MYTHBUSTERS: ROOSTED IS ROASTED
Turkey Season is around the corner and the ADK Outdoors crew is out scouting in earnest, this means a vital thing for us….roosting turkeys.
Each year this argument comes up everywhere and I frankly get a kick out of it. What gets me chuckling the most is how outspoken the pros are about saying that roosting turkeys doesn’t mean they are roasted, as well as how shy they are about saying the opposite.
Well….here at ADK Outdoors, we aren’t afraid to say anything. So I am gunna dip my toes into the argument. I believe that roosting IS roasting. I believe that for a lot of reasons but let’s dive in.
When people refer to “Roosted is Roasted” they are talking about the fact that when you are able to locate a turkey on the roost the evening before a hunt, you basically guarantee a harvest in the morning. The issue with the moniker is that there are no guarantees in hunting. I’ll go out of my way to acknowledge that right now. Know that nothing is certain I think ititss fair to say that a gaunt in the hunting world is commonly being referred to as a hunt with a pretty high chance of success.
Now I have to bang on my chest for a minute. I have a pretty high success rate when it come to turkey hunting. Most of my hunts involve an encounter of some kind whether it be a harvest, or convertible opportunity, or even a miss (that’s for you buddy). In saying that, I know that some of my crew and friends with lower success rates are great turkey hunters. What I believe sets me apart is my scouting. I do a ton of it, and most of that is roosting.
When I locate a bird, I make note of it or pin it on a map with the date and time, I than make a point to go back and look for that Bir din the evening and get it roosted. Barring a predator or human encounter that evening I know that bird will be there in the morning. If I can make that successful scouting trip happen the morning before a hunt. it usually turns into a shot.
Now, I said that I DO believe roosting is roasting. Here’s the part where I will slightly side with my brethren on it not being roasting. Just because I have that bird roosted and I know where is is in the morning, does not mean i’m going to shoot him right off the tree. Often I do, but sometimes I don’t. What does often happen is that if I don’t shoot him off the tree, I kill him later in the day so long as he gets off his hens before the bell rings at noon in NY. However, I know, that if I do kill him later in the day, it’s because I roosted him.
When I am not killing the same bird I roosted because he’s henned up, Im moving to a different bird, that I also have roosted. It is very rare for me to be hunting a bird that I have not scouted beforehand. The turkey season is short and more-so than deer hunting it is a results-oriented hunt.
In a nutshell, make the time to scout your birds. Anyone can go out in the woods and get lucky on a bird. If you end up close to one, you have a good chance of killing it, so why not take the time to go roost one and make sure that you are in fact close enough. Scouting for turkeys is easy, you can do it on your way to work. Leave a few minutes early and take the back way. Set aside 20 minutes before dark and check on them in the tree. The results will speak for itself.
