Pennsylvania Game News - May 2020 - 34

Cover Painting by Mark Anderson
You make the long hike up to the ridge and settle in before
daylight on this opening morning, knowing a gobbler is roosted
somewhere, but not so close - until his booming gobbles nearly
knock your socks off. If he flies down and struts within 30 yards of
your 20-gauge English fowler muzzleloading shotgun, he's in serious
trouble. One hundred signed-and-numbered prints of this month's
cover, "Backwoods Gobbler," are available from the artist on 18by 24-inch giclee archival paper. The $125 price includes delivery.
Visit the artist's website, www.MarkAndersonArt.com for ordering
information on this and other artwork.

line and a piece of black tape.
Find the balance point on your decoy,
so that when it hangs in place, it looks
natural. This might take some practice and
adjustment, but once you find the sweet
spot, do something to mark it so you can
easily set it when hunting.
In the woods, you simply need to tie
the line to an overhead limb to deploy the
decoy. Just make sure you put out enough
line so the decoy is at a natural height, just
off of the ground.
When using this setup in an open field,
you'll need something to hold the line.
A stout limb that's maybe 10 or 12 feet
long can be set in the ground at an angle,
and the decoy is suspended from it.
Some use a shepherd hook, which
works great, but is more suitable for a
permanent hunting location since it's not
something most will want to carry around
in the woods.
If there's no wind to move the decoy,
simply attach some fishing line to the
decoy and trail it back to your setup.
Keeping the line on a closed-faced spinning reel can help. Just give it a slight tug.
You don't want the decoy jumping high if
mimicking regular, calm behavior.
If you're using multiple decoys, tie
tag lines to the main line to move all of
34

the decoys.
This jerk-cord rigging is popular
among waterfowlers, but hasn't seemed
to catch on with many turkey hunters, and
might be just the single thing you need to
pull that reluctant gobbler into gun range.

ADD A CALL
Have you ever used a decoy, only to
have a gobbler avoid it and instead come
looking for the source of your calling?
It's happened to me a few times, generally with the gobblers circling my setup
and coming in from behind or from the
side where it was impossible to take a
shot.
After some experimentation, I found
that adding a simple push-button call to
the decoy set works to solve this problem.
When turkeys close the distance on
one another, they'll often call less aggressively, making soft yelps, clucks or purrs.
Peg a push button call right under the
decoy so it won't move, and attach a fishing line to it.
When a gobbler comes close, but just
out of gun range, pull the line to call
softly. This gives the gobbler the visual
and audio all in one spot where he can
focus his attention, instead of splitting
it between what he sees in one spot and

http://www.MarkAndersonArt.com

Pennsylvania Game News - May 2020

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