Turkey memory??

say if u shot and missed at a turkey will he remember that for a while and not come to that spot and how long might it take for them to come back to that area?? thanks

I know where two are that I hope forget real quick....

With a brain the size of a walnut (or less), I'm not too sure what they can remember.

I'm glad you asked this question so I didn't have to

They can remember! There have been plenty I've hunted that after having busted me at some point by slipping up behind me or in any way relating my calls to ME, or calls coming from a dangerous direction (where they have been shot at or spooked) , upon hearing said calls thereafter, will make a hasty retreat in the opposite direction off the roost, or will just plain shut up..
I call that memory...when a bird persistently avoids a particular call that he previously came into and subsequently made the call-human connection...that's memory. Walnut or not.

Simply missing one and having the bird only hear the shot won't get you in much trouble. He only knows that he heard a loud noise like thunder after a close lightening strike. Chances are he's heard that before.

What will stress the bird out would be if he identified the noise with a predator. If he sees or senses you during the shot process, he'll add that to his memory banks. If no connection to a predator was made, he'll likely forget the incident in a few days.

I had such an incident a few years ago. I missed a bird on the fourth day I'd been hunting him, but he never made the human connection with the sound of the shot. I let him alone for five days and killed him within 50 yards of where I'd missed him. On that day he gobbled at least 50 times coming to the gun, and it was the same bird. His distinctive gobble was unmistakable.

Very True. I think the very worse thing that can happen is for him to link a predator to a fake turkey call. Once this happens he doesn't soon forget that call, however, there are some things you can do to sometimes get around it, and that is use different calls or even more unorthodox methods such as leaf scratching, circling and calling from a different direction than where he got spooked, or patterning him and waiting where he likes to go without calling and bushwhacking him.

straightshooter said:

Simply missing one and having the bird only hear the shot won't get you in much trouble. He only knows that he heard a loud noise like thunder after a close lightening strike. Chances are he's heard that before.

What will stress the bird out would be if he identified the noise with a predator. If he sees or senses you during the shot process, he'll add that to his memory banks. If no connection to a predator was made, he'll likely forget the incident in a few days.

I had such an incident a few years ago. I missed a bird on the fourth day I'd been hunting him, but he never made the human connection with the sound of the shot. I let him alone for five days and killed him within 50 yards of where I'd missed him. On that day he gobbled at least 50 times coming to the gun, and it was the same bird. His distinctive gobble was unmistakable.

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Last friday a buddy of mine called me at 4:00 and said that he saw a strutter and 4 hens in his horse pasture when he got home from school but couldn't find any 12ga shells so he grabbed his 20 and some 7 1/2 shot, he led a horse down toward the bird and the tom didn't come out of strutt until he got to 30 yards, he shot three times and never cut a feather. He had just walked back to his barn and was talking to me on the phone and the bird started gobbling about 100 yards from the field. I was about to leave the house to go hunting so i told him id bring him my turkey gun and we would try to call him up. What had happened was the hens flew one way and he flew the other, he was trying to get back with them. By the time i arrived 20 min later the bird was back in the pasture he had shot at him in 30 minutes earlier. We circled around and got between him and the hens and he answered the first two calls i made. After that we never heard a peep, a farmer brought some hay for the horses so we figure that he ran the bird out of the pasture, and we opted to wait and try the bird one morning at the end of this week at daylight.