If you can't cut off the flock, watch their path of travel and return the next day. Chances are they'll follow the same path at the same time of day. When studying birds on the move, make it a point to learn why they are moving where they are. This time of year, toms are driven by the need for food, water and shade. Their rut is all but over, so their sex drive has diminished and they are back to focusing on one thing -- survival.

Once you do take a late-season bird, break open the crop to see what they've been feeding on. This is one of the most valuable pieces of information a late-season turkey hunter can acquire. Whatever has attracted that bird will attract more, even in subsequent years. Be where the birds are going and you'll often fill that tag.

4. Aggressive Calling
I'm not a passive hunter. Sometimes this hurts me, but usually my aggressive approach helps close the deal. Turkeys are funny birds. What works on them one season, even from one day to another, may not work at all the next time around. That's why I'm always willing to try and make something happen.

Turkeys have small brains, and though they can be very clever, they don't appear to have a very good memory. By that, I mean they can be called to one morning and not show a bit of interest. The same birds can be called to later in the day or the next morning, in the same spot, and come running to the sounds.

If I can see and hear birds, I'll often hit them with very aggressive sounds. If they don't run at the first sounds, I'll get louder and more aggressive. My turkey vest will have various calls specifically for this reason, to generate loud sounds. Box, slate and diaphragm calls that didn't work yesterday can all of a sudden turn on the birds. Don't be shy when it comes to calling, there's often nothing to lose.

5. Decoy Change-up
Last spring while hunting with a friend, we experimented with several decoy setups.

On this morning, we were a bit too aggressive. Wanting to see how toms reacted to a flock of decoys, we put out five fake decoys consisting of two adult toms in full-strut, two hens and a jake. We also added two mounted birds, a tom and a hen. The spread looked impressive, and we both thought it might work.

Our early-morning calls had toms answering from the roost, and once they hit the ground, you could hear them quickly closing the distance with each approaching gobble. As the first two toms rounded the corner, they pulled their feathers in tight to their bodies, quit gobbling and skirted around our spread. Both were mature birds, and though they hung around the setup for over a half-hour, they never came to within shooting range. The same happened with a pair of other birds. Our setup was a flop.

Going back to the mounted tom and hen at our next setup, a flock of jakes approached, and hammered the tom decoy to pieces. In fact, they ripped its head off before we could run them off. Later, my friend used his new BowTech and made a perfect shot on a lone longbeard that came right in.