Turkey hunting gear list: what a first-season hunter actually needs

Start with paperwork, not gear

The first three items on any turkey hunting gear list are not gear. They are a hunting license, a turkey tag or permit, and the hunter education certificate your state asks for. Nothing else on this page matters until those are in your pocket, and every one of them is issued by your state, not by a store. Start at our first-season hub, then open your own state wildlife agency's turkey page and read it start to finish.

Hunter education is the piece beginners most often skip, and it is also the cheapest thing on the list. IHEA-USA, the association that coordinates these courses, keeps a state-by-state course finder whose whole purpose is to “Choose a State to FIND A COURSE and Learn Hunter Ed Requirements.” IHEA-USA says hunter education courses “train and certify more than 550,000 students annually” and cover “firearm safety, bowhunting, wildlife management, field care of game, responsible hunting, landowner relations, wildlife identification, and much more.”

Buy the tag at the same time, and read the tagging instructions before opening morning rather than with a bird on the ground. New York tells hunters they “must fill out the tag which comes with your permit and attach it to any turkey you shoot immediately.” Pennsylvania goes further: hunters there “must immediately tag their bird before moving it from the harvest site” and must report the harvest to the Game Commission “within 10 days.” A pen that works in the rain belongs in your vest for exactly this reason.

The checklist

Three tiers. Everything in the first tier is on the list because a spring morning goes badly without it. Everything in the second tier solves a real problem but is not the difference between hunting and not hunting. Everything in the third tier is worth owning eventually and is a poor use of first-season money.

We have not hunted with any of the products on this page. Everything specific below comes from a maker's own page or from a conservation group or state agency, and every one is linked in the sources. Our scoring method explains how the numbers on each pick are produced.

What you actually need, in the order to buy it

1. Your license, tag and hunter education. Covered above. Do this first because some courses fill up months before spring.
2. A shotgun, a choke and one load you have patterned together. You almost certainly do not need a new gun. What you need is to know what the gun you have actually does on paper. Mississippi State University Extension's turkey patterning publication exists for precisely this, and the NWTF frames the reason plainly: “Knowing how it shoots with a specific load and choke at various distances takes the guesswork out of shooting a gobbler.” Work through what choke for turkey hunting to pick a tube that matches your gauge and threads, then how to pattern a turkey gun to prove it. Guns and shells are not sold here and never carry a buy button on this site; chokes are.
3. Clothing that covers you, including face and hands. Florida FWC's turkey safe-hunt page puts the whole clothing rule in one sentence: “When turkey hunting, wear camouflage or drab green and brown clothing, including gloves and a face mask.” The NWTF adds that “a good camo pattern for the terrain you are hunting is essential.” Note what neither says: a brand. Drab clothes you own, plus a mask and gloves, meet the standard. What to wear from the boots up is in what to wear turkey hunting.
4. One call. One. A box call is the usual first call because the motion that makes the sound is large and repeatable. Our picks across every call type are in the best turkey calls for beginners, and the practice path is in how to call a turkey for beginners.
5. Something to sit on. Not a luxury. Vermont Fish & Wildlife tells hunters to “always sit with your back against a tree trunk, big log or a boulder that is wider than your body,” and the NWTF's tree guide says the tree “should be as wide as, or wider than your back and shoulders so that your body outline is concealed.” A cushion or a low chair is what lets you stay against that tree for two hours instead of twenty minutes. Options are compared in the best turkey hunting chairs.
6. The small stuff. Knife, your tag and a pen that writes wet, water, a snack, a headlamp, your phone and a way to navigate. None of it is exciting and all of it gets used.

What to look for in the four you will shop for

Four items on the list are genuine purchases rather than things you already own. Here is the buying rule for each, before any product name.

• A call: a maker that says in writing the call suits beginners, and a surface that survives the weather you hunt in. A plain chalked wood box is fine if you can keep it dry; if spring where you live means rain, buy a box the maker rates for wet use.
• A vest: published pockets for the call types you own, a published weight, a published chest range that includes yours, and a seat. A vest with a seat means you do not buy a seat twice.
• A face mask or gloves: breathable mesh you can wear for three hours in May, adjustment you can make without lifting your hands to your face, and camouflage on both sides. If you wear glasses, buy the mask that says so.
• A choke: the right gauge, a version that fits your barrel's exact thread pattern, and a load rating from the maker that covers the shells you plan to shoot. Buying a tube before you know your thread pattern is the most common way to buy the wrong one.

One honest note on that list: the vest carries its own 2.5 in seat, so if you buy it you can leave the separate chair off your first-year list and add one later if you want a backrest. And if you hunt a 20 gauge or a .410, the choke above is the wrong gauge for you: start from our turkey choke picks and match the gauge and thread pattern first.

What genuinely helps

None of this is required. All of it solves a problem you will actually have.

