Sometimes you have to do crazy things to kill more pheasants, turkeys, ducks and other birds.

Luckily for you, Field & Stream has some oddball tactics to help you out.

Has anyone ever tried and succeeded with any of these oddball tactics? I’ve heard and read about them over the years, yet I’ve never known of anyone who tried them with success. They live on in magazine and web pages, and I am beginning to think they are myths, given eternal life only by writers like myself, who have heard or read about them and repeat them when they are desperate to fill space. I present three here, from most to least plausible, in hopes someone will tell me they work.

Challenge a Hen: When a tom is with hens, one approach is to pick a fight with the boss hen. When she calls, you answer back aggressively. Soon, you’re in an argument, and then, the theory goes, she comes in to fight, dragging the gobbler along with her. I have, a time or two, called to turkeys and had hens lead the way, bringing the gobbler along, but there was no back and forth “fight.” The birds came more out of curiosity than to rumble. The times I have picked fights with hens, there’s been lots of squawking back and forth, but it’s all talk. The hen is happy to stay out of sight, trade insults, then take the gobbler somewhere else. This trick must have worked for someone, sometime, and it should work, but it never does when I’m around. [Continued]