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Avian X Jake

Question for anyone whose used the Avian X jake. Do you notice that it tends to spook younger birds? I had a setup the other morning and had a mature Tom come in to it but ended up spooking when I was attempting to draw my bow. However I observed several jakes and young toms see the decoys and stay clear. I've noticed the dominant birds seem to have white heads. While I was setting there looking at my deke I realized there is a lot of white in it compared to a real turkey. I'm thinking of painting it to add more red. Anyone else experience this with the Avian X?

A turkeys head can be any shade of red/white/blue depending upon how fired up they are. Not sure it has any real relation to age but I could be wrong. I have not had any issues with jakes in particular steering clear of my Avian deke but I would guess it was a personal thing. That jake or group of jakes may have had a recent but kicking and weren't looking for a fight.... In fact this year I had mature birds shying from the deke and jakes running in. I also witnessed and video'd a jake chasing a beard dragger all over the field in an attempt to whoop him. My guess is with those particular birds the jakes had been ganging up on the older birds making them a bit skiddish.

Worked fine for me

Body posture has more to do with dominance than head color. I use the Dakota, but it's the same concept but not as pretty as the DSD, which is the benchmark.

I had several birds shy this season from the Dakota, but I think it was because it was set in knee-high wheat (my only option). I also got too aggressive and tried to draw my bow before the toms were totally fixated on the decoy.

Yours should work any time of the year, we've killed strutting toms off quality fake jakes Nov, Dec, Jan, and photographed them, a lot, in Feb and March, and killed more in April and May.

If you think you're in with a bunch of subdominant birds, you may want to push your jake decoy closer to the ground.

writer, I recently purchased the Gobblestobber jake and never ran across how the height of jake plays a factor? Can you please give more info on this? I feel I am hunting some subdominant birds this year. Really excited for the Ohio opener......Thanks -

Nope, we killed jakes over ours last weekend with no problems in Nebraska.

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