Turkey Decoys - When to use what?

[Hockley]

Long response here, but you asked a lot

My strategy will depend on the place moreso than time of year. The majority of my hunting has been at a few places in the south zone, and a few places in the hill country. Everything below is based on my experiences there. On those specific places, south zone birds have been more responsive to decoys.

When I use decoys, a ¾ strut jake, a feeder hen, and an upright hen have killed probably 75% of the birds I’ve either killed or helped with killing. I’ve got the DSD white face jake, but also killed a pile off the Avian jake. Once that Avian blow-up doll got popped by some spurs I upgraded to the DSD. Both work though.

Birds respond way more to the jake than the hen decoys. Some hens absolutely hate the upright hen. Mine has sharpie colored eyeballs right now bc the paint has been pecked away by a number of hens. I have to repaint her multiple times each season. She also has a split down her back from a Sutton county tom that tried to breed her for over an hour one morning. I’ve never seen a bird in a trance like that. On the flip side, my jake has been pecked or spurred by almost every tom that’s committed and come in. He also has some love juice on him from some Kansas Easterns that got frisky with him.

At my lease in the hill country, the birds are extremely decoy shy. We have a decent population, and by the time season comes in, they’ve been gobbling and fighting for a while, so I think they just give each other space. My theory, based on what I’ve observed anyways.

I’ve called in piles of birds there, and if they see a jake or strutter decoy, most of the time they’ll go elsewhere. I quit trying to use decoys there a few years ago. If I bring a decoy, I usually only run one feeder hen, 20-40 yards past me, so I’m in between the bird and the hen decoy. It’s fairly open and I give them something to look at when they get to where they should be able to see something. If he sees her, starts strutting and expecting her to come to him, he’s in range already, which is bad news for him.

I called in a bird one time that shied away from a hen decoy. He went down a rise. I crawled and took the decoy down, called him back in and killed him about 20 min. later. He wouldn’t come close at all when the decoy was there. Once it was down, he came right in looking for the calling.

I bet I’ve tried a strutter on 40 hunts and have only killed one bird off it. I’ve tried it right off the roost, midday, afternoon, in known strutting fields, etc. Most of them seem to go the other way when they see it. I haven’t seen the responses to the strutters that other guys do. I’ve tried with both jake fans and full fans on the DSD jake strutter decoy.

I don’t think the red face vs. white face matters very much. I’ve been a part of a lot of killing off both. IMO the tom seeing a jake with a couple hens elicits an aggressive response either way, so I don’t think the head matters much there. I don’t have an opinion on strutter faces given the above paragraph.

Like Clay said, it's a guess, but that's what makes it fun

Excellent post. I've killed my share fair of turkeys, but I picked up several things out of there that will help. I've also seen the birds down south work a decoy much better than the birds in the Hill Country.

[KenWood]

I pay attention to what I see on my way to the lease and my cell cams. If I see large groups of hens I use a few uprights and a few feeders. If I am seeing a lot of jakes, I don't use a jake at all. The old saying that a band of jakes gang up on toms is true. If you have a lot of jakes they will hang up a good ways out or just leave. If I get pics of a single hen, I use a single hen. all depends on what they are doing at the time. If toms are grouped up I will sometimes use a strutter. I rarely use a strutter because I have had more toms run away than anything. I think Rios aren't as hot headed as Easterns. Maybe the strutter works better for them. I wouldn't know, never hunted them. I only hunt with a bow so I set my decoys at 6-8 yards. I have had them drumming up against the blind shaking the whole thing! That's all I got. Not a pro turkey hunter but I do alright if I am around some.

[jomw10]

I only use a Jake. From my limited experience, if the tom is committed he will come running to fight the Jake.
I'm not good at calling, so I only do occasionally and completely stop if I hear a gobbler close by.

[Smart]

I'm no JFT but we do alright. I hunted for a lot of years with cheap foam decoys and mostly just a single hen. I did have a cheap foam jake but it just didn't elicit much response. I had some decent success with them but it wasn't till I added a 3/4 jake by Dakota and eventually a DSD jake (at the badgering of JFT) that the decoy show kicked off. I hunt from a popup with my bow in hot turkey areas of our lease that, after 16 years on the place, we know usually holds some birds. Because of that, I can use decoys more than the average run and gun hunter. 2-3 of us might have 4-6 popups set up on various parts of the lease the days we are there. Since there is no dedicated roost on our place our birds will roost wherever they are on the lease that evening. We have even had them roost in the trees at camp. They could be anywhere and in several groups. That is why we create so many choices of blind setups through the years. The good thing about that is several of our members can be successful on a single morning without messing the others up .

Minimum I will have a DSD 3/4 jake and a standing hen decoy wise. Maximum would be a feeder hen, standing hen, a 3/4 jake and a laying down mating hen with the jake behind or at least around the mating hen. If I can get a Tom to see my jake in either scenario, and he is solo you can almost bet he's coming in to whip some azz and that's the show I like that you get from hunting with decoys. I love to hunt them that way and capture the video of it all going down with the bow shot. Last year I added a mating motion jake to the mix and that added a whole other element to it with motion. I killed my Tom with 1-5/8" spurs over him last year. He came in on a string after he found us and was not happy Fake Jake was trying to pick up on his girlfriends. I look forward to putting him to work in future years when he's needed over the standard 3/4s.

I think you mentioned calling as well OP or maybe somebody else did down lower. I use a David Halloran Twisted Sister pot call, crystal over glass, and a mouth call. I have various strikers of his and use those to change up my sound if needed. The mouth call is for in-close work, especially if I am not in a popup or have my bow in my hand at the time and need to call for some odd reason. The amount I call depends on the situation. I prefer to have them answer me a time or two and then I'll try to shut up and let them come find me. I will get back on if its been a long time and they haven't made it in yet. We don't have giant open clean pastures like a lot of farming places with waterways. We have large openings in our woods. We work with what we have. Because of that, I've also called them in like a duck all the way to where I know they finally see my dekes. When they are hot and heavy and seem to be searching or have passed me up in an area where the dekes aren't always as easy to see in the west Texas brush, I'll stay with them lightly until they do see me. I guess you could say it varies. I'm sure I have ruined a couple of hunt by calling to much and some by not calling enough because of our landscape.

So in short decoy wise, its a DSD jake and standing/feeder hen most of the time .....if they have some decent group of hens still together, I'll pull out the Jake, feeder, standing and mating hen. If those don't work I'll now add the motion jake over the hen and remove the 3/4 to see if that will make them commit If you told me I could only hunt with one decoy, it would be my "Fake Jake" 3/4 strut. They just seem to hone in on him and fight the heck out of him. I don't own a strutter. Saw Clay and PoPo use them with some success but I think I'll just not kill a turkey before I drag that thing around.. Some of yall probably saw these videos from another post but here are couple of my favorites of birds fighting decoys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_iktM-Wu38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbE0UAQ5ej8&t=25s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dvn9DN8GM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8SlLj-qdzA

[Smart]

Almost forgot this gem. Here is a video where I had already killed a big Tom with my bow and was on my way back to the blind after finding him and taking pictures. This nice Tom was kicking the heck of my Fake Jake's butt for a long time with nobody around. Hell he might still be fighting it had I not tried to stalk though the cedar tree to shoot him. He busted me on the draw though as i had to step out from behind a cedar tree. Had I been left handed it would have been a different ending at 25 yards. Anyway. Just some more decoy action to get the blood pumping for season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOwg5EWthKY&t=184s