Turkey season for 2013 officially began for me at day break on Saturday morning. As various resources depicted, I also had been gathering some fairly inconsistent reports from friends and co-workers. With that, I really did not expect much for the weekend as I also needed to spend significant time planting food plots on the same property.
As day broke on Saturday, everything was present but the sound of turkeys. I set up on the south side of our river bottom land as I knew birds frequently roosted in a few trees within several hundred yards of my blind. Not having a chance to go and locate birds the night before, I was running solely on previous experience and a few crossed fingers. I positioned one decoy so that birds pitching down into the field to the south may see, and the other so that birds working through the trees may see. This put the decoys out around 20 yards from the window corners, and 25-30 adjacent to each other.
Without hearing any gobbling early in the morning I basically set my plan to wait it out and do some light calling every 15 minutes or so. The hope was that any birds working through the area would either hear or pick up on one of the two decoys. As it got to be around the 7 o’clock time frame I hit the call again and waited patiently, more or less watching the wood line to the south east where my 2012 bird approached from. After just a minute or two of listening for birds and watching the far tree line, I glanced over at my right decoy to see nothing but the back side of a fan 
The gobbler had moved in completely silent and was no more than 1-2 yards off from the DSD. As I reached down to pick up my 870, the bird swung behind the decoy and was all over it. Pulling up the bead, I double checked that he was not a jake as I was honestly a bit caught off guard and in a hurry (note for next year, don’t put the decoys at the far edges of the blind windows 
). As the bird separated just slightly from the decoy, giving me my first clear shot, two jakes came running into the mix. At this point, which was maybe 15-20 seconds after I first saw the gobbler, all three birds were on top of the DSD.
The tom took the charge in beating up the decoy. As he did, he extended his wings, lifted his head, and elevated just enough to give me a shot I was comfortable with. At 20 yards with a pattern master I knew my pattern was tight enough not to touch the jakes in their location. End over end he went, and the jakes acted like nothing had even happened. The only thing I could think to do was pull out the phone video as I have often heard of the jakes pounching on toms after being shot. As I got the camera up, the jakes scurried over to the dakota decoy and began checking him out.
I ended up stopping the video around 5 minutes as the two jakes circled the dakota and worked it over just enough to tip it in an angle. After around 10-12 minutes they began working towards the wood line to leave. Not wanting the season to be over, and knowing this was an opportunity to watch birds (not very common as our bird density is very low compared to many parts of the state) I touched the call a few times and back they came 
They didn’t end up doing anything more to the decoy other than a few circles and few chirps, but it was pretty cool just watching them interact with the decoy in bewilderment.
After the fact, I am pretty sure the birds pitched down from the further known roosting position and either saw the intended decoy off the bat, or heard the calling enough to bring the decoy into sight from that distance. All in all, I am happy with the hunt. I got to watch the jakes for a good period of time and harvested a bird I am happy with. Though he is likely only a two year old, I know bird numbers as a whole are pretty sparse down here, and I learned after the fact that the neighbor shot a big tom two weeks ago. I did not weigh him, he did not appear real sizable next to the decoy, 7/8th spurs and a 9 inch beard. I am thinking he may be the tom I had pictures of with 4 hen all though the winter.
, congratulations!
