Decoys

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Bgoodman30 said:
Of course. But you can't fit every turkey hunt in a box either. Seems the most adamant against them hunt a certain which they believe is the only way...
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It's certainly not the only way
Bgoodman30 said:
They run and gun on big blocks of timber which is why the have they feel so strongly decoys are stupid because in that situation they are. Same for Dave Owens types because they hunt from South FL to Washington, Why would they sit and wait behind some decoys? Some guys have the only 100 acre family cattle farm with 13 trees to hunt and running and gunning with no decoys is not really the best option. Sure you can do it but you bump the birds to the next county.. If they want to blind hunt with decoys I got no hard feelings toward them.

I will be in AL the 31st with no decoys in hand. ;)
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I hunt massive tracts of land. All public. Heck I think one of my places is over 60,000 acres. This is active coal/timber land, and killing birds over decoys would be laughably easy. Our birds routinely congregate in log landings or reclaimed strip mines. It would cheapen what makes our mountain hunting so special and difficult by riding a 4 wheeler to one of these places and staking out a decoy.

I cut my teeth hunting huge ag fields in Alabama. Some as big as 500 acres. Decoys were illegal then, and we learned to hunt field turkeys. Sure we got our asses beat most days, but we also got decent at killing those field birds with just a call.

When I moved back home after college, all I had to hunt was small farms and never messed with decoys because they were taboo to the turkey hunters I crossed paths with in Alabama.

I firmly believe that's the difference, people who have hunted turkeys for a long time are far less likely to use decoys than the new hunters. Old school versus new school. Traditionalists versus Kill at all costs no matter the tactic.

I also as stated earlier. Firmly believe decoys are one of the main reasons for our dwindling populations. It makes it too easy, too many dominant birds are killed, and it is effecting nest initiation
 
Let me ask this question to those that are very pro decoy

Why do you use them honestly? Is it because you have a higher success rate with them or because it makes it easy to just put them out and wait? I would love a 100% honest answer

Note, I'm not talking to the folks that due to age or health don't have a lot of other options.
 
Setterman said:
It's certainly not the only way

I hunt massive tracts of land. All public. Heck I think one of my places is over 60,000 acres. This is active coal/timber land, and killing birds over decoys would be laughably easy. Our birds routinely congregate in log landings or reclaimed strip mines. It would cheapen what makes our mountain hunting so special and difficult by riding a 4 wheeler to one of these places and staking out a decoy.

I cut my teeth hunting huge ag fields in Alabama. Some as big as 500 acres. Decoys were illegal then, and we learned to hunt field turkeys. Sure we got our asses beat most days, but we also got decent at killing those field birds with just a call.

When I moved back home after college, all I had to hunt was small farms and never messed with decoys because they were taboo to the turkey hunters I crossed paths with in Alabama.

I firmly believe that's the difference, people who have hunted turkeys for a long time are far less likely to use decoys than the new hunters. Old school versus new school. Traditionalists versus Kill at all costs no matter the tactic.

I also as stated earlier. Firmly believe decoys are one of the main reasons for our dwindling populations. It makes it too easy, too many dominant birds are killed, and it is effecting nest initiation
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To each his own. I don't think you can find any studies to correlate decoy use to population decline. Where populations are the greatest usually have the highest harvest and continue to reload year after year. Turkeys are declining without our help...
 
Except they aren't reloading year after year. I hunt a county that was near the top for several seasons and has seen a tremendous drop in both the kill and actual population.

And, yes, excess harvest by hunters is part of the reason for the decline. And, decoys used by those that couldn't come close to killing a bird without that crutch are in that equation.
 
Bgoodman30 said:
To each his own. I don't think you can find any studies to correlate decoy use to population decline. Where populations are the greatest usually have the highest harvest and continue to reload year after year. Turkeys are declining without our help...
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Well if that's the case please explain alabama's population decline. If you look at when decoys were legalized the Population decline started right after they legalized decoys. Current regs outlaw decoys again but only for the first two weeks.

If decoys weren't an issue than why would they feel the need to do take this measure?
 
REN said:
Let me ask this question to those that are very pro decoy

Why do you use them honestly? Is it because you have a higher success rate with them or because it makes it easy to just put them out and wait? I would love a 100% honest answer

Note, I'm not talking to the folks that due to age or health don't have a lot of other options.
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It's the way I hunted up in Illinois.
Really don't know the run and gun technique.
Be willin to give it a try though.
Tips?
 
Chiflyguy said:
Really don't know the run and gun technique.
Be willin to give it a try though.
Tips?
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Spot them, use the terrain to get in front of them and figure out where they are headed.
Set up, call and wait.
Or get in front of them and then sneaky sneak into range and kill them.

Had people say that isn't sporting either sooooo dunno.
 
