Pennsylvania hunters are blessed with huge tracts of public land where wild turkeys abound, yet outsmarting a wily tom may also involve playing chess with other hunters. Matt Van Cise is a Mossy Oak ProStaff hunter, champion competitive caller, and expert on public land gobblers. In this post on the Mossy Oak website, he lays out a plan for Keystone birds and other Eastern states with large public tracts of land:

I’ve been calling competitively since 1996 and hunting turkeys for more than 22 years. There are numbers of turkey hunters in Pennsylvania, and plenty of public lands where hunters can take wild turkeys there. Many hunters can find 200,000 acres to hunt relatively close to home. The secret to hunting public land is to not hunt in the most-obvious places, like many hunters do, and some turkey hunters hunt the same areas year after year.

Right now, our turkey population in Pennsylvania is very good. You can walk almost any ridge top or stop on any dirt road, call and hear a turkey gobble. Many hunters go to the same region and park in the same place every day they hunt. They leave their trucks there, walk into the woods and call the same way each day. I try to go into places where other hunters aren’t hunting by simply steering clear of other hunters’ vehicles. Each morning I …