• A vest. A pack would work. A vest is better because the pockets are laid out for the things turkey hunters carry, and most turkey vests include a seat, which collapses two purchases into one. How to choose between them is in how to choose a turkey vest, and the field is ranked in our turkey vest picks.
• Tick protection. The CDC's tick prevention page says ticks “live in grassy, brushy, or wooded areas,” which describes every place you will sit in April. Its advice is to “treat clothing and gear with products containing 0.5% permethrin” and to use EPA-registered repellents containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus, PMD or 2-undecanone, then to shower within two hours of coming indoors, which it says “has been shown to reduce your risk of getting Lyme disease.”
• A locator call. An owl or crow call makes a gobbler answer without teaching him that a hen is in the area. It is the cheapest way to know which tree to sit near at dawn. See our locator call picks.
• One hen decoy. A single hen gives an incoming gobbler something to walk to that is not you, and it is the lowest-risk decoy to own. Where it goes and how far out is covered in how to set up turkey decoys, and the full field is in our turkey decoy picks.
• Binoculars. Mostly a safety tool. Every agency on this page says to identify the bird before you raise the gun, and glass is how you do that at a distance. What you are looking for is in jake vs tom vs hen.
• A blaze orange bag. Maryland DNR says to “ensure your decoy is not visible when you are transporting it,” and the NWTF says to “never walk with parts of a decoy or harvested bird showing.” A cheap orange game bag covers both jobs.

What to skip in year one

This is the section the catalogs will not write for you. Each of these is a real product that real hunters use. Each is also a poor first purchase, for a specific reason.

• A second and third call type. The temptation is a box, a pot and a mouth call in the first month. The cost is that you get mediocre at three instead of reliable at one, and reliable is what calls a bird in. Buy call number two when call number one sounds the same every time. Our guide to how often to call turkeys is worth more than a second call.
• A strutter or full-fan decoy. This is a safety judgment, not a taste one. The NWTF is blunt about carrying and setting realistic gobbler decoys on shared ground: “exposed parts of the decoy can look like the real thing, provoking an accidental shooting.” A new hunter who is still learning setups does not need the highest-risk decoy in the catalog. Start with a hen.
• A ground blind. A blind is genuinely useful for a bowhunter, a fidgety kid or a hunter who cannot sit still yet, and it is dead weight the rest of the time. A tree wider than your shoulders does the same job for nothing. Our guide to whether you need a blind covers when one earns its place. Note that some states regulate what a blind may be made of: Pennsylvania requires blinds used for turkey hunting to be “manufactured with manmade materials of sufficient density to block movement within the blind from an observer outside the blind.”
• A gobbler or gobble call. Vermont Fish & Wildlife's advice to turkey hunters is “stick with hen calls,” because “a gobbler call might draw in other hunters.” That is the whole argument. It is also why several of the box calls on this site can gobble and we do not tell beginners to use that feature.
• Electronic calls. In some states owning one in the field is an offense. New York says you “may not use an electronic calling or amplifying device to locate or hunt turkeys during the open season,” and Missouri lists “recorded calls (in use or in possession)” among its prohibited spring methods. Check your state before you even consider one.
• A head-to-toe premium camouflage system. Re-read what the agencies actually require: “camouflage or drab green and brown clothing” (Florida FWC), and never red, white, blue or black, which Vermont explains are the colors of a tom's head. Quiet, drab, covered. Brand and pattern are a year-two conversation, and the field is in our turkey camo picks when you get there.

If you want the opposite of this page, the one-pick-per-category version, our starter kit roundup puts a single recommendation in each slot. And the cheapest upgrades of all are the ones that cost nothing: our list of common turkey hunting mistakes fixes more first seasons than any purchase on this page.

What actually goes in the vest on opening morning

A short packing list, because a gear list you cannot carry is a wish list. Everything here fits one turkey vest.

• Your call, plus chalk if it is a traditional chalked wood box
• Locator call, if you own one
• Shells, in the loops, counted before you leave the truck
• Face mask and gloves, in a pocket you can reach sitting down
• Tag, pen, knife and a couple of zip ties
• Water and one thing to eat, because the bird may not arrive until 10 a.m.
• Headlamp, phone, and a map or an offline mapping app
• Blaze orange bag or vest for the walk in and the walk out
• Bug protection and, if you wear them, spare glasses or an anti-fog cloth

Everything else stays in the truck. A first-season hunter who is comfortable and can reach two things without standing up beats a first-season hunter carrying the catalog. The full sit, from tree choice to gun position, is in our turkey hunting setup guide.

The items on this list that are safety items

The NWTF's safety task force found that historically “most incidents were due to mistaken target identification.” Every item in that callout exists to keep you from being mistaken for a turkey, or to keep you from mistaking something else for one.