Early in the season, when toms still tolerate one another, a spread comprising several breeding hens can pull in multiple gobblers at once. (Shutterstock photo)
April 28, 2025
By J. J. Faux
It’s been more than 40 years since a smarter-than-me outdoorsman realized that wild turkeys like to hang out together, and that by deploying a fake bird or two near your hunting setup, you can lure in other birds. And so, the notion of the turkey decoy was born.
Crude, hand-painted paper and cardboard imitations soon gave way to hard-plastic and foldable foam birds that could be easily tucked into a hunting vest. Then came posture-specific dekes, white birds, super-realistic feathered decoys and even, at one time, self-inflating counterfeits that you could roll into a baseball-sized sphere and disperse around your hunting area. Some worked, others didn’t.
Though there are a plethora of decoy options available to turkey hunters today, not all of them are effective at yanking birds to within gun range. That’s where turkey decoy customization comes in. Frequently, trying something a little different will increase your odds for success.
POSES MATTER Nowadays, decoys come in a wide range of positions: breeding hens, feeding hens, guard hens, strutting jakes, half-strutting jakes, feeding jakes, strutting longbeards, half-strutting longbeards and so on. What some hunters may not realize, though, is that decoy effectiveness is dependent on understanding what stage of the breeding phase the gobbler you’re after happens to be in. I liken it to playing chess against an opponent who not only doesn’t know the rules, but wouldn’t play by the rules even if he knew them.
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A couple years ago I was working a late-spring gobbler when some unexpected wind whipped up and moved my un-staked blind back a couple of feet. (A bear had knocked the blind over during the night, and when I popped it back up before daylight, I didn’t bother with the stakes.) The shifting of the blind caused the approaching gobbler to retreat back up the power line road. When he was out of view, I repositioned the blind and staked it down. Being late in the season, most of the adult toms, including the one I had been hunting, were no longer in full-blown gobbling mode.
A lone jake decoy positioned near a breeding hen fake has proven to be the undoing of many toms over the years. (Shutterstock photo) It wasn’t long before the tom ambled back, cautiously approaching my decoys—a strutting jake and a feeding hen—which were moving nicely with the wind. The tom finally started strutting at 70 yards, then continued to dance his way in. Not wanting to press my luck, I planned to dump him at 40 yards, so when he got to that point, I pulled the trigger. Click. It took me a full 5 minutes to clear the jam.
Meanwhile, the gobbler was dancing around my decoys not 20 yards in front of me. I was eventually able to get into position again, but I had to wait another 10 minutes for the tom to move away from the decoys far enough that I could take him without the risk of damaging one of my not-inexpensive fakes. He was 18 yards away when I stoned him.
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Without those decoys, that tom surely would have lived to see another day. The jake strutter with a hen was enough to get the bird close. I’m fairly certain that a strutting tom decoy would have blown him out of there.
THROW ’EM A CHANGE If you have the wrong combination of decoys, or misread the turkey breeding phase, decoys can be more of a deal breaker than a deal maker. And, as turkeys have become more and more used to seeing decoys, they’ll sometimes run from them rather than to them. So, what’s a hunter to do?
Ed Ripic, a guide at Turkey Trot Acres in Candor, N.Y., started using a hen decoy with a customized, moveable neck and head a while back. He detached the neck and head from a decoy, reinforced it for strength in use, then reattached it using springs so that it would move easily. Next, he attached a string to the beak and ran the string through a hole in the head and down through the neck.
Late in the season, hens are typically scarce as they tend to their nests. That said, one or two in a late-spring spread can lure a roaming gobbler. (Shutterstock photo) “When I pull on the string [from the blind], the head comes down a little as if the hen is preening,” Ripic says. “It’s almost like a confidence decoy because a preening hen means she’s relaxed and that everything’s okay. It’s a welcome sign to other turkeys. If a gobbler sees the movement, he usually comes in. But even hens come in, and when they do they can pull in a tom.” “It was such a good idea,” says Turkey Trot head guide Pete Clare. “When Ed first started using it, he almost didn’t even need to call to get a gobbler to come in. They’d just run on in when they’d see that hen preening.”
