Sunday, April 13, 2008
Gobbler dekes useful, not always pretty
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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You had to give the jake credit.
The juvenile male turkey was obviously nervous, but he wasn't yet ready to flee the strutting gobbler. Instead he carefully tip-toed around the bigger rival, just waiting for the big bird to make a move.
The gobbler wasn't going to move. He was already dead, stuffed years ago by a taxidermist in West Virginia.
His name is Luther, the prized new acquisition of my buddy and certified turkey hunting fanatic Freddy McGuire.
Freddy sat about 20 yards away in a blind, enjoying the show and with no intention of shooting the juvenile. But his intentions quickly changed when a glistening, big brown figure charged into the field intent on kicking the mysterious newcomer's tail.
"Here comes a big gobbler," Freddy hissed, his words captured by the microphone on the video camera friend Jeff D'Augustino was running on the South Carolina hunt earlier this month.
And down the gobbler quickly went, yet another victim of a strutting gobbler decoy.
Gobbler dekes aren't new, but they're enjoying a revival and continue to be a hot trend in turkey hunting. You can be sure plenty saw use Saturday when Virginia's spring gobbler season opened.
Most major decoy companies now offer strutting gobbler decoys, which are intended to take advantage of a dominant gobbler's desire to challenge rivals during the mating season. Many of the commercial decoys can be retrofitted with a preserved tail fan from a real gobbler or jake.
The decoys, which start at about $50, usually break down and are pretty easy to transport, which is important for hunters who cover a lot of ground on foot. They also look pretty good.
But they don't look as good as the real thing.
Jeff's gobbler decoy, Uno, is the mount of a longbeard he killed a couple decades ago. The mount had seen better days, but Jeff couldn't bear to just get rid of it so Uno's now in his third season of tricking toms.
Freddy acquired Luther from an estate over the winter.
So what if you want a real gobbler decoy but aren't willing to sacrifice one of your own mounts or pay big bucks to buy a professionally mounted bird?
You make your own.
In the fall I put out the word that I was in the market for the skin and wings of a gobbler. A couple weeks later my friend Bobby Hogan called to tell me he'd killed a good jake and had my parts.
From a taxidermy supply company I ordered a $15 foam gobbler body and a painted head. At $50, the head was by far the biggest investment in the project.
The skin stayed in the freezer and the other parts in the box until a couple of weeks ago, when I realized I better get on the project.
When the skin was thawed I covered it with a liberal dose of Borax, a preservative. I cut out as much wing meat as possible, stuck wire through the wings to extend them, and covered them with Borax.
I stretched the skin over the form and pinned it in place. Taxidermists use adhesive, but I didn't want something that permanent because I figured I'd eventually redo the body with skin of a mature gobbler.
Next I attached the head, wings, fan and a post for support.
And then I had a good laugh.
The gobbler, with its jumbled mess of body feathers, looked like he had just come off a three-day bender in Vegas or, as my wife put it, "like he got in a fight with a coyote and lost."
But the fan and head look good, and I really seem to think those are the keys.
I took a picture and sent it to Freddy, Jeff and several other buddies. They were surprisingly kind in their replies and with their suggestions for names.
One suggested Tuff, because it was clear this gobbler didn't back down even after a whuppin'. But I held off on a name until I asked my girls.
"Gobble," one of them said.
"Bobby," the other added.
Gobble I got. But Bobby?
"Isn't that who killed him?" she replied.
So just like that he became Tuff Bobby Gobble.
He wasn't among the decoys out there begging for attention on Saturday's opener because an out-of-town family obligation kept us from the woods.
But he'll debut later this week.
And we'll see how tough he really is.
Or at least how tricky.
