Decoys can make, break spring turkey hunt
In the deadly serious game of venatic chess that is spring turkey hunting, a match that recently played out on a mesquite/live oak flat overlooking the Llano River concluded in a draw. It just as easily could have — should have — ended with the hunter whispering “checkmate” as she looked down her shotgun’s barrel, steadied the bead on the longbearded gobbler’s bloodred neck and squeezed the trigger. She made all of the right moves, employed classic tactics proven effective in past matches.
But as in all chess games, much depends on how the other player reacts to those moves. And when, as happened on the Llano one morning a couple of weeks ago, that other player is an adult long-bearded gobbler and one of the hunter’s moves involves putting a turkey decoy on the game board, that reaction is anything but certain.
Using a turkey decoy can be a key to hunting success. Or, as in the case above, it can be a move that stymies a chance at success. Which way it goes depends on how decoys are used and, perhaps most of all, the maddeningly unpredictable nature of turkey behavior.
“They can be your best friend or your worst enemy,” veteran turkey hunter Butch Kissman said of turkey decoys. “I pick and chose when I use decoys. Even then, sometimes they work against you instead of for you. You just never know how a bird’s going to react to a decoy.” Avoiding being ‘busted’
Decoys’ ability to serve as an attraction and distraction make them a great, often crucial benefit to turkey hunters during the spring season that coincides with the birds’ mating season.
When a mating-minded gobbler comes looking for the hen, the hunter is imitating through the yelps and clucks and cuts and purrs made on calls, that male bird expects to see a hen. And he knows exactly where the calls are coming from, even from 100 yards or more away. Turkeys have exceptional aural acuity and an almost supernatural ability to zero in on the spot from which the hen calls are coming. They also possess incredibly fine visual acuity, especially when it comes to detecting movement — just ask any turkey hunter who has been “busted” by a gobbler that caught and spooked from some slight movement the hunter made at the wrong time.
A decoy or two or three can blunt the gobbler’s chances of busting the hunter. When the approaching gobbler sees a decoy, his visual focus turns to the fake, reducing chances the bird will spot the hidden hunter.
Seeing a hen also can — and usually does — amp up the birds’ ardor, triggering a flurry of gobbling and strutting as he tries to tempt the hen to cozy up. The smitten gobbler often will come strutting straight to a hen decoy — a decoy standing 15-20 yards from where the camouflaged hunter sits.
If a hen decoy or two is accompanied by a decoy imitating a “jake” — a year-old, stub-bearded gobbler inexperienced and pretty much clueless in the whole mating thing and usually no physical match for an adult gobbler juiced on testosterone — so much the better. The sight of a “jake” with a hen can incite an adult gobbler into a rage of aggression, and the long-beard will come strutting and gobbling to the decoys, intent on thrashing the young gobbler and spiriting away the hen.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work. And that’s the way it usually works. But not always. In some instances, decoys can prove the undoing of a hunt. Playing the game
That’s what happened on the chessboard along the Llano.
The gobbler answering the yelps and clucks that Susan, my wife, scratched out on a slate call came gobbling out of a draw and over a slight rise where it caught sight of the single hen decoy. The adult gobbler, whose long, thick beard and booming voice indicated he was at least a 3-year-old bird, stopped in his tracks.
He stood out there, 60 yards away, and began strutting and gobbling, walking back and forth, pirouetting and showing off for the ersatz hen. He was playing the game the way turkey behavior says it should be played. In the turkey mating game, an unattached hen usually goes to the gobbler. And while most gobblers just can’t stand to see a hen ignore their blandishments and will, eventually, approach a recalcitrant hen, some are hard-headed and demand the hen come to them.
This gobbler was a traditionalist. He demanded the hen come to him. And the decoy wasn’t going anywhere.
The gobbler strutted and gobbled and did everything in his power to tempt the hen to come over to him. He never came any closer, staying several yards beyond shotgun range. After about 45 minutes of this, he gave up, deflated, folded his wings and walked away, ignoring Susan’s “come back” entreatments on the slate call. Older means wiser
Having a gobbler spot a hen decoy and “hang up” outside shotgun range is not a rare occurrence. It happens fairly regularly. It happened last weekend to veteran turkey hunter and call maker Bill Crowell on a hunt near Burnet.
“He was an old gobbler, and he hung up when he saw the decoy,” Crowell said. “Those older birds will do that — stand out there and demand the hen come to them. That’s one of the chances you take when you use a hen decoy.”
An option is to not use a decoy at all and hope the gobbler’s search for the heard-but-not-seen hen brings the bird close enough to the hunter.
Or, a hunter can add a “jake” decoy to the set and hope the sight of a competing young gobbler standing near a hen triggers an adult gobbler’s aggressive side. And it often does. But not always. Sometimes it triggers the opposite reaction.
“I don’t like using jake decoys,” Crowell said. “There’s too big a chance the old bird won’t want to fight the younger bird for the hen, and he’ll just leave when he sees a jake.” Kissman agrees. “I rarely use a jake decoy and will not use one when there are a lot of jakes out there, like there are this year,” he said. This year’s large crop of jakes, the product of a hugely successful nesting season in 2015, means groups of the year-old gobblers are causing problems for adult toms.
“They’re like street gangs.” Kissman said of the groups of “teenage” gobblers that usually run in packs, unlike the typically solitary adult gobblers. And those groups of jakes often harass adult gobblers, trying to steal hens and generally causing the adult birds to expend considerable time and energy battling the hen poachers.
“Old gobblers just get tired of getting beat up by groups of jakes,” Kissman said. “They see a jake decoy, they’re likely to go the other way.”
He’s right. While I’ve seen adult gobblers race in to challenge a jake decoy, I’ve also watched adult gobblers spot a jake decoy, skid to a stop and immediately turn tail feathers and sprint away. Tough to predict
The mystifying thing about all of this is that it’s really impossible to predict how a turkey — a hen, a jake or an adult gobbler — will react to decoys.
Some hens will attack hen decoys; others ignore them or avoid getting anywhere near them.
One adult gobbler will race toward hen decoys, another will dawdle and slowly approach, and some will hang up at 70 yards and demand the hen come to them.
Jakes? They almost always will investigate any decoy and often will hang around for a half-hour or more, hoping the statuelike hens show some interest in them.
“Anybody who says they absolutely know what a turkey’s going to do either hasn’t hunted turkeys very much or is fooling themselves,” Crowell said.
That unpredictability — that anything-can-happen element — is one of the many great attractions and rewards of playing the big chess game with the birds during the spring season.
And despite their occasional downside, decoys are one of the chess pieces most of us are willing to put into play.