A Tom in the Hand,Is Worth a Big Gobbler in the Bush

[Hatchet Jack]

Got lucky yesterday morning after finally coaxing in 3 hens that were hanging with this gobbler. They were feeding in a food plot below me. He would not leave them to come to my calls so I figured the next best thing was to try to call the gals up hill to my food plot. After almost an hour they finaly made their way up to me. At the same time they were making their way up the powerline toward me, a loud thunderous sounding gobbler was making his way thru the woods behind me as well. He sounded extremely aggressive. Sounding off more frequent as he was getting closer to the powerline.
Once the hens and gobbler made it to my food plot they stopped short of my decoys. The gobbler with them hung back a bit and was very leery and reluctant to come in. All the time the gobbler in the woods was getting closer and louder. Something tells me the reluctant gobbler was intimidated by my jake decoy. Even though I just recently colored his head all red and removed his beard to make him look more immature.(No more jake decoys for me.)
The whole time I was hoping the gobbler in the woods would show himself because he   sounded big.
As the reluctant gobbler started to skirt the decoys and looked more and more skittish, I decided to shoot him rather than wait for Mr. Thunder Chicken back in the woods. You know the saying about one bird in the hand vs a monster gobbler in the bush, or something like that.
Any way..... here is my cell phone camera, hand held, very shaky, self video. I had to put the phone down in order to make the shot. When I did you can hear Mr. Thunder gobbling back in the woods. It took me a while to make the shot because I was waiting for the hens heads to get out of the way before pulling the trigger. Once it was all clear I tried to pulled the trigger and realize I forgot to take off the safety. Duh! Not too worry. I waited a second time for the hens to get out of the way and made the shot. He flopped and died 10 yds from the shot.
If you watch, please be sure to turn up the volume

https://youtu.be/pMGM6qy_bIk

[Greg Massey]

Congrats on your chicken ...

[Yoteduster]

Congrats on a nice bird

[WylieCoyote]

Watched 2 Jake's run a strutter 300 yards across a cow pasture.
my buddy went back the next day with a strutter Jake and coaxed him into running all the way across the field to fight.....he dead.
We don't use anything but a DSD Jake or a creepin' Tom with a real fan. Watched 8 birds die so far this year and none over 15 yards.
Any issues we ever thought we had with a Jake decoy could easily be blamed on something else because 99.9% of the time they slam it.


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[JeffC]

Congrats,  great story and pictures, and phone video wasn't that bad.

[Swenny]

Fantastic!  And couldn't agree with you more, a Tom in the hand. . .

[joey46]

Congrat!  We use a Funky Chicken decoy on almost all hunts.  It works almost all the time but isn't a slam dunk.

[bear hunter]

congrats on your bird.

[Tom007]

Great job, Thad for sharing video...congrats...

[greencop01]

Congrats, sounds like you had a great hunt!

[Beards and Hooks]

Congrats on your bird

[ManfromGreenSwamp]

Super duper! Congratulations


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[Hatchet Jack]

Thanks for the congrats fellas.
I have always enjoyed using the jake decoy when ever it works. Love watching a tom come in with wings folded down to attack it. However there are other times like in the video where they sometimes get intimidated by it and either hang up or skirt around out of range.
Maybe I need to get another jake decoy. Do you guys have any suggestions? Whatever I get will need to be able to fold up and fit in the back pouch of my turkey vest.

[Vintage]

Congrat's on your bird.

[tomstopper]

Nice. Congrats