Holding off on hunting this property cuz it has no cover...a long narrow cornfield butts near a creek on one end and the "long" side borders a neighbors long narrow (maybe 60 yards wide) soybean field.on the west ..big roost trees in a pasture just west of the neighbors soybean field. I'd have to use ground blind/decoys and call them over 200 yards from the roost area. I put together a homemade movement hen at 4:30 am using an old Zebco 202 and drilled a hole thru hens chest attached line there and hid reel inside deke for travel. Put a ? shaped lag screw hook in her too to use as the anchor for line in ground under her chest. Carried in my ground blind, dekes in my vest, seat and BPS 10ga. Got set up about 35 yds east of the soy field fence in dark. 4-5 gobblers sounding off and a few hens. 3 big toms fly down and strut for 3-4 hens about 130 yards from me..two more toms fly down north of them about 75 yds. The movement decoy worked great, tugged on the reel inside blind and she moved a little side/side and tugged harder she dipped like feeding. The three toms looked her over but stayed with hens..the nearest tom by himself finally got interested in my calls and committed after about 20 minutes. Took him at 30 yards with BPS 10/Jellyhead,Rem Lead 4"s as he crossed inside fence. The decoy movement I am certain is what brought him on in. I had real fan jake mobile set behind hen. He was a horse, weighed just over 26lbs, sharp curved 1 1/4" spurs and 14 1/2" beard. I was loaded like a pack mule on way out but was grinning from ear to ear.
That is a heck of a bird!
Thats a great story and an excellent bird to go along with it. Congrats on your ingenuity and patience.
Congrats great bird!
Great bird! Congrats
:z-winnersmiley:
14 inch beard thats gresat good job
Congrats! That's one monster gobbler!
Don't laugh...here is my movement decoy setup. I have since spray painted the zebco with a flat green camo paint for when I am using without a ground blind. I am going to experiment with this more in future and I know there is a guy selling a lot better setup than this...I just needed something in a hurry. I think his website is: www.turkeydecoysystem.com/
Yeah someone may have done it better for commercial reasons but you my friend did it by you for you and it works. No bought item can give you the satisfaction you have with your own doins. Nice job.
Thanks for the kind words...I'm going to try it this weekend on some Rio Grande birds with my 12 year old grandson. He called in two toms to 60 yards today by himself but they hung up...no decoy. Maybe this system will help!
Stud of a bird. My buddy and I often comment that we need to tie a line to a decoy. I believe that movement is essential. Double we killed first Illinois season didn't commit until after a light breeze casued some decoy movement. They were hung up at 100 yds or so and came right in after the movement. My 2 cents worth.
The turkey decoy system that I posted the website info for...I like his stake design and I think I'll buy one but I think I will still use a fishing reel as my system to deploy the line and reel it back in when I'm done...it just looks a lot simpler and neater...I don't want to be messing around with a lot of finicky items at 5:30 am in the dark. His stake has a spring built in for side movement and flex downward for a deeper feeding motion which I think would be great.
In future I will set up a rig with much heavier line maybe 30-40 lb test to stand up to turning and bending the decoy down. I didn't have any trouble with my homemade system but have only used it once...it probably has 8 lb line on it...pretty light.