Located in east central wisconsin and my tags are good for may 12th to 25th .. wondering what type of setup with decoys and calling should be done .. don't have many years under my belt Sent from my SM-G955U using Bowhunting.com Forums mobile app
With the results I'm having this year,apparently I don't know!...Lol Trying to answer this for me is hard because to me it's based on your birds, the time of day, time of breeding and hunting pressure. Gosh watch the hunting public. I know that I normally have a jake and two hens in the morning and 3 hens in late morning. This year no Jake because we have a live mob of bully Jake's big Tom's are avoiding. Late mornings I do hard excited cutting and some gobbling ( private land) to draw in live hens. Usually you'll see Tom's in tow or coming in a bit later.
I've always just used one single hen decoy, but I tend to be very mobile when hunting them and don't want to carry much. I have had the majority of Tom's that come in to my calling commit to going right to the decoy, but do have some that see the decoy and then hold up. These Tom's for whatever reason won't go right to the decoy. Tom's come in for two reasons, either to mate with a willing hen or show their dominance (fight) over another Tom. The times they don't go right to my decoy I often wonder if a jake decoy might've done the trick. I really feel that a hen and a jake decoy is the best setup in a high majority of scenarios. As far as calling. Early on when they are in full breeding mode, before hens are starting to nest, I rarely have to use any other sound besides yelps. I do throw in some clucks here and there, and will cut/cackle if having trouble to get them to respond. Yelps are far and away my most successful sound. Tone/pitch can be everything though, I've had birds respond to my calling but won't come and then I simply switch to a different reed and here they come. Having at least two different calls that have a different pitch is a good idea. If I could only carry one call it would be a double reed that is very raspy, they seem to really like a raspy sounding yelp. Once the breeding season is waning and the majority of hens are nesting, then I seem to have better luck with hen feeding sounds. I can normally get one to gobble with yelps, but then I have to close some distance and then use soft non aggressive sounds like clucks, purrs, do-its, whit-whit's, and a couple soft yelps here and there to get them to come in. During this time they don't come in like a love struck teenager, they come in much more slowly. They are mainly feeding and will continue feeding while slowly wandering their way over to you. They call much less frequently and you have to be really patient. I've had some take over an hour to get in range. I do better during the middle of the day during this time.
