2014 First Jake

[Bowhunter57]

The hens that kept hanging around brought me a tom (jake), this morning. I never called once and give the credit to the decoys...a jake and two hens, that I've been using all season.

I was set up on the edge of a freshly planted field (yesterday) with my jake and two hen decoys, at 18 yards. A hen popped out of the woods about 80 yards west of me with a jake in tow...along with 2 other hens. The first hen flopped down at 50 yards and started rolling around dusting herself. The jake stopped with her and I thought that was as close as they were going to get.

Then the jake took another look at the decoys and came over to take a closer look at the jake decoy. When he was about 10 feet from the jake decoy, I settled the fiber optic sight on the base of his neck and squeezed the trigger. At the blast of the muzzle the jake went down hard and never moved. I expected the hens to bust out of there, but they stood their ground, started clucking and walked over to see what the problem was with the jake.

I unzipped the blind door, stepped out and started clucking and yelping at the hens. I couldn't believe my eyes, as they walked over to me, still clucking and yelping back and forth with my calls. They walked to 8 yards of me, as I stood next to my ground blind and then they walked on into the woods. Amazing!









Bowhunter57

 

[gamestalker]

That's really cool, they really are very dumb animals aren't they.

I remember one spring turkey season when I had dropped a buddy off at his bird we had put to bed the night before, and I drove up the road a ways to set up on mine. After I had killed mine, I drove back down the road to wait for my buddy to come down the slope with his bird. While sitting there waiting in the truck, I heard some hens clucking up on the top of the slope, so I started calling to them. It wasn't but a couple minutes before 3 hens came flying down and plopped right down beside the truck, I thought they were going to jump in the cab with me. I sat there messing with them the whole time I was waiting, and even as my buddy came walking up to the truck with his gobbler, they were still walking around the truck.

Congrats on the bird!

GS