7 expert tips for getting a hung-up turkey to come into your set-up

#5  PULL THE GOALIE

Once you’ve exhausted the calling options and it becomes clear a gobbler is staying put, it’s time to make a risk-reward calculation. Recognizing that a turkey’s eyesight is its primary defence, directly connected to its flight mechanism, do you make a move?

The first option is to leave your visual safe place to quickly remove decoys from your set-up—notably fake jakes and strutters—to make the approach less threatening for a battle-weary tom. Leave behind just one hen, and any tom worth his spurs won’t take kindly to lost opportunity, and may well come in for a closer look. Just don’t get busted with a plastic bird in your hand.

#6  RELOCATION, RELOCATION, RELOCATION

Should your decoy-removal ploy not do the trick, make another risk-reward calculation to move your entire set-up 50 yards in the opposite direction of the hung-up tom. Then call to feign your fake hen’s growing indifference, and her departure.

To enhance the illusion of a hen moving further and further away, gradually make your calls softer and softer. The unpleasant spectre of rejection is often enough to put a petulant tom into motion.