It's late season do you still use jake and hen , just hen or none?
Last day of the season here in Texas I called in three jakes and then later a Tom (which got shot by my friend) over a Jake/hen combo. As the season gets later I find the birds seemingly less aggressive towards the Jake.
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For the most part, my experience in the late season is that as the hens responding to his gobbling decreases because they are now nesting, the more dominate gobblers are likely to respond to calling. Whether it's a jake or strutting tom over a hen decoy on the ground doesn't seem to be a factor since both attract an incoming bird that wants to run off the intruder male and steal the hen for themselves.
Considering most areas are greened up by late season, I don't even think of messing with decoys. Simply too easy to get in a spot they'll come without expecting to see the hen. Make the foliage work for you. Also makes it much easier to make a small move if he doesn't want to come in all the way. The move might be ten feet or 200 yards, but both are easier if you don't have a decoy to worry with.
On the public land I hunt,the hens I see in the late season just walk by and the toms gobble but run around clueless. So I just use a jake decoy and gobbler yelps and gobbling just to try and bring em in.
I used a single jake (Avian X) yesterday in the field with success. I chose the single jake because Ive noticed some of our birds re joining bachelor groups. I decided I wasn't going to make a sound and just hunt the field silently since the birds were quiet in the morning. I got a courtesy gobble around 3:00 pm, just as I was contemplating calling it a day. Second guessing myself and wondering if I was just hearing things I decided to sit back down and started cutting aggressively until he cut me off. Then it became clear... I wasn't hearing things! He gobbled a ton while making his way down the ridge into the field. Once he saw my jake, he came running in and acted like he was going to fight. I held off the shot cause I wanted to see him do his stuff. He circled the decoy once and then shifted his focus on finding the hen (me) that he heard. I shot him at 20 yds. Even though he never threw a punch, that jake decoy sure pissed him off for a second. Tomorrow is the last day of the NC season.
Awesome picture
That is a great picture looks like a great spot you got there
I think it's all about the individual birds. For years, I've lived by the rule to not use a strutter/jake decoy later in the season, but after seeing birds skirt them early in the season for the last few years, my rhyme and reason is now gone. For me, it's sometimes they do, sometimes they don't...