REN said:
Let me ask this question to those that are very pro decoy

Why do you use them honestly? Is it because you have a higher success rate with them or because it makes it easy to just put them out and wait? I would love a 100% honest answer

Note, I'm not talking to the folks that due to age or health don't have a lot of other options.
Click to expand...
I used decoys on two hunts. Friend of mine from college who I used to hunt a lot with back in the day brought them down here, and I was excited to try them out. First time was about 10 am in a pretty big (30 acres, big around here) hay field. We had two boys with us and set up a tent blind on the edge of the field and a strutter and hen 25 yards out. Called once and one gobbled on the other side of the rise of the field probably 150 yards away. They topped the rise and strutted all the way up o the decoy in probably 10 seconds. Boom boom two dead toms. Next morning we set up the decoys in a pasture on a different farm. Birds gobbled on the roost and pitched onto the field 3-400 yards away and ran/strutted their way to the decoys, boom boom two more turkeys. I have hunter turkeys for a lot of years. I have messed with field birds a lot in those years, even these same birds that very year in the same fields. I've killed some field birds, but my success rate would be somewhere south of 5%. Even if decoys only worked 25% of the time (I think it's much higher than that early season, less mid and late season) they are an incredible tool that makes killing turkeys way too easy for anyone to kill. I haven't YouTubed turkey hunting much in the last 5 years, but virtually every video is someone killing one with a decoy. To deny they are extremely successful and easy to use for anyone is ridiculous. To deny they are not good for the turkey, and therefore not good for turkey hunting is very short sighted.
In talking with guys work with who do not hunt, they said that they do not know of anybody that does not use corn and decoys to kill turkeys, that it is not possible to do so otherwise. They literally think I'm lying when I said that I use neither and can kill turkeys.
 
Southern Sportsman said:
But we shoot deer with rifles?
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How many have you called in?
scn said:
Except they aren't reloading year after year. I hunt a county that was near the top for several seasons and has seen a tremendous drop in both the kill and actual population.

And, yes, excess harvest by hunters is part of the reason for the decline. And, decoys used by those that couldn't come close to killing a bird without that crutch are in that equation.
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Which county?
 
Chiflyguy said:
It's the way I hunted up in Illinois.
Really don't know the run and gun technique.
Be willin to give it a try though.
Tips?
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"Run and gun" is just a newer term someone created. I'd be more the. Happy and willing to provide my advice or thoughts to help out anyone trying to learn more about the sport decoys or not so feel free to post questions or PM me any time. I'm no professional at it but have thousands of failed attempts in the past 35 years I can share lol.

And thanks for the reply. I didn't mean to ask the question as a shameful or other demeaning way.
 
Chiflyguy said:
It's the way I hunted up in Illinois.
Really don't know the run and gun technique.
Be willin to give it a try though.
Tips?
Click to expand...
'run n gun' is basically a technique to cover as much ground as fast as possible to locate a bird. Usually done on LARGE properties where you can cover a good portion of the section you want to hunt in 8-10 miles hiking. Usually done on spots you have no idea whether birds even exist there or not, often the first time hunting a spot. I usually pick out high ground spots I want to call from, map out my route before hitting the property, then start hauling butt until I cut a fresh track, find fresh poop, fresh scratching, or the best... actually strike a gobble. I usually call once every 200y or so. Once you have confirmed a bird actually exists on that property, it's a totally different game (you now abandon the 'run n gun' technique where you listen more than you call, actually spending 30 min or so setting on what looks to be good spots terrain/ habitat wise. If I KNOW there is a bird in the area, I might only cover a half mile to a mile a trip instead of 8-10 miles. Because you expect to cover 8-10 miles when you start out in the morning, you want to go as light as possible. Very light gun, very light or no vest, just a single pot and mouth call, and a bottle of water and snacks. No heavy boots, I use ultralight hiking shoes. You don't want to be hauling anything you don't need. I never even carried a vest until 2 or 3 years ago, but now I really need the cushion to sit on as I've gotten older.

The downside is you will probably walk past 80% of the toms because they won't disclose their presence with a gobble. The upside is you are much more likely to stumble into fresh sign the more ground you cover, so you can locate more birds overall than just going blind into a spot, sitting there for 8hours calling rarely, then walking back out never having heard (or seen any sign because you didn't cover much ground) anything. The other upside is that if you do get a gobble, there is a VERY good chance you will kill that bird (at least in southeast MS) once you know he is there and take the time to work him. I suspect I kill over 50% of the birds I strike down here (TOTALLY different than my farms in TN where they gobble like crazy just because they want to and have no intention of even coming to your call most of the time). But I bet I only strike 5 or 6 birds the entire season over around 30 days in the field. Another upside is I've actually struck birds that gobbled to my footsteps when I'm in the thick stuff. Done that twice, killed both of them.
 
Personally, I look at the use of decoys somewhat akin to the use of "rattling" deer antlers, both being something that is often, maybe more often, as much liability as asset.

Particularly in the big scheme of things, the potential benefits of either have been very over-stated, while the liabilities rarely mentioned, I supposed, because money is made in the selling of both decoys & rattling horns?

Sometimes, deer decoys also work great.
So why don't more deer hunters use deer decoys?
One reason is you can do more spooking of deer than attracting of deer via using those decoys.
Never mind the pain in the butt of using ANY decoys.
 

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