How to Set Up the Perfect Decoy Spread to Draw in Gobblers

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that packable foam turkey decoys were ubiquitous additions to a hunter’s spring pack or vest. In those days, options were limited to jakes and hens, and apart from hunters dressing up decoys with skins and feathers from previously killed birds, there was little competition on the market. Turkey hunters simply made do with what they had.

Today’s hunters have exponentially more decoy options, many featuring stunning realism. The variety of turkey decoy styles and poses means there’s a solid fake for every hunting style, location, time of season and flock scenario. This is great given that the daily patterns of jakes and toms vary as the spring season winds along. If you observe bird behavior and track the mating season’s progression, you can stake decoys to fit the birds you’re chasing, the terrain you hunt and your hunting preferences.

Many variables influence whether you use a decoy, how many decoys you might employ and what types of fakes you utilize. How mobile you want to be, the landscape you’re hunting, the amount of hunting pressure, the aggressiveness of target birds, weather, time of day, current flock hierarchy and the stage of the mating season all affect decoy placement. While somehwat challenging, you must consider each factor when contemplating your setup. Here, we’ll discuss six decoy strategies that are tailored for certain scenarios and can help you tag a wily spring gobbler.

STRUTTING TOM

It might be early, late or in the middle of turkey season. You’ve seen a big tom making the rounds with the ladies. However, he’s avoided you for days, weeks or maybe even more than a year now. This can be the perfect time for a strutting tom decoy. It’s a strategy that accomplished hunter and decoy maker Dave Smith (davesmithdecoys.com) loves.

“The biggest surprise for me is how underutilized a strutter decoy is in my opinion,” Smith says. “I’ve had seasons where I use a strutter only, and it’s remarkable how well it works. Our strutter is smaller than a real turkey, and I’ve had dominant and subordinate toms come in to it like crazy.”

Smith opts for a go-big-or-go-home approach. His goal is always to arrow a state record—or at least a giant tom—so he caters to the personality of a big, dominant tom with a strutter deke. A mature gobbler’s mood often changes from day to day, and he may be more aggressive on some days than others. On the right day, Smith feels a dominant gobbler will come in swinging. Smith’s all-or-nothing formula might land a giant or fail miserably, but he believes the reward is worth the risk.

The veteran turkey hunter has had some exciting hunts with a strutter, including one monster tom that busted him as he tried drawing his bow with no blind. He also shot an archery state record in Oregon while using a strutting tom.

“That bird was with three other giants, and they were all thrashing my decoy in the middle of the day at about 6 yards,” Smith says. “That’s the kind of excitement I strive for.”

When using a strutting tom, anticipate things to escalate quickly if a gobbler decides to pick a fight. Smith says an aggressive gobbler will come in fast and attack the decoy. With the bird focused so intently on the strutter, he adds, you may have better odds of getting your bow drawn or gun raised. Just watch his eyes and move stealthily.

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EARLY-SEASON FLOCKS

It’s early in the season and wintering flocks are still intact. When you scout your properties, you see big bunches of birds. Whether due to a late spring or a dearth of warm days, turkeys are still moving en masse, making it challenging to fool so many birds or pull a tom off the group. What do you do?

A good mix of decoys can be the perfect invitation to turn the flock your way and summon a tom or two into range. Plant a variety of hens in various poses to resemble a flock working over the landscape. Relaxed hens feeding or preening and a few upright hens mixed with trailing jakes and toms can put the real birds on a collision course with your faux flock. It’s hard to turn the crowd unless you deploy your own head-turners.

HIGH-PRESSURE PUBLIC LANDS

Prairie river bottoms and hardwood forests on public land can be prime turkey country. If you find an unpressured honey hole, accept our congratulations and keep your mouth shut. However, most public-land hunters will face competition and pressured birds. Here, you must convince flighty toms that you’re the real deal, which can be quite challenging.

“In high-pressured areas, adding two or three feeders or two or three preeners is wickedly effective,” Smith says. “It just adds so much confidence for approaching birds.”

As with setting waterfowl spreads in hard-hunted areas, you want to create the appearance of a realistic, relaxed environment. This exact scenario is why Smith brought varied poses—like feeding and preening—into the company’s turkey decoy line. These days, such decoys are common options. Simply put, conveying that the coast is clear and that birds are at ease helps convince a tom to relax and take a closer look. Spread out decoys to help portray this relaxation and contentment. If public-land toms are regularly seeing the same decoys, a different approach may be just the ticket to punch your tag.

