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I knew I may be in for a long sit and would need to be patient, so I opted to hunt from a ground blind. The weather was fair, with chilly 40-degree mornings giving way to sunny, 70-degree afternoons. The significant temperature swing, along with my decision to hunt in a blind heavily impacted my choice of apparel. I opted to wear the lightweight ScentLok Savanna Aero Crosshair Pant and Savanna Aero Raid Hoodie in Mossy Oak Terra Gila over a basic black ScentLok BE:1 Trek Base Merino Wool Shirt and Bottom.

Man and mother nature delivers many objects that can detour a hunt from going the way the hunter has planned. When these incidents happen, turkey hunters often want to throw their hands up and wait until another day. Instead, hunters need to shake it off and keep hunting with perseverance. Below are three obstacles that could end a turkey hunt, but why they shouldn't.

When chatting with Jennings, who has been successfully bowhunting turkeys in recent years, he explained a few tactics that he tries to do that could help hunters get up close and personal with a mature gobbler this spring when bowhunting.

Whatever the reasons, most hunters agree that the gobbling of a mature tom is what keeps their blood pumping in the spring turkey woods. One of the only times a hunter does not enjoy the sound of a turkey gobbling is after sitting for a decent length of time while calling, only to realize that the gobbler is hung up and won’t come any closer. Several things can cause a gobbler to hang up or not respond to calls, but let’s talk about ways to prevent it from happening in the first place.

One of the challenges that summertime predator callers often face is that of controlling human scent. Coyotes are known to have one of the best senses of smell of any animal that is hunted.

The rut was just starting to heat up and bucks were cruising. Like so many of my hunts during the rut, I was planning to sit all day. It was one of the first colder days of the season; temperatures were in the low thirties, but it was supposed to warm up a bit in the afternoon. I chose the ScentLok BE:1 Voyage Jacket and Pant for these conditions because the tailored, single-layer system has an ideal warmth-to-weight ratio.

The rut was in full swing and I was planning an all-day sit. It was cold in the morning – somewhere in the high teens – but I knew it was going to warm up into the mid-thirties in the middle of the day. It had also been dead calm the first few hours in the mornings and in the evenings.

Having the right equipment is crucial to success, no matter what you are doing. When deer hunting late season, having the right gear to keep you warm, comfortable, and scent-free can be the deciding factor as to whether your tag goes on a mature buck or in the trash at the end of the year.

To help get advice and tips on what to look for, when to scout, and where to hang the best treestands, I recently talked with Jason Say of Wired Outdoors T.V. to see how he closes the deal on mature bucks each year.

The proof that scents and lures work to bring in mature bucks has always been debated among believers and non-believers. Using scents and lures to attract deer and using a scent elimination system to destroy odors can be confusing and, if not done correctly, can seem as if they are pointless. However, if one provides the scent that deer want to smell and destroys the odors that can spook them, they will see that both do, in fact, work.