to introduce to you in the World Deer and Turkey Expo interviews that I conducted this past weekend.  In this episode, you will hear of a great new product that I think all of us turkey hunters will want to check out. Phil Bullock with Bunkerhead joins me to discuss the Bunkerhead facemask system. The Bunkerhead system effectively keeps your facemask off of your face by clipping onto the bill of your ball cap.  This system is great for those turkey hunters who do not like the feel of a facemask on their noses and faces, but it is also good for those hunters who wear eyeglasses. I also interview Tom Hurlburt with Knockdown Outdoors about their new smartphone application that acts as a digital signout board for your hunting property. This awesome new app has a text feature built into it that will enable you to text with your hunting buddies through the app as well as weather and wind direction.  I highly recommend you download the Knockdown Ou

It is time for a one week summer vacation, so this week's show is a "Best Of" replay of one of my favorite episodes. I have the replay of my interview of Fall Turkey Hunting with Dogs with JT Byrne.  I really learned a lot during this interview with JT, and that is why it is one of my favorite interviews. JT's passion for fall turkey hunting with dogs really comes out in this interview as well. Listen in, and I'm sure you will enjoy the interview as much as I did recording it.

In today's episode, I am discussing wild turkey diseases with Heather Fenton with the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in Athens, GA. Dr. Fenton discusses Avian Pox, Blackhead Disease, Lympho Proliferative Disease, Salmonella, and other diseases that affect wild turkeys.  We also discuss the symptoms of the diseases, the causes of the diseases, and the mortality rates of turkeys that get the diseases. In addition, we discuss the likelihood that those diseases can be spread to humans, precautions to take while handling a bird we suspect to be diseased (as well as birds that we are cleaning/processing), what to do if we harvest a bird that we suspect to be diseased. While there is nothing we, as hunters, can do to cure a bird that is diseased, we can help to do a few things to prevent the further spread of these wild turkey diseases. One of the ways that we can prevent the spread of diseases in wild turkeys is to avoid artificial feeding of birds. Artificially feeding wild turkeys concentrates bi