On the use of Turkey Decoys and Going Old School

From Turkey and Turkey Hunting --

Not as Sporting...Are You Serious???

The Turkey Hunter at the Vegetorium

Some of y'all remind me of the stories a buddy of mine used to tell. He was a cook at a vegetarian restaurant/store up near the University of Cincinnati. He used to listen to the various veggie-heads all day and had some pretty funny tales.

He said that there was a macho-ethic going on with the grazers, and it would always seem to escalate into a one-upping sort thing:

"I'm an ovo-lacto." (If I remember, that meant just eggs and milk)

"I'm just ovo." ( That meant just eggs.)

"Well, I just eat free ranging eggs."

"Well, I just eat fresh unwashed eggs."

"Well, I just eat eggs that got laid in a dog pile and left in the sun. . ."


It would go downhill from there. Look, nobody should be thinking they have the only way to hunt turkey or the best way. If you define yourself as a turkey hunter based on what you refuse to use, that's your gig. It is not necessarily others. There are still guys who argue over Babe Ruth over Hank Aaron-- I don't consider either position more sportsmanlike.

Folks get all huffed out over what they think is "Fair Chase." The strict definition of Fair Chase just says that the hunting method must conform to all applicable game laws. That's it. The rest is purely custom. State rules have the odd quality of appearing to be written on stone tablets sent from the Almighty. They're not. They were mostly written by cigar-chomping fat balding middle-aged white men who had more ulterior motives than a turkey has mites. They are written with the same level of spiritual dignity as picking your garbage day. Game laws are simply meant to be followed, not held with the reverence of Scripture.

Some states allow dekes. Some do not. Some allow rifles, some do not. If you look back on what the "Old School" was doing a hunnerd years ago, the top reference on this subject, Traditional American Wild Turkey Hunting by Edward A. McIlHenny speaks mostly of rifles being used.

Those who have tried buckshot at this range note that they have knocked over their birds nearly every time, but are surprised to see them get up and run away. This never happens if the sportsman uses a good rifle and places his bullet in the right place.

Dang! Now that's kickin' it old school!


Some times you fill like a nut-- some times you don't.

I am a fairly old school kind of guy, but I'm far from the old timers I hunted with who carried their box call in a bread bag. I know it. What's more, I've sat with a few of them and watch them listen to the turkeys laughing in the bushes the same way they do me. I figure the turkeys are going to laugh at me no matter what, so what difference does it make? They laugh at my dekes when I choose to use them. A good part of the time they stay in the bag and I use it for a backrest. It all depends on how I feel.

Do decoys give me an edge? Maybe sometimes. I have seen some gobs get fooled. I have seen other gobs turn away and run. Do decoys give me an unnatural unsportsmanlike edge?

(pregnant pause)

You gotta be joshing me. Believe me, I've been turkey hunting for almost 3 decades. If there is an unnatural edge out there and it's legal I'd buy it in a second. The turkeys laugh. They laugh from the moment when I hit the woods until the time I go in. I've tried every gimmick I could. There is no "edge" short of digging a trench and filling it with corn.

For a few years there, I was using a motorized deke with a remote control. When I hit the button, the deke would bob its head like it was feeding. That was cool. That really got the turkeys laughing-- mostly at what the deer would do when I'd hit the button on them. I was laughing too. Then I moved all my turkey hunting over to Kentucky and KY prohibits the use of electronic decoys. My luck did not change-- the smirk was still on their silly beaked faces. I'm sure the ones in Ohio told my turkeys in Kentucky about the robot decoy and they all had a good laugh over the Winter.

Camel Jockies, Blond Virgins, and Turkey Hunting

Back when I was in college, we had a bunch of Algerians living next door. They were good Moslem boys, and they all had been told to keep their wicks dry on blond women-- bad stuff, Satan's whores. Of course, they first all wanted to know what blond women were like (as if we'd know). Then they'd turn around and tell us about how one of these days the other set of teeth blond women had were going to reach out and bite us off at the root. In a few months they realized it was all just a lot of hooey their mommas told them to keep them virgins. They all had blond dates, and they were all complaining that their mommas wanted them to come home and marry some camel-faced girl with a mustache.

I see this happen a lot when Alabama boys come up to Kentucky or Ohio to hunt turkey. They all seen decoys on TV. They can't wait to hunt behind decoys. Then they get out and hear all the sniggering coming from the bushes and they realize this thing about decoys is just something their daddies told them so they would stay home and hunt the farm. Some go back home with their turkeys. Some don't. Everyone goes home agreeing that the turkeys in the Ohio Valley can snigger just as loud as the turkeys back home-- decoys or no decoys.

On Going Old School

The past few years I've been going "Old School." Don't kid yourself. Old school comes to us all. Go ahead and carry dekes, go carry a pop-up blind. Go on out there with your 40lb vests and your knee-high snake boots, and tube-steel shooting seats. Believe me when I tell you this: Wait. Eventually it all comes down to weight. This has nothing to do with Sportsmanship. It has everything to do with Age. One of these days you'll be glad you were schlepping 50 lbs of gear over Gobbler's Knob; it kept you in shape. Little by little you'll want to start leaving stuff at home. One of these days that 3.5" semi-auto and all that ammo is going to start feeling heavy and you're going to start eyeing that 20 GA single shot you let the grand kids shoot like a camel jockey eyes a blond waitress at the rib shack.

Then one day you'll be down to a call or two in a baggie and a couple of shells in your pocket and some little kid from up the road is going to see you huffing and puffing your way home in some ratty 30-year- old camo and ask you. Rather than admit the truth, you'll fill his head with stories about how hunting turkeys this way is the only real sporting way to bag a bird, and that kid is going to go home and ask his Dad for a 20 GA shotgun for his birthday. He's going to have his momma drive him into town to the surplus store and he's going to spend his money on a ratty old M-65 jacket and a boonie hat (cause that's the best there is.) He's going to make her buy of loaf of Butternut Bread, just for the bag. The whole thing is going to start all over again. You wait y'all. It's gonna happen.