"Every bird is different in how he will respond to pressure," Sullivan said, "but the one thing you can pretty much count on is that he will not be as vocal. He won't be gobbling nearly as much as he was before he felt pressure, and that would apply to locator calls, gobbling on the roost, or gobbling on the ground in response to other birds. He's going to get a lot more tight-lipped, and that is especially true on public lands. If you are listening for a gobble, you need to listen hard, because he may only give you a couple of them to let you know he is there."

That requires a lot of concentration; especially since the humid, heavily vegetated Florida environment can muffle the call of a gobbler even as close as 100 yards, and it gets more humid and more vegetated the farther we get towards summer.

Hunters need their ears in peak condition, and some savvy hunters have found that hearing enhancement products are major assets. There are a number on the market and most work. These are, essentially, battery-powered "hearing aids" for hunters that slip easily into or onto the ears (depending upon the model) and magnify ambient sounds while providing a blocking circuit that cuts out loud, sudden noises -- like your shotgun going off after you called in the gobbler you heard. Such hearing enhancement products can work well during the late season, when gobblers talk far less than they do during the early season. Miss one of their few calls and you may not be aware that a huntable bird is in that area.

On the other hand, enhanced hearing products might inform you that there aren't any huntable birds in your spot. Even if you found birds there previously, that may be a sign you need to shift hunting areas. But you may not have to go far to find those birds.

"Gobblers may move their roosting areas in response to hunting pressure, and might even alter their normal daily travel routine," Sullivan stated, "but it is seldom a lengthy move. They are not like whitetail bucks, which will move into the thickest terrain they can find. Turkeys don't even like thick terrain, and don't want to be in it.

"A bird may shift his home range slightly, but it will be to other suitable turkey habitat," he added. "That could easily be a half-mile away -- maybe even a mile -- but I haven't seen any more drastic movements than that, and even those may not happen under pressure. It is quite possible for even a heavily pressured bird to stay in his home area and just not talk much. But he will still be looking for hens. He's still a gobbler in the breeding season, and he is going to try to breed."

Regardless of when you get started during the season, the objective is still the same. You cannot take gobblers if you cannot see them, so finding where they are is always an important key. Just how you do that during the later season can vary.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," Sullivan noted, "and if I had been hunting during the early season and had located birds through tracks, strut marks, droppings and locator calls, that is a spot I would want to check for late season birds. Just look for the same signs and determine if they are fresh."

If that survey turns up zip, you may not need to make radical shifts of terrain to find birds. Often, simply finding suitable habitat adjacent to an area -- maybe less than a half-mile away -- that has not been hunted is enough to reveal where the gobblers have gone.