Dang Jakes!!

[Wrangler95]

Hunted a few times at a place I hunted last year and havent seen or heard a gobbler this year and I now know why.Saw a group of 7 or 8 jakes yesterday,they have run the gobblers off the property.Gonna quit this property for this year but a good thing about it,it will hold some great 2 year old gobblers next year if they dont leave!Anyone else had their gobblers get run off by a bunch of jakes?

 

[megalomaniac]

It may not be as simple as you think... depending on whether you are seeing a normal number of hens or not.

Sure, jakes can gang up on a single longbeard and whip him into submission, I've seen that a million times.

But when I'm hunting a property with several jakes, no LB's and very few to no adult hens (I'm not talking about jennies, they usually are present and around the jakes), the population is in freefall at that area, and your particular location doesn't have as good of nesting habitat as another place nearby. Essentially what happens is as the population falls, the hens choose the best habitat, the toms follow, and the toms push the jakes out of the best habitat to whatever is leftover. When the population is high, the best habitat is saturated with hens, and spillover to the poorer habitat and bring toms with them.

Now if you are seeing plenty of adult hens (not jennies) and no toms, you've got the habitat, but the toms have already been killed.

 

[ROVERBOY]

Hunted a few times at a place I hunted last year and havent seen or heard a gobbler this year and I now know why.Saw a group of 7 or 8 jakes yesterday,they have run the gobblers off the property.Gonna quit this property for this year but a good thing about it,it will hold some great 2 year old gobblers next year if they dont leave!Anyone else had their gobblers get run off by a bunch of jakes?

Lately about all I have been calling in is groups of jakes.

 

[Wrangler95]

Hunted a few times at a place I hunted last year and havent seen or heard a gobbler this year and I now know why.Saw a group of 7 or 8 jakes yesterday,they have run the gobblers off the property.Gonna quit this property for this year but a good thing about it,it will hold some great 2 year old gobblers next year if they dont leave!Anyone else had their gobblers get run off by a bunch of jakes?

Lately about all I have been calling in is groups of jakes.

I called in 4 jakes yesterday at another property I hunt,Ive seen more jakes this year than ever before,just hope a cat or coyote dont catch them between now and next year!