POSTURING HEN

The woods and fields have gone quiet, there’s less gobbling and toms are hard to find and even harder to draw into range. You spot hens, jakes and toms at a distance, but they ignore you and tend to their business. And the toms you do see are terribly henned up, following hens off the roost for long hours.

It’s time to throw out a posturing hen decoy. This pose can tickle the fancy of a longbeard, but it also incites his real-life paramours.

“The posturing hen is another great decoy that is probably underutilized,” Smith says. “She has brought in hens many times, and many times those hens had a tom in tow that would otherwise never bother approaching.”

If a boss hen hates getting cut off by a mouthy hen in the distance, a posturing hen is the visual equivalent of a challenge to her dominance. With a posturing hen decoy, you can appeal to both sexes and have a fair chance at hanging your tag on a persnickety or henned-up tom.

SINGLE JAKE

Shane Simpson (shanesimpsonhunting.com) is a champion turkey caller who chases birds each year from early March in Florida to early June in Michigan. Over the years, he gradually whittled his decoy selection down to a single jake, which he ran for many years until more recently opting to use no decoy at all. When he made this first switch, he reasoned that while some toms wouldn’t approach a strutter decoy, most wouldn’t be afraid of a jake.

Originally, he’d put out a jake and a hen, then use calling to bring birds into range. However, once Simpson began prioritizing mobility, he wondered if he even needed the hen. His calling could audibly represent a hen, and the decoy could visually depict a jake. After successful experiments, he began solely using the jake. To make his jake decoy really stand out, Simpson also started adding some bright red, blue and white aftermarket paint.

According to Simpson, when he was hunting, a tom could hear a hen, but he would see the jake. Most often, the tom would move to challenge the jake, forcing the mature gobbler into range to fight or chase off the younger bird. He says that, at the time, running the jake solo proved much more effective than adding a hen decoy, too.

Simpson used this setup across the country and throughout the season. Because of the near-universal aggression toward the jake, he wasn’t forced to know the exact stage of the breeding season or precisely what the birds were doing. His favorite jake decoys mimicked young birds by sporting an empty chest that looked almost flat, and a short, 1-inch beard. The thinner the chest, the less intimidating the decoy appeared and the more likely a tom would challenge it. However, in your own hunting, if you want to really fire up dominant or subordinate toms, you could also pair the jake with a breeding hen.

NO DECOY

As mentioned earlier, Simpson now solely runs and guns without a decoy. This decision reflects his hunting style and need for mobility while filming, but there are distinct advantages to not using a decoy at times during the hunting season. If you’re on the chase and working toward gobbling toms, you don’t have to expose yourself to pick up or set down a decoy. You can merely sit back against a tree and call.

When you’re calling birds and on the move, once you strike a tom and fire him up, you must conceal yourself and limit movement. Otherwise, he might spot you once he starts answering your calls and pinpoint your location. Because you don’t have to worry about setting out a decoy, you can focus on optimizing your ambush position based on where birds are, on sitting still and on calling.

When hunting hollers, hills and ravines, toms are much more receptive to calling because they know they can’t see the hen they think you are until they are on the same elevation with an unobstructed view. You can use that to your advantage, enticing toms to come to your calling while being set up in a position to intercept them. Likewise, in wooded terrain in late spring when heavy foliage blocks sightlines, calling often gets a tom to investigate. But, if that tom crests a ridge or emerges from a thick wood edge expecting to find a hen and sees a decoy, he might hold tight and see if he can display and lure the hen to him. If no bird is visibly apparent, though, he’s likely to keep moving and searching for the sound’s source. In these cases, using no decoys and keeping the tom moving and looking is your best bet for dropping a spring gobbler.

COUNTERFEIT COUNSEL

• Tips to consider when placing decoys this spring.

Decoys excel at drawing birds into range and getting them squared up for a good shot. However, how and where you place decoys matters and can boost or reduce your odds of success. Consider the following best practices when setting up.

Avoid drawing birds into a direct line with you where they may see you moving in the background. Offset decoys slightly as best as you can, understanding that you can’t always guess how or from where a bird will approach.

Arrange your decoys with the goal of inviting a look from all turkeys, not just gobblers. A spread that draws hens and jakes is also good for toms and may bring in a big gobbler on the trail of the others.

Contemplate how far away you place your decoys, too, especially if you plan to use calling to draw toms closer. Turkeys have such exceptional hearing that they’ll pinpoint your location almost exactly. If they hear calling from a blind or the base of a tree but see a hen decoy 30 yards distant, they’ll realize something is amiss. If you call a lot and run hen decoys, keep them close to your blind.