I wasn't 100 percent certain that I was going to bag a gobbler that morning, but the positioning of those decoys had stacked the odds largely in my favor. That was even after I'd already messed up by sitting on the wrong side of the cedar tree!

After five minutes of yelps, purrs, clucks and gobbles, silence filled the air. I was almost ready to believe that the toms had followed some hens away, when out of nowhere, two longbeards appeared next to the jake decoy. (Continued)

Long ago, thankfully, I learned to have my shotgun up on my knee and ready to go for times like this -- when gobblers appear as if by magic. This hunt was just about over.

After one tom trounced the synthetic jake, I waited for the two birds to separate before pulling the trigger. As one moved toward the crouched hen decoy, I put the bead on his head and pulled the trigger. At 6:18 a.m. the 26-pound, double-bearded monster dropped!

Walking over to the fallen trophy, I glanced at the squatting hen and jake decoys that played a key role in my successful hunt.

WHY IT WORKS
If you've spent much time observing turkeys in the spring, you have probably noticed two key facts about their behavior.

First, when a hen is ready to be bred, she squats down on the ground and waits for a gobbler to come up behind her to mate. In fact, this courtship behavior often becomes a sort of dance between the hen and the gobbler. The tom approaches the crouching hen, which then jumps up and trots off right before being mounted. The hen runs for a short distance, and then squats again.

Eventually, if the tom continues pursuing her, the willing hen remains in the squatting position as the male advances, and the gobbler gets the opportunity to breed.

In the springtime, I've seen gobblers run across wide fields to get to a squatting hen. This past spring, in fact, moments after I shot that dominant gobbler, three other toms flew down from their roost trees and raced toward my crouching hen decoy only a few yards away from the dead bird!

When a tom sees a hen display this behavior, he doesn't waste any time getting to her. It's his visual cue that the hen is ready and willing. If he's not the first male to arrive, he might miss out on that opportunity to breed.