My good friend and taxidermist Darcy Ryder has been taking longbeards for years by using a moveable “stuffer” gobbler decoy. A stuffer is a mounted bird that hasn’t quite been finished—sort of a taxidermy mount in the rough. When I first hunted geese on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in the days before full-body decoys, stuffers were the decoys of choice.
For turkeys, Ryder inserts a narrow PVC pipe up into the cavity of the stuffer, allowing about an inch to protrude out the bottom. He uses an arrow shaft for the stake. The narrow stake, enables the decoy to move freely in even the slightest breeze.
“I run light wire from the deke to the blind,” he says. “You want to pull it through the window because pulling it under the bottom of the blind makes too much noise. You don’t have to move the decoy much, but if a gobbler’s out there at 100 yards and you move it just a little, he’ll come running right in. It’s an amazing thing, really.”
While getting a stuffer to use might be a tall order for some turkey hunters, the PVC-and-wire setup could be used on a store-bought decoy with success. It’s something any half-handy turkey hunter can replicate.
Large spreads with decoys in a variety of poses can be extremely effective as toms begin to battle for breeding rights. (Shutterstock photo) SUPER SETUPS A turkey hunter working a food plot or a field will usually place the decoy out in the field and then set up in cover on the field edge. The object is to let the decoy capture the attention of any nearby gobbler.
Change things up by placing the decoy just inside the woods, close enough to the clearing to be readily seen, but not right out in the open. More often than not, a turkey approaching a field from the woods will stop short and survey the scene before emerging into the open, so it’s a natural setup. Having a hen decoy partially hidden rather than standing out in the open often makes a gobbler close the distance more quickly than he might if the decoy is set where it can be seen from a great distance.
In this scenario, it’s best to use several decoys to imitate a group of turkeys feeding together, mimicking the social dynamics of a real flock of turkeys. While hens start to split off from the flock once they start nesting, it’s still common to see a few hens together even late in the breeding cycle, so it’s a natural look.
Large spreads with decoys in a variety of poses can be extremely effective as toms begin to battle for breeding rights. (Shutterstock photo) Remember that safety must always come first. I wouldn’t try any of these decoy setups on public ground or on a property with other hunters around. It’s also advisable to put a blaze orange band on a tree nearby to let fellow humans know you’re there.
Many deer hunters these days are in tune with the whitetail’s breeding stages. Turkey chasers should be as well.
THE CHEAT SHEET The four phases of spring turkey behavior and the decoys to use.
Turkey decoys are currently available in a wide range of poses. Choosing the right ones depends on the what stage of breeding the birds are in.
Pre-breeding Photo courtesy of Dave Smith Decoys What You’ll See: Flocks of gobblers with interspersed
hens and jakes. Gobblers are not quite yet interested
in breeding and often travel together.
What To Use: Set out a spread of hen decoys and
try to attract the attention of roaming toms.
Harem Gathering Photo courtesy of Avian-X. What You’ll See: Gobblers are fighting, establishing territories and gathering hens for breeding.
What To Use: Deploy a half-strut or full-strut jake,
along with a hen or two.
Breeding Photo courtesy of SX Decoys What You’ll See: Toms are gobbling less, often only
on the roost. Hens are in the early stages of nesting.
What To Use: Try to pattern the flock and set up
along the area it is using with several feeding hens and a jake close by as if it’s trying to sneak in. Be prepared for a gobbler to make an entrance late in the morning after his hens have gone to nest.
Nesting Photo courtesy of Higdon Outdoors. What You’ll See: Toms can be call-shy now. Hens spend most of the day on their nests.
What to Use: Attempt to roost a gobbler in the
evening, then set out a hen decoy with a relaxed pose as close to where you expect the gobbler to fly down as possible the next morning.
This article was featured in the April 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe .
