How do you know whether or not you are hunting pressured turkeys? Well, if you live in northeast Pennsylvania, you are hunting pressured turkeys.

It's not just two-legged hunters who are pressuring turkeys. Humans and every four-legged predator in the woods would love to kill and eat a turkey. Even when a turkey is roosting in a tree, it should do so with one eye open.Are turkeys brilliant, savvy birds who stay up nights thinking of ways to outsmart us? No. Their brains are the size of walnuts. They aren't as "smart: as we are, but because something is always hunting them, they are extremely, ridiculously wary.The first time I hunted turkeys, I was so optimistic that I figured I could get one using my bow. I hunted with a guy named Tom Umland, born in the Bronx but transplanted south. We flung a camouflaged piece of burlap on a barbed-wire fence and sat behind it, looking out over a pasture.Turkeys gobbled at daybreak and I got a glimpse of a beautiful gobbler across the pasture strutting for his hens. After that, nothing happened for about five hours. I remember that I was amusing myself by watching huge red ants crawl on a green vine in front of me; I could see through their abdomens. I was bored out of my mind."Now we wait," Tom had said at daybreak, as the turkeys left. "He knows we're here, he's seen the decoys and he'll be back."Suddenly, there he was, coming back as Tom had predicted. He was careening to us over the meadow hills like one of the icons from the Scrubbing Bubbles commercials, all fanned and covering ground smoothly, pirouetting like a wind-up toy.When he came to the decoys, he turned his back towards me, with his tail fanned, meaning he couldn't see around it. I got the bow drawn and shot, and he dropped kicking on the spot.Huh, I was thinking. This turkey hunting thing? It's easy.And then for the next seven years, I didn't get a turkey, and here's why - I approached it like it was easy. It can seem so, for brief moments, but for the most part you better be paying attention.Am I an expert? No, but I've hunted with many turkey-calling experts and learned a lot from them. Here are some tidbits of advice I've learned from turkey hunting gurus like Bo Pitman (White Oak Plantation, Alabama), Doug Crabtree (Ohio turkey calling champion) and Gary Sefton (Knight & Hale game calls):"When the sun comes up and it gets warm, turkeys will try to find a place to loaf and get away from the heat. If it's sunny and hot, say 70 degrees by 10 a.m., hunt turkeys in shaded areas; if it's raining, look for them in open fields." Gary Sefton"Use your binoculars more than you use your calls. Scout your hunting area so that you know the parts of the terrain that will change the way turkeys move. When hens have gone to their nests, you'll find gobblers walking ridges like bucks, trying to find hens." Bo Pitman"Turkeys have better hearing than we do, so start by calling quietly. But adjust to the situation, for example, call more loudly during rain or wind. Your scouting and knowledge of the land is much more important than your calling. Think more about how to get the bird, not about how to get him to gobble." Doug Crabtree