It’s been more than 40 years since a smarter-than-me outdoorsman realized that wild turkeys like to hang out together, and that by deploying a fake bird or two near your hunting setup, you can lure in other birds. And so, the notion of the turkey decoy was born.
Crude, hand-painted paper and cardboard imitations soon gave way to hardplastic and foldable foam birds that could be easily tucked into a hunting vest. Then came posture-specific dekes, white birds, super-realistic feathered decoys and even, at one time, self-inflating counterfeits that you could roll into a baseball-sized sphere and disperse around your hunting area. Some worked, others didn’t.
Though there are a plethora of decoy options available to turkey hunters today, not all of them are effective at yanking birds to within…
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Game & Fish East (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025