Unique gifts for turkey hunters who already own the obvious stuff

How we picked

We have not carried or used any of these items. On 2026-09-22 we read each maker's own product page and scored every item against the published rubric for its category on our methodology page. For this page in the gift section we then filtered for one thing: would the recipient plausibly have bought this for themselves already?

Everything here failed that filter in the right direction. These are the second-order items — the ones a hunter thinks about in the truck on the way home and forgets by the time they are back at a computer. That is exactly the gap a gift fills. If your recipient does not yet own the first-order things, start with our best gifts for turkey hunters instead.

Why hunters never buy these themselves

Turkey gear has an obvious tier and a forgotten tier. The obvious tier is calls, decoys, a vest, boots. Hunters buy that themselves, usually in February, usually with strong opinions. The forgotten tier is everything that supports the obvious tier: the spare striker that gives a pot call a second voice, the bag that keeps decoys out of sight on the walk in, the paper targets that turn “my gun probably shoots fine” into a known pattern, the sling that stops a shotgun cutting into a shoulder on a two-mile walk out.

None of it is hard to choose, and none of it is exciting enough to survive a hunter's own shopping cart. Which makes every item on this list a better gift than it looks on a shelf.

The seven gifts, side by side

Every value links to the page it came from. A dash means the maker does not publish that figure — common on handmade calls and strikers, where no two pieces of wood weigh the same.

Locator calls: the gift with a story

A locator call does not sound like a turkey at all. It sounds like a crow, an owl or a hawk, and the point is to startle a gobbler into answering so a hunter knows where he is standing before daylight. It is the most interesting object on this list to explain to someone who does not hunt, and hunters who own fifteen turkey calls often own no locator at all.

The Quaker Boy Crankin' Crow is the straightforward one: an acrylic barrel with a Mylar reed that Quaker Boy says “creates every crow sound easily and accurately” and calls “extra loud.” The Phelps Triple Locator is the clever one: one acrylic body with three grooves for an owl scream, a pileated woodpecker and a hawk scream, and Phelps publishes blowing instructions for each groove on its own product page. Neither one needs a size, a measurement or a gun.

If you want to understand what you are buying before you buy it, the NWTF's guide to locator calls and how they make turkeys gobble is short and plain, and our best locator call picks rank every locator in our registry with the maker's claims attached.

Small gifts that do real work

Two picks here are small enough to fit in an envelope and still change a morning. The Knight & Hale Hickory One-Piece Striker is a hand-turned, flared-tip hickory striker; drop it into a pot call the hunter already owns and the call has a second voice, which is genuinely useful on a bird that has stopped answering the first one. Knight & Hale says it “creates a smooth, rich sound,” and covers it for a year. It only makes sense as a gift if the recipient runs a pot call — if you are not sure, our pot call picks show what one looks like.

The Allen EZ Aim turkey patterning target is a six-pack of 12 in paper targets that Allen says were “developed to test how your turkey shotgun patterns.” Patterning is the single highest-value hour a turkey hunter spends before a season, and almost nobody has targets in the truck when the mood strikes. Give them with how to pattern a turkey gun and the gift includes the reason to use it. Note the honest limit: at 12 in square, a wide pattern at 40 yards will run off the paper.

How to choose between them

Match the gift to how the person hunts. Someone who hunts late May in the South, or anywhere with standing water, gets the most out of the Thermacell EX90: Thermacell publishes a 20-foot zone, a 9-hour run time, an IP54 rating and a lanyard with a carabiner so it hangs off a limb, and the rechargeable models avoid carrying butane cartridges. The counter-argument is real too — a battery has to be charged the night before, while a fuel cartridge does not care how long it sat in a truck. Our guide to using a Thermacell for turkey hunting covers both sides.

Someone who walks a long way to hunt gets the most out of the Allen Endura sling or the decoy bag. Someone who hunts the same field every year and never leaves the truck for more than 400 yards will use the locator and the striker more. And someone who has never once shot their turkey gun at paper — which is more hunters than you would think — gets the targets.

If the recipient is new to all of this rather than deep into it, the picks on this page are the wrong shape for them. Our gifts for new turkey hunters starts from the first call instead.

Check these before you order

• The sling needs somewhere to attach. Allen's own copy says the sling “does not need swivels to function effectively” in one line and “SWIVELS TESTED” in the next, and lists no swivels as included. If their shotgun has no sling studs, this is a project rather than a gift.
• A striker needs a pot call. It is a beautiful little object and completely useless to someone who only runs a box call or a mouth call.
• A decoy bag needs decoys. The X-Slot is built for up to six full-body decoys; a hunter who carries one folding hen does not need a six-slot backpack.
• Repellent products are regulated. Check the EPA's own repellent search tool if the recipient has concerns about what they are using, and follow the label.
• Ask for a gift receipt. None of these need a size, but the sling and the striker both depend on gear you may not have seen. A receipt makes a wrong guess costless.

The common thread across all seven is that they are additive. None of them replaces a decision the hunter has already made about their call, their vest or their gun, which is what makes a gift land well with someone who has been doing